[TheForge] acid

[Dann]

Sounds to me like you struck gold in the chem lab.   These are just a 
few gallon jugs not 55 gallon drums so no environmental group should 
get excited. These are concentrated acids that would commonly be 
diluted before use.  When doing any dilution   the rule is add the 
acid to the base.. For example water is more basic than the acid.. so 
you would have your measured volume of water and add the acid to it 
to reach the desired concentration.   My chem teacher had a rhyme, 
"Do it like you otter.. add the acid to the water, may your rest be 
long and placid if you add the water to the acid!"

What Bruce  is explaining, is how to safely do the opposite thing, 
because, adding   lye to water is actually the reverse of that 
rhyme... as in this instance the water is relatively an  "acid" 
compared to the lye... so he was describing that you add it in very 
small quantities with a lot of stirring to avoid  a very hot chemical 
"boiling" reaction.

I was reading up on how to make your own bio-diesel fuel from used 
restaurant  cooking grease. Each batch of 40 gallons required about 6 
ounces of NaOH  to precipitate the glycerin out of the fuel.

Nitric acid  is really cool stuff.  A little bit of it will make your 
skin very yellow, ( ask me how I know ..)
it will also clean the calcium deposits off your aquarium.   It is 
one of the most basic acids used in quite a number of manufacturing 
processes.  It is  also a  primary starting point to make gun 
cotton/  nitro-cellulose ( and a lot of other compounds that can go boom) .

Dann

At 09:56 AM 5/13/2007, you wrote:
>That sentence was supposed to read:
>
>When diluting lye, add lye to water slowly with rapid
>mixing to avoid both boiling of the solution and
>setting up the lye crystals like a lump of cement.
>
>Gotta slap this little laptop around to get it to
>heed...
>
>Bruce
>
>
>
>
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