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Author Topic: Sodium Hydroxide Source.  (Read 460 times)

Vesp

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Sodium Hydroxide Source.
« on: March 15, 2009, 07:57:56 PM »
Sodium and potassium hydroxide can be easily bought off line in the form of drain cleaners, at a chemical supply shop, and places that sell paraphernalia for making biodiesel and soap. Personally I am not a big fan of ordering offline since you have to pay more for shipping, and wait.  I haven't until recently been able to locate any decent sources of sodium hydroxide since they have taken Red Devil Lye off the shelf.

Now I've found at least 2 sources of drain cleaner that contain pure lye. Rooto 100% lye, Roebic Crystal Drain Opener, and if your lucky they still sell Glug which is also supposed to be pure lye. I hear they sell these at lowes or ace hardware.

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LYC

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Re: Sodium Hydroxide Source.
« Reply #1 on: March 15, 2009, 08:09:24 PM »
Thanks! This is really helpful, I always thought the drain cleaners now days were mixed with Al beads to make life miserable for all us "soap makers".. haha
I've never seen the 100% Lye Rooto before, I've only seen their Sulfuric acid products, I'll have to check that out sometime I guess.

Vesp

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Re: Sodium Hydroxide Source.
« Reply #2 on: March 17, 2009, 12:29:14 AM »
Oh yeah most do and they also tend to mix sodium nitrate in as well. It seems like mixing Al powder, and a nitrate oxidizer is a dumb idea with sodium hydroxide. It can still be separated and really only acts as annoyance to anyone who needs pure sodium hydroxide while obviously it makes the product more dangerous.

I bet all you'd need to do to get pure sodium hydroxide from those mixes would be to dissolve it in alcohol, filter, and then boil away. Sodium Nitrate probably isn't too soluble in alcohols.
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LYC

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Re: Sodium Hydroxide Source.
« Reply #3 on: March 17, 2009, 10:40:06 PM »
Well after looking around online at all the lowes hardware stores for the Reobic I disocovered that none of them carry the product. I'm sure they could order some though.
Ace is the place!  ;D

Vesp

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Re: Sodium Hydroxide Source.
« Reply #4 on: March 17, 2009, 10:51:31 PM »
Oh well that's to bad lowes doesn't seem to have it. Sounds like you got the rooto at ace though, so that's good. How much was it?
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LYC

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Re: Sodium Hydroxide Source.
« Reply #5 on: March 17, 2009, 10:53:09 PM »
Yeah.. I think it was 3 dollars and something. Not more then 4 dollars for a pound of it!

llamabox

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Re: Sodium Hydroxide Source.
« Reply #6 on: March 21, 2009, 07:19:31 PM »
Lowes Hardware, item# 146450 "Roebic Crystal Drain Opener"

Vesp

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Re: Sodium Hydroxide Source.
« Reply #7 on: March 21, 2009, 07:42:12 PM »
Does the lowes sell it where you live?
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llamabox

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Re: Sodium Hydroxide Source.
« Reply #8 on: March 21, 2009, 08:01:18 PM »
It did the last time I was there, maybe 6 months ago. I have since switched to Thrift brand as a small hardware store closer to me stocks it.
http://www.thriftmarketing.com/material_safety_data_sheet.htm

http://www.ldavisenterprises.com/catalog/i1190.html
« Last Edit: March 21, 2009, 08:06:30 PM by llamabox »

Vesp

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Re: Sodium Hydroxide Source.
« Reply #9 on: March 21, 2009, 08:10:36 PM »
Ah that seems like another great source! :)
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spaced_out

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Re: Sodium Hydroxide Source.
« Reply #10 on: March 30, 2009, 09:01:55 AM »
I recently ran out of sodium hydroxide at a very inopportune time. A trip to my local home depot and lowes proved unsatisfactory, so I ended up finding Bullseye lye at a small specialty hardware store and its pretty good, albeit not super high grade or anything. 908gms cost me $15.99 versus 500gms for $125.00 of acs grade lolz.

poisoninthestain

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Re: Sodium Hydroxide Source.
« Reply #11 on: March 30, 2009, 03:37:37 PM »
spaced_out- I never really saw a problem with technical grade(home depot, lowes,ect...) NaOH compared to food grade or ACS grade. I mean sure it's much crappier as far as purity goes but most reactions aren't so picky.

The only major impurities *that i know of* (and i have a tendency to prove myself wrong often) are heavy metal ions.

If you are just A/B washing/extracting technical shouldn't be a problem. Again, if you're synthing GHB or some other sensitive compound I'd use food grade at least(I always used NaHCO3 for GHB btw).

same applies for KOH.

micro

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Re: Sodium Hydroxide Source.
« Reply #12 on: June 13, 2009, 11:13:42 AM »
The cheapest generic brands of drain openers usually have zero to none of additives.
My NaOH and KOH drain openers appear to be reasonably pure.
I'd still love to have H2SO4 drain openers here, but pure NaOH and KOH ones are good.

Vesp

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Re: Sodium Hydroxide Source.
« Reply #13 on: June 13, 2009, 07:24:11 PM »
You are talking about the ones in solution, right?
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Douchermann

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Re: Sodium Hydroxide Source.
« Reply #14 on: June 15, 2009, 04:21:51 PM »
As for the NaOH with aluminum shaving in it - if you dissolve the NaOH in alcohol, it will most likely react with the aluminum.  Not to mention, it would take a lot of alcohol.  Your best bet might be to form a suspension with dibromomethane.  It's more dense than sodium hydroxide, but less dense than the aluminum.  It should separate fairly well.  However, if you can get dibromomethane, I don't assume you have a problem getting biodiesel NaOH in 100lb sacks.

Vesp

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Re: Sodium Hydroxide Source.
« Reply #15 on: June 15, 2009, 07:21:09 PM »
Interesting Idea with the separation. A mixture of OTC solvents might work, but I wouldn't count on it as most of them float on water.

You could always allow it to react, and then with a dilute solution allow the Al compounds to precipitate and extract the solution.
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wuberton

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Re: Sodium Hydroxide Source.
« Reply #16 on: September 01, 2009, 03:53:31 AM »
Although listed as retailers on the manufacturer's website, Roebic Sodium Hydroxide Crystal Drain Opener is not found (at least not in this region) in Lowe's, Home Depot, Wal-Mart or Sears... however, an independently owned hardware store carries it (thank God) and TSC (chain store--'it's better out here') still carries both Roebic NaOH and H2SO4 (which is only 90% and full of nasty extras)...
For some reason, Rooto has been inaccessible for awhile now (a month at least)...
Vesp & Doucherman -- Many thanks on the separation techniques, as a decent amount of said product was purchased by a non-listening peon... think tuesday or BW over at WD had mentioned using a screen as a filter, and collecting the smaller NaOH as it passed through, although the hygroscopic nature of NaOH made that a pain for swim...
 

Sedit

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Re: Sodium Hydroxide Source.
« Reply #17 on: September 01, 2009, 04:02:02 AM »
I just got 2lb of NaOH for the first time in years but it is not red devil by far.

Has anyone noticed any problems when using NaOH flakes that appears to have a greyish color to it. It reacts with H2O nicely and all but I am not use to this discoloration and it displeases me a bit.
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Vesp

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Re: Sodium Hydroxide Source.
« Reply #18 on: September 01, 2009, 04:12:52 AM »
The only NaOH I've ever seen is in little prills, and I've never had any problems with it.

I wonder what could be causing it to be grey? Graphite perhaps?
Does the solution it produces appear greyish, produce a precipitate, or is it completely clear? If it is clear I wouldn't worry to much about it, or perform a titration on it to figure out its purity.
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German

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Re: Sodium Hydroxide Source.
« Reply #19 on: September 01, 2009, 06:19:11 AM »
When I first started to buy chems I didn't understand people's difficulty with lye. Biodiesel places sell the powder super cheap from 2lbs to hundreds with no suspicion attached. They also sell sulfuric acid, nitric acid, and some other goodies all while assuming you need large quantities for making biodiesel.
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