I have heard that magnesium and sodium hydroxide react to form an explosive mixture producing MgO, H2, and Na - I figured "yeah, whatever" thinking that it would be nearly impossible to recover any sodium.

However it is fairly do-able and especially at smaller amounts. I believe that we can find a way to very effectively improve the yield and the extraction process.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=908rjHQ5mmc&feature=fvw[/youtube]


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faorfmRkCv0&feature=channel[/youtube]

Any ideas on how to improve the yield?
Clearly mixing the reactants in a proper ratio, the better off you will be - excess NaOH will react with sodium at those temperatures. I would think excess magnesium would be highly desirable.
One other thing is if there could be a chemical one could mix with the NaOH and Mg to absorb a decent amount of the heat, it would prevent the reaction from being so violent. It is hard to think of anything that with sufficent heat would not react with Mg, NaOH, or Na. Perhaps the addition of finely ground carbon? A extremely high boiling point wax or oil? etc...

For extraction...
I think an effective method of extraction would be to grind the "ash" to a fine powder under mineral oil in a mortar & pestle than transferring that to a long tube in which heating and stirring can be performed. The heating will allow the sodium metal to form blobs and sink into the bottom while the other materials would stay as a powder and hopefully get suspended into the mineral oil.

Is there a solvent that is nonreactive towards sodium, has a density greater than sodium and a boiling point above the melting point of sodium? If so - that would be very useful.

The best thing that could ever happen would be to find a mixture of sodium and potassium hydroxide that has a lower melting point, and actually be able to melt the hydroxide mixture under a mineral oil solution than slowly add an excess of magnesium or even aluminum - which the guy from the video eludes to the idea that aluminum would be higher yielding in sodium.

To find an inert substance with a boiling point above 360*C sounds like a really really difficult task.

However -- hxxp://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/je60023a009#

If I am reading this correctly, a mixture of NaOH and KOH can produce a mixture that melts at 170*C - which means great things, since that is very much in the reach of some fancy solvent, I bet. What is the boiling point of wax?

The molten electrolyte for each experiment was a eutectic mixture of sodium and potassium hydroxides (51 mol % NaOH, 49 mol % KOH, Alfa Aesar). This eutectic has the benefit of a much lower melting temperature (170° C.) compared to the melting temperatures of pure sodium and potassium hydroxides (323° C. and 360° C., respectively).

hxxp://www.faqs.org/patents/app/20090017345

Seems pretty easy!

The boiling point of paraffin oil is around 224*C.

Slowly adding the Mg while stirring ought to allow for some heat to form and be lost. It would be dangerous, you'd probably want to reflux the oil, and keep an eye on everything.

Off-topic but related: Does NaOH dissolve in things such as Ethylenediamine, liquid ammonia, etc? If so - perhaps slowly adding Mg or Al to that could be very useful.

I swear the quest for making sodium when I was a child was what got me into chemistry.  Now I have no problem tossing pounds into large bodies of water.

Be warned. NaK is a bitch and higly sensitive to air (very pyrophoric)! K is a wet fart against it.

Once I heated NaOH with Al-Foil in a testtube with open flame until a reaction occurred and after cooldown I added some water. A violent reaction was the result, so I think Na was produced.

So it should be possible to dissolve Al in molten NaOH under inert gas to get pure liquid Na (Al(OH)3 should dissolve in NaOH as [Al(OH)4]Na).

yes but he said

Once I heated NaOH with Al-Foil in a testtube with open flame until a reaction occurred

And under those conditions it is very likely that a reaction that produced sodium did occur. I think, at least.


Thanks for the input by the way. I know NaK is insanely more dangerous than Na or K - but the NaOH and KOH mixture is the only way to go about this for a very high yielding process - since that mix can be melted under a high boiling point solvent, which will allow a slow addition of the reducing agent in an inert liquid -- which is needed so it doesn't catch fire and have all of the sodium/potassium getting kicked off into the atmosphere. Additionally the reaction can be controlled very well, assuming one slowly adds the Mg or Al just a bit at a time. I think that it would only do little "pops" and hopefully nothing to serious.
Than in the end, you would likely have the shiny NaK metal in the bottom, a hard chunk of hydroxides and a suspension of the oxide. The NaK being a dense liquid could easily be separated from the other powdery low-density material I would imagine.

Understandable, I think there is a decent chance that it could form sodium, however.
Either way, it is well known and documented that magnesium works.
And with the 170*C of KOH/NaOH with Mg (or possibly Al) under a decent inert solvent - NaK should be easy to produce I think.

A big danger exist if the NaK forms in small drops, circulates to the top, and hits the air - igniting the already hot likely oil based compound.

Otherwise, I bet this is one of the safer and easier ways to make NaK.

Dioxane is pretty toxic right?
I like the sound of n-octane or some other long or aromatic hydrocarbon such as paraffin oil.
I really wish I had some KOH right now - basically the only thing stopping me from trying this with Aluminum.

I bet it could be sold as a kit if it worked really well

Or since NaK would form, and it is very very reactive - perhaps it could than be hydrogenated easily to form NaH/KH.
Sell a DIY NaBH4 kit - Comes with euctic mixture of hydroxides, 100% trimethyl borate, THF, etc etc all that would be needed to make the Na/KBH4.

Sounds like a horrible idea to sell as a kit. Liability and all lol

Oh yep got those confused.
paraffin oil seems practical as well I think - easy to get for a lamp fuel, looks inert, etc.