NurdRage - 2018-12-24
In this video i test Eucalyptol to see how it behaves in the sodium production reaction. I'm hoping to try and find a way to avoid dioxane. 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
This is very likely going to be the last video for this year and only video for this month. Been very busy with other things and haven't been able to put in the time into video production. Anyway, merry Christmas, have a happy new year.
Merry Christmas and a happy new year to you.
I hope you have a magnesium christmas, and a halogen new year!
Merry Christmas to you as well!
Hey nurd rage it would be awsome if you could show us if this process works for potassium as well! :)
Have you tried Glycerine? Tell me if there is any reactivity issues.
I do enjoy the Lab Notes format. There is always something to learn, especially for those of us who have a limited knowledge of chemistry. Have a Merry Christmas and I hope the new year brings much success with your experiments.
Hey! I show realy cool chemical reactions with exotic chemicals like: LiBH4, SOCl2, KO2, TiCl4, NOClO4, NaN3, SF6, etc.
You don't have to know chemistry to see it :D If you like chemical experiments - Welcome ;)
You have a treasure here. You have the ability to fund independent research, make informative and interesting regular reports on the progress of said research. This fosters genuine interest in scientific research, and could potentially be a model for research to get done that perhaps would not otherwise happen except as a side reaction to a more potentially profitable research project. .
you could definitely get a paper published on this, though i know many chemists who are already are aware of this project
Now that I did some research, it does look like as if you could publish research under a pseudonym, which would make it seem as if NurdRage would probably publish something under his/her current pseudonym of "Dr. N Butyl Lithium"
@Jason Dong The only problem with publishing a paper anonymously/under a pseudonym is that if you need to contact a fictional person, you need a way to verify that they are who they say.
You could do it the old-fashioned way, where some organization knows the real identity, and can verify that identity.
You could also do it using cryptographic hashes to sign any message sent by the fictional character, for example using blockchain.
Eh you don't need blockchain, just bog-standard GPG signatures will do
I bet NR already have a paper ready on this. Just waiting for be accepted.
Or maybe he already sent it as a letter to a journal.
@MrJason005 yes. Hence why I said "for example".
How about polyethylene glycol for a solvent? Long enough chains will give a pretty high boiling point, and you might get magnesium / sodium coordination similar to dioxane.
Wow man, you're really going to take it to the point where the very amateurish amateur could replicate it, so that the authorities would have to ban you and all chemicals that you used as precursors!
@Nathan Hopkins
Yes but you can't really buy more than 5g. That's the size of the vast majority of the samples sold, and they cost a lot.
If you want to use sodium for chemical synthesis at a reasonable price you'll have to ask to a chemical supplier, and to be able to buy from them you must either be an university or some other kind of chemical research unit, and you have to justify the use that you make of the sodium.
Plus in most countries buying large quantities of sodium will get the police knocking at your door anyways.
Nathan Hopkins, like with all laws and regulations, the government sets them in whenever they see that we're doing something fishy. There were no car traffic laws until there were cars. There was no regulation of small-sized flying vehicles until drones became abundant. There was no ban on acetic anhydride until people started using it for making heroin. Same with sodium and pretty much anything else. As soon as something interesting emerges, it gets banned.
I lost all my downloaded chemistry videos in a boating accident
@Pietro Tettamanti I mean, I've definitely seen Amazon listings for significantly larger quantities. Not that the price isn't high (which is why NurdRage's work is awesome), but these are small orders from an industrial standpoint, so a price markup isn't out of the question.
@bormisha Not disagreeing, but the illicit use isn't as obvious to me here. I suppose the bees will cook something up eventually, though.
Still, it would be quite expensive to implement countermeasures. After a certain point, having a regulated, legal source of these drugs does a better job of controlling illicit production than "poisoning" commodity chemicals.
you better set up a sodium factory after all this work you've invested.
The established method of electrolyzing sodium salts is likely still much cheaper at an industrial scale.
@Basement ScienceE
But what about energy efficiency? is it more efficient too?
@Laharl Krichevskoy Considering how much energy you waste by heating all the solvent volume....probably
It's just amazing what you have found working on this.
odd, was just looking at the active ingredients for listerine ....0.092% Eucalyptol
You should try other alkaline metals too!
francium!!!
i think he did lithium a long while back
@Barnesrino Kripperino He never made lithium from its salts, he just got it out a battery
Codyslab made ceasium and something else by reacting ceasium cloride with sodium or something
He did potassium, but the video is unlisted. But you can still find it if you search for it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHgyn-wsxFw.
Your fume hood must smell like a factory for cough sweets.
And as a side bonus, your lab now smells minty fresh.
I may not understand everything but i enjoy watching your work.
The path to success is paved by failure.
There is no such thing as failure in science. Both positive and negative outcomes of an experiment give information, which is the true objective. For example, NR has learned that ethereal solvents increase reaction speed but do not purify the resulting sodium - and he has formed a new hypothesis that it may be the chelating properties of dioxane that allow it to purify the sodium.
@PyroDesu Yes, that was exactly the point of what I said.
A failure is defined as not having achieved your objective, but that failure can still have brought new information.
Congratulations on your failure. Really, I love how these videos are actual science, documenting empirical testing, not just demonstrations of known results. Anywho, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from a fellow Canuck, May the lab gods grant you good favour, and avert and abeyance on all lab gremlins.
Thank you for your continued work on optimizing this process.
@ 6:18 - “but after running it for 4 hours, it was clear it wasn’t working”. Nope, It was cloudy it wasn’t working. 🥁 Ba da dun. 😂
I’ll see myself out now.
just as i finished commenting on a Cody'sLab video, u uploaded XD
I love watching these videos even though I have no idea what is going on.
Impressive work as always. Your dedication to this work is greatly appreciated for my own personal education at the very least.
Wow, this is starting to get really cheap!
Thank you for all the hard work and effort you put into the videos, especially with all your set backs from losing all your data a couple times.
Excellent work, I like that you were able to validate the sodium is reacting with the solvent turning it brown. Sometimes I really wish I knew what it was exactly
#OOT, @NurdRage Can you show how to synthesis dioctyl adipate (DOA), I need it as binder in my solid rocket propellant
I don't remember you finding menthol as a catalyst...Guess I'll have to rewatch some videos.
Merry Christmas! Thanks for the great content.
As a high school student interested in studying chemistry I just have to say that these videos are amazing and i love to see how actual chemistry research works. Its laborious and takes a lot of time to overcome all the hiccups. School won't tell you this so im glad that someone like Nurdrage exists. Thank you and keep up the great work
I wish you hadn't spoiled the ending with the title. Another great video though, informative and fascinating
I wonder if you could run the reaction in just the catalyst with out the solvent.
Edit: I see a problem with my questioning. Considering how much you would need to even try it I think it would not be practical at all.
Thanks for all the work.
I missed the last video and and then he mentioned finding a catalyst that worked great and was easy to find bulk I flipped out and went and saw it, great vids, keep em up!
In what video did you test menthol as a catalyst? I can't find it and I thought I've watched all progress reviews in the series...
The video just before this one.
Lovin this stuff!
Very interesting. Keep up the good work Professor Rage.
Thank you for your work. Did you consider separating the stages of the process to improve its speed? I.e. first react NaOH with the catalyst to produce the alkoxide, then separate it from water and the remaining NaOH, then react the alkoxide with Mg to produce Na and Magnesium alkoxide, then separate Na at this stage where the insoluble magnesium oxide is not yet present.
Dammit, you're not going to leave any discoveries for anyone else!
It could be reduction or hydrolysis Of the strained ether
...taking a shot every time he says SOLVENT.
polar aprotic solvent? like NMP? unfortunately based on literature DMSO and DMF does react with sodium
You may not have tested this yet, but would menthol also work for potassium? What about larger alkali metals (Rb, Cs) - do you think the trend of K being easier than Na would continue for those ones, or would the reaction not work in the first place?
You said that this sodium reacts with the eucalipto, but I can't help but to notice yield percentage. Could it be acting as a catalytic alcohol?
Come along way since you started this project. Want to give it a try myself.
First of all: Merry Christmas! Will you be looking into other chelating agents for purification? Crown-Ether and EDTA are the first things popping into my mind.
You really should publish the entirety of this work on sodium production when you finish it. It might now be cutting edge stuff, but it has yielded new reactions and does have several theories that are worth researching.
So how much sodium do you have by now ? I'm imagining a closet packed with sodium.
Pls clean your workspace : D
A lot of it is just burned into the surfaces. I would have to replace them and that's just too expensive on an amateur budget
@NurdRage hmm jeah youre right i hope you reach your patreon goal soon and you can afford new equipment i mean your videos are great but it would look just a little bit more professional ;)
i agree, it would look a lot nicer. Hopefully we'll get there. :)
just an idea: molten sodium at 101C has a lower density than dioxane, while magnesium and also magnesium oxide have a higher density. So is it possible that the purification actually only works because dioxane has a density between that of sodium and the magnesium (metal and oxide)?
Other solvents in the same density range don't succeed in separating the metals. This has been tested way back in 2017 back when the actual sodium making reaction still involved flames.
Hmm... looking back at that 2017 video, all the other high density solvents he mentioned were aromatic. We now know sodium reacts with aromatic rings producing tar that coats the sodium particles. Eucalyptol is non-aromatic, but just shy of sodium's density. Maybe the purification solvent needs to be >1g/ml and non-aromatic?
Tetrachloroethane (R-130) is right in that density range, and boils high enough to remain liquid when sodium melts. Of course, it may not be any safer to handle than dioxane, and certainly harder to find.
@NetRolller3D that's what I tought, some halogenated solvents might do, but you cannot combine them with sodium metal, that's the problem. (as far as I know, it is STRONGLY discouraged to dry chlorinated solvents with sodium, and I would assume the same goes for other halogens as well). So essentially what we're stuck with are non-aromatic alkanes and ethers. And most of those are not very dense, and/or boil below the melting point of sodium. Longer chain alkanes might do, but they might be too viscous to allow for an effective separation...
Great job. Happy holidays!
👍
Electra Flarefire - 2018-12-24
NurdRage's secret quest: To have as much Sodium as Cody has Mercury...
Progress is being made..
Alex Besogonov - 2018-12-27
The key limiting step is availability of fast neutrons. If you have excess neutrons you can do a LOT.
Unfortunately, currently neutrons are extremely expensive because you can produce them at quantity only in fast nuclear reactors. But there's going to be an even better source soon - fusion.
Arne Cl - 2019-01-05
@bormisha I think sodium vapour lamps are still more common than a nuclear reactor.
Where I live you literally find a sodium vapour lamp every 50m.
GRBTutorials - 2019-02-02
@bormisha Or we get enough energy that we can convert big quantities of other elements into precious metals, or even create them from energy. In fact, that's what we'll eventually have to do for all elements if we survive and don't drive ourselves extinct (a big if, I know) and want to expand to other solar systems in other galaxies. And it's not impossible if we become a Type II civilization. The Sun produces an amount of power equivalent to 1.2 * 10^10 kg of matter per second. Even a tiny percentage of that energy is enough to create a lot of matter from energy.
bormisha - 2019-02-02
@Alex Besogonov, abundant fusion neutrons come from D+T reaction, but to produce T, we need to burn Lithium with neutrons. Lithium is also rather scarce. Check the "Abundance of the chemical elements" Wikipedia article. Other than that, if you produce gold with fast neutrons, it will come in a highly radioactive mix of its own isotopes and other elements. To recover the stable gold to sell, you'd need to perform high-accuracy isotope separation, which is also difficult as hell.
bormisha - 2019-02-02
@GRBTutorials, true, but it is a very inefficient use of the energy, given that the yields are poor (do an Internet search regarding candidate nuclear/particle reactions, and what yields do they have). A large fraction of your energy would be lost in neutrinos. For a Type 2 civilization, asteroid and planet mining should be an easy thing that would provide the said civilization with all necessary amounts of matter. Energy, whatever amounts we collect, is likely to remain more valuable than the matter.