NurdRage - 2019-02-14
In this video we make sodium metal from menthol, sodium hydroxide, magnesium, baby oil, and a some lithium if necessary. First, we get a flask and add in 14g of magnesium metal, this can be obtained from fire starters. Then we add in 20g of sodium hydroxide which is acquired from drain opener. Now the key catalyst is 1-2g of menthol crystals, these can easily be bought online. A magnetic stir bar should be added at this point. On top we add in 125mL of mineral oil, i recommend hypoallergenic baby oil. Finally, 3g of sodium metal is added to jump start the reaction and serve as a drying agent. If this cannot be obtained then the lithium hacked out of an AA energizer battery can be used. The reaction mixture is connected to a gas bubbler and a thermometer is inserted. Magnetic stirring is applied and the contents kept suspended to prevent hot spots. The mixture is heated to 120-130 celsius for 2 hours or until bubbling stops, whichever comes first. What's happening is the sodium or lithium metal jump start is reacting with any moisture present and destroying it. This is necessary to prevent damage to the glassware from the highly caustic reaction mixture at higher temperatures. If this damage is acceptable then the jump starter metal may be ignored. After 2 hours or when the bubbling stops, heating is increased to 200 Celsius. Sodium metal is produced here as the magnesium reacts with sodium hydroxide to produce sodium, magnesium oxide, and hydrogen. Menthol serves as the catalyst, allowing this reaction to proceed in a controlled fashion at 200 Celsius. Other catalysts like tertiary alcohols or borneol may also be used. Heating is continued until bubbling stops, about 30-40 hours in the case of menthol. After cooling, the sodium can be boiled in dioxane to separate excess magnesium. Alternatively, the sodium can be remelted into an ingot, and the excess magnesium cut away as it tends to settle at the bottom. Approx yield is 10.9g or 94% Related videos: Make sodium metal with domestic chemicals (thermochemical dioxane process): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCrFFVVcPUI Make dioxane: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Zzrn-61XAY Donate to NurdRage! Through Patreon (preferred): https://www.patreon.com/NurdRage Through Bitcoin: 1NurdRAge7PNR4ULrbrpcYvc9RC4LDp9pS Glassware generously provided by http://www.alchemylabsupply.com/ Use the discount code "nurdrage" for a 5% discount. Twitter: https://twitter.com/NurdRage Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/NurdRage/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nurdrageyoutube/ #Sodium #Menthol
Less than ten years ago there were people laughed off chemistry forums on a weekly basis for asking for an easy and safe way to make sodium metal. It was thought impossible outside of electrolysis. Sure showed em. Menthol brings this to a new level of accessibility.
@Buck Starchaser my man, i dont NOT trust it! Thats the only cigs i ever smoke, when i do. I have a pack if kools menthol sitting in a drawer for the last two months, having one whenever theres the right beer combo. Im not a person of blind faith so much when it comes to science, so much as i am one that believes in the double blind studies. Having said that, i switched to the vape several years ago, occasionally desiring the maoi induced effects only a proper nh3 dipped freebased nicotine taylor made offers us. Do you smoke?
@Angel All Love No. I just quit smokeless tobacco last month, when my dentist told me some tooth damage I had was caused by it. This met my threshold for "I will quit when some believable damage is being caused by it".
Well.. at least it was a tooth and not weird, white growth on gums. Leukoplakia is no joke, and precancer
@Buck Starchaser as good as medicine?
I remember the original forum post where these methods were discovered. Someone got it to work with a balloon iirc, and they were laughed at because nobody could reproduce it. Kind of nuts to see how far it's come!
The sodium project won't stop, there is still a lot more to research. But i'll be doing some other projects too.
You should get knighted, since your contribution to science is so substantial, in that it greatly makes sodium, a common compound, much cheaper to make.
Hey, I've done this twice now. The last time I played around with it a lot. My yield wasn't great but I got a feel for it. This time I just followed your prep. It's cooling now but the imbalanced stirring action that developed towards the end of the reaction is promising. Reaction times appear to be drastically lower for me.
* This run quit producing gas after 7 hours. I'll see with the yield whether it stalled for some reason or if it just completed more quickly.
* My magnesium was in the form of tiny turnings produced from a dremel. ground with a straight router bit at 8kRPM right before use.
* NaOH is new, fine granular from CCS
* The baby oil I used had been stored with sodium in it for at least 6 months. The metal was well corroded and looked like a piece of dried up cheesy scrambled eggs. I wonder if this indicates that the sodium performs a long term cleaning or "hardening" of the oil.
* Stirred at 700 in a flat bottom 500ML flask with 2' condenser column and 3' of host down to the oil bubbler.
* 14g Mg, 20g NaOH, 2.2g menthol crystals, ~3g of starter sodium, filled volume to about 200ml or 250ml with pre-dried mineral oil.
* I haven't gotten my hands on any "hypoallergenic" baby oil yet. The reaction seems to occur with generic baby oil as well as pharmacy mineral oil for laxation.
* Everything proceeded as you indicated, except faster.
* Your reaction mixtures always appear bluish but I get a color like a medium-dark roux (dark gravy)
Interesting, like last time it appears the reaction can stall. I'm not getting any tar as under better lighting my precipitate is gray like yours. There does appear to be consumption of the catalyst going in to a significant degree. There also appears to be a massive consumption of magnesium early in the reaction.
* I think I might see if I can get a workable setup that involves heating the flask in a vat of oil that is also being stirred.
* I suspect that 200C might be too aggressive, particularly for more finely divided magnesium.
* I suspect that deconstructing this reaction a bit more might be both illuminating and perhaps better performing. In particular, I'm going to try preparing the alkoxide first and then afterwards feed the magnesium in piecewise.
@Jim Johnson No you can't. A cursory review of the reaction taking place should make that obvious.
Wouldn't an excess of NaOH eliminate the need to remove residual Mg from that Na?
Years of work condensed into 12 minutes. Impressive.
This is why I love youtube. I don't have the safety gear to do the experiments plus materials. At least I get to see it 💘
"As you can see, it's a very simple and straightforward process that anyone could have figured out" yeah right. It only took about 2 years of an absolute genius of an organic chemist, the best chemist on youtube period, to figure it out. This ladies and gentlemen, is what research and development IS and its also the EXCITING world of chemistry. In case you don't know it, aluminum use to have to be made with sodium and it was worth more than gold. That is why there is an aluminum pyramid on top of the Washington monument. Then came the Hall–Héroult process process and the entire aluminum industry was revolutionized. What NurdRage has done here is nothing LESS than the historic breakthrough of the Hall-Heroult process for aluminum but its for Sodium. I wish I knew Nurd Rages real name because this needs to be the NurdRage (insert real name) Sodium Process. I'm dead serious. This is break through, this is no small accomplishment. Sodium is still made today by molten electrolysis of sodium salts. Now one of the main ways of making magnesium is through a molten electrochemical process. Dow Chemical did a LOT of work on this in the early 1900's and before and during WWII. The Chinese (today) like to use the Pigeon Process which is the silicothermic reduction process with Silcon. The production of silicon is done with Quartzite ( a rock) or sand is used along with coke or carbon. It IS done in a arc furnace at a high temperature but is a silicothermic reduction and NOT an electrochemical method. The silicon is then reacted at high temperatures with MgO (Magnesium Oxide) to make elemental magnesium. The magnesium is now used in the NurdRage Sodium Process (NRSP) to make Sodium. So this is probably the first time in history that sodium was made on something that CAN BE a production class scale, with widely available chemicals for the production of sodium without an electrochemical process. Now with the 'easy' and economic production of sodium there is a world of NEW possibilities on what NurdRage can show us we can make with sodium that will have a high value to it. Well Done NurdRage. You truly are a role model world class chemist and a mentor to millions. You have reached more people than any university professor could if he taught 12 hours a day for 100 years. Steven Harris
Glad to see this project entering its final stages. A far cry from its somewhat pessimistic beginnings. It’s amazing to see scientific discovery documented AS it happens.
Why thank you!
"Some years ago"
I feel old now
Me too, man, been following this project since it started
This is exceptional, I've been following you for years, even long before Patreon existed and you were fully stuck because you couldn't keep on doing these experiments.
I knew that you always wanted to have some sort of breakthrough experiment, and, I think, this could be it. You've worked for years on this, and I've seen the failures, the successes, the trials and tribulations and the all-out "giving up" stage. I'm so happy that you managed to see this through to a reasonable conclusion.
Sodium metal access to the amateur opens up so many opportunities for new chemists to perfect the art, through having purer end results, to higher yields, to actually being able to do things without shedding hundreds on chemicals that they can't afford on a budget to fuel a hobby passion.
So well done to you sir, you've done the exceptional!
Congratulations!
Thanks!
I totally agree
When looking at this video and thinking how easy it is to make sodium, remember that a professional PhD chemist spent more than a year of his free time to perfect the process and especially to find a suitable and commonly available catalyst.
And how to get good yealds and not eat the glassware
Explosive carrot
@Dapper Dinkum haha wonderful
Forbidden Carrot
"And that is how you make sodium. As you can see, it's a very simple and straightforward process that anyone could have figured out."
You can be a real bastard sometimes, you know that? xD
I came here to say this.
His modesty is as astounding as his results
How many of these videos can I watch before I’m put on a watch list??
@Syncerus Caffer Caffer If your interested in derivatives of 4-piperidone, specifically n-phenylethyl-3-methyl derivatives, brush up on your mannich reactions. There's a heck of a lot of euilibriums at play since you're reacting 3 reagents together simultaneously, but get the conditions just right and it does work. There's a paper out there that can get you started, but you're gonna have to find that one on your own while you're researching. I'll leave you with a final though: just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should. I'm providing this info because I'm assuming you're just curious and wanting to learn the mechanisms behind the synthesis for your own enjoyment and nothing more.
@snowdaysrule2 Thank you very much! 🤗
There's only one problem, I can't brush up on my Mannich reactions because I would have to learn them from scratch; I'm just an amateur interested in organic chemistry, never studied at a university; I just get fascinated whenever I see an organic structural formula. 🤩
I'm also dreaming of designing a crazy strong opioid with a half live of... well, very long; thinking of α- methyl lofentanyl. 🤔
Okay, I'll be learning about Mannich now. 🤓
@snowdaysrule2 Ideally I would really make something, although right now it's not realistic to expect that, one of the reasons being I have no fumehood, only a petit balcony.
Also know that I can reasonably protect myself against an accidental OD because I've lots of naltrexon, a very strong, extremely long working morphine antagonist.
And last but not least, I'm not interested in making money with it, at all. 😇
Two
@Superfluous Science not really because no workers are necessary a simple script could add and rank people on a list like that pretty easily
As a chemist myself I take off my hat to you sir for your persistent and dedication .....
Hope you can publish this and get the recognition you deserve for an excellent application of science and chemistry ...
Hey! I need some help in the chemical field! Are you expert level?
Pro tip: cheap magnesium can be found at scrap/junk yards in the form of wheel rims. Ask if you can buy broken mag rims, as these only have scrap value.
just realised i have 4 mags sitting in my shed, just waiting.
ooooh
It's unbelievable that the menthol can works the whole process like menthol without decompose. Best video on this theme on entire YouTube. Hat down.
Agreed. Surprised it isn't reduced to menthane by the sodium and or lithium.
@fla playa
Alcohols are difficult to reduce to alkanes. You have to go around it.
S2N Reaction
Ok, I'm stumped. What exactly is the menthol doing in this process? Is it passing through some kind of alkoxide intermediate before the sodium is reduced?
@scabbarae
Nurdrage explains it better than me
https://youtu.be/PxPjBz_8S3c
Fueling desires for chemistry. Perfect for Valentine's Day! Look foreward to seeing the new lab.
Congratulations on getting this process boiled down to a tutorial. It's been an amazing journey, and I'm grateful that you've taken us all along on the ride with you.
Keep being awesome :D
HOLY SHIT IT'S OUT
The moment has come. Thank you, NurdRage. Can't wait to see the additional developments in the project!
That looks so simple now. It is almost difficult to think of all the steps needed earlier to get to this simple and efficient method. Good job!
Random eBay store: you gonna order more than 5g of our expensive sodium?
Nurd Rage: nah... thanks for the jump start sodium!
Random eBay store: jump... start?
Lol, it's not that expensive anymore.
https://www.etsy.com/listing/759853845/sodium-metal-10-25-50-100-grams
A few tips discovered the hard way: Mg powder/dust requires exceptional magnetic stirring or an overhead stirrer because it tends to form a sludge. Mg shavings don't pack well which means they stir poorly and require a very large flask. Mg turnings or chopped up Mg ribbon is the best compromise, although good stirring is still required.
Use a large, strong stir bar that covers almost the entire diameter of your flask. If you use an undersized stir bar, poor stirring will cause undisturbed pockets of Mg that ultimately forms aggregates. This slows the reaction and, more seriously, traps the stir bar and forms localized hot spots which will overheat and crack the flask. I had this happen and the bottom of the flask cracked after about 24 hours at 200 C. I'm not sure if my stir bars are unusually shitty but despite being PTFE they were wrecked (dark black) at the end of this 24 hour reaction.
If the reaction fails be very careful during cleanup as you're faced with the task of digging chunks of unreacted Mg aggregates out of the flask which are also coated in small globules of sodium. This can easily burst into flame if any moisture hits it, which is a very bad thing if it happens inside the flask. Hydrogen + flame + glass vessel with a narrow neck = exploding glass.
Very nice work! I would advise anyone trying this to always cut sodium UNDER mineral oil. This will reduce the amount of oxidation and also minimize the risk of ignition. Cheers!
That's not a worry with fresh made, that's very true for older samples though
You're thinking of potassium. I've never had sodium ignite while cutting. Even with old, dry or large samples. I have with potassium though. Nothing like cutting 100 grams of potassium and it instantly melts and catches fire. Out of the dozens of kilos of sodium that I've handled and cut, nothing even remotely similar has ever happened.
This is amazing stuff, expecially for small scale sodium synthesis! This empowers a lot of home lab reactions that would usually cost a lot of money, like alkoxide substitutions or making NaBH4. I'm sure that we can also find some working tertiary alcohols even more common than menthol!
P.S. is your menthol stereochemically pure or racemate?
OK, so I think that this prep needs one major change which is to perform the steps in a deconstructed fashion. The major reason for this is that "hypoallergenic" baby oil isn't necessarily free of unwanted compounds. In my case, I was able to get 'equate' brand hypoallergenic baby oil but it still had fragrance in it. Whatever the reason, I ended up with the same problem as last time which is that, after the initial formation of the alkoxide, the sodium production would go for a while and then stall. Adding in more menthol produces a lot of gas for a short time only. I assume that once the formation of the alkoxide dies down, the gas stops because the sodium producing reaction never re-starts.
The one-pot design is great but considering how finicky the reaction is, I don't think it's worth it especially considering that the starting materials aren't strictly defined (relative to an in-depth paper). This is what I recommend:
* First dry the oil with sodium metal. I just processed three bottles of the oil in a couple of batches with a 1L beaker. Leave the sodium in there a while and also bring the oil to the melting point of sodium for at least an hour. In my case, this produces the expected flakes of NaOH pretty quickly. However, after some more time, a significant amount of a yellowish-orange compound will precipitate out. If you do not pre-treat the oil, this reaction will happen during sodium production. In my case it appears that this yellow compound either suppresses the reaction, destroys the catalyst, or both. I strongly suspect catalyst destruction.
* Charge a small beaker with approx. 50ml of the dried oil, a gram of sodium metal, and a few grams of menthol. Stir fast enough to agitate the sodium for about an hour. The metal should get shiny and then dull and tan colored. The oil will become hazy.
* Charge your reaction flask with the NaOH and a few grams of sodium and dry with slowly increasing heat as per NR's videos. Once the lye starts to become translucent and wants to cling to the glass, slow down the heat increase. Watch the glass and if lye is sticking around on one spot too long, just pick up the flask and manually agitate it until it's free of any clinging NaOH and resume. Once you melted the sodium, you're done. I used very fast stirring for this (800+) and it also consumed about one hour's time.
* Charge the reaction flask with the magnesium.
* Charge the reaction flask with about half of your sodium menthol baby oil.
* Hook the flask up to the bubbler and raise the internal temperature to between 190C and 200C.
I cannot stress enough how important pre-treating the oil is. Making a large batch of pre-dried, pre-purified oil ahead of time so that you can use it without rationing improves absolutely everything. The reality is that if you do not pre-treat your oil you will be pouring wet, and likely contaminated, oil all over your sodium every step of the way.
NurdRage: "I used the sodium to make the sodium"
And it works great! xD
So cool to see the fruits of all your labor over these last months. Can't wait for the next video!
7:53 He says as I am actually peeling carrots.
How about hydroxylation of limonene,
Should yeild a diol, both OH being 3'
Might be a valid catalyst
and even if only one double bond is hydroxylated then we get menthol haha
Cyclicalization of citronellal is another path to explore. Heat citronellal with citric acid to 50°C for a few hours, and it should convert to P-menthane-(3,8)-diol, an insect repellent also known as PMD, menthoglycol, or by the trade names Citriodiol and Citrepel. This is basically menthol with a tertiary alcohol group attached to the "bottom" of the molecule, and should work even better than menthol. Of course, you can also extract PMD directly from store-bought insect repellent.
"A very dangerous and explosive carrot" LMAO
has been an honor to follow your investigation until this point... thank you for so much
btw, this: "As you can see, it's a very simple and straightforward process that anyone could have figured out" made me cry laughing, also the "explosive carrot"
I’m having some trouble with my run. Everything seems to progress nicely for about 5-8 hours and I can see the magnesium being converted into magnesium oxide due to the discoloration of the oil. However, after those 5-8 hours the reaction will suddenly stop I assume as it begins to backflow. Any ideas on what the issue is?
This is the end of one of the most exciting sagas of youtube videos I have ever watched. I am extremely impressed with what you achieved!
A great achievement! I’ve been watching the progress of this project since the beginning, it’s been a fascinating learning process!
"That anyone could have figured out"..... Yeah. Clearly
Well done! It’s been awesome watching the process! Most of all, thank you for making the extra effort to publish the full scientific process which is so important for aspiring STEM enthusiasts to see - especially the “failures” you had as this is where the gold truly lies.
yea I'd like to see the rationalization for the reaction. Looking at menthol, my first guess it is related to the fact that it's covered with lone pairs. really cool work getting the process to this point!
Thank you so much, you're a genius. Nobody ever taught me more about chemistry than you. And I learned a lot already before.
This is really a great synthesis and I wanna try it soon.
It would be interesting to see, how to form NaN3 from this.
Also am still searching for a way to make Nitromethane at home.
Amazing job! Definitely something I will try. I'm tempted to record it and upload it to the YooToobs as well.
You Sir are a Legend.....
I really enjoyed this series, seeing how you overcame the obstacles and optimized to make it accessible to those with a small budget using readily available ingredients. It was a lot more useful and interesting to me than the standard chemistry cooking shows. Thanks also to those who helped fund the research.
I don't know if it possible, but I would like to see a series on making non-recreational drugs. I take a 50+ year old antidepressant, tranylcypromine, that has gone from about $40/mo to $300/mo in about a decade. Of course I'd never take something I cooked up myself, but it would still be interesting to see for educational purposes.
Thank you for making sodium obtainable! I've enjoyed watching this series, and your other videos.
Two questions:
Is there a reaction of molten sodium chloride with magnesium?
Is the melting point of a sodium chloride/potassium chloride mixture lower than each separately?
OK, this trips into a third question - making NaK with your process.
Thanks for the great videos!
Hype! You've finaly made it <3
It's finally out!!! Wowww! Congrats man :D
Great job, I’ve been waiting to see this for a long time. Thank you for sharing!
Would this reaction work the same with potassium hydroxide, yielding potassium metal?
"A dangerous and explosive carrot"
Thank you nurdrage. Honestly I love science and math so much. These are my favourite videos to watch.
I'm so happy for you and the community. I'm glad you have been able to develop a method to produce sodium metal for the amateur chemist.
I like the oddly satisfying way of cleaning up, purifying, and separating the sodium metal with the 1-4 dioxane!
Mystyc Cheez - 2019-02-14
"As you can see, it's a very simple and straightforward process that anyone could have figured out"
LMAO
agvulpine - 2019-02-21
@GRBTutorials You never know what dynamics might change in process costs. One method might eventually run afoul of EPA, energy or industrial zoning.
piranha031091 - 2019-06-26
That's impostor syndrome for you: *does something brilliant* "Anyone could have done it!"
Blim The Toolman - 2019-06-28
He worked really hard on figuring out this setup. Years in the making. It went from about a 40-70% yield with the brute heat method, went to about 70-80% yield for the first sodium magnesium mixture, then this method upgraded the original chemical mixture with chemicals that help get that yield to 90+% that's insane, it's literally free sodium as long as you have the keys for ignition (starter sodium)
Lord Tachanka - 2019-12-31
bormisha he was literally quoting. Stfu white knight.
Quagigitymire - 2020-07-07
The words "are you fucking kidding me" instantly came to mind hearing him say this...