Q: On use of ultrasonic horn to make reactions more complete

Electroencephalopod · Sat Jun 25, 2005 12:21 pm

The Cephalopod had a dream one day that he was able to get his acids to react more completely, with less heat, and faster with his magic beans if he placed the magic pot in the field of an ultrasonic transducer. Now, Pod had done exhaustive looking around about this, and found that lots of major chemical manufacturers use this for apparently the same purpose.

So Pod was wondering if any of you kind ladies and gents had experience inasmuch as comparable yields for simple things, like extracting the magick from magickal plants. Surely a nonpolar extraction would be the simplest method of testing this out, no?

Then Pod fell back to sleep hoping there would be some clarity to his dreams soon...

fcknut · Mon Jun 27, 2005 11:51 pm

You would probably get a slight increase in yield for extractions from plant matter (as opposed to a typical aq/org extraction) cos sonication is basically like battering your stuff around with a bat, so you particulates will have a greater surface area etc. You may find that this makes it harder tofilter effectively but this may not be a major problem depending on what you're doing. But if getting hold of/access to an ultrasonic bath is difficult, you are probably just as well off crushing your stuff well and leaving it stirring for a wee bit longer.

but hey, that's just my opinon - wtf do i know....?

fcknut · Mon Jun 27, 2005 11:53 pm

just a further note - sonication probably isn't useful for all reactions - and quites often it is useful purley from an increased level of solubility of reagents. it can also be used for removing oxide coatings from metals, but there are often better ways to do this too...

primathon · modified

I've never really given this much thought, but do you think this sort of thing could prove benificial in reactions employing a PTC? Seems like it would help...

I dunno, just thinking out loud...

Vibrata_Lumine · Fri Sep 16, 2005 9:09 am

Swis has been scheming a while of weaving free electrons into matter with ultrasound. That will be cool