Swede Posted September 6, 2008 Posted September 6, 2008 Earlier this morning, I set up a simple experiment. 37.5 grams of clean KClO3 was dissolved in 300 ml of water, which is a saturated solution at 35 degrees C. A gas delivery system was created which delivered ozone gas to be bubbled through the chlorate solution, in an attempt to chemically oxidize the chlorate to perchlorate. http://www.5bears.com/perc/abt006.jpg About an hour later, I noticed it had stopped bubbling. The tube was clogged with white crystals, which tested positive with methylene blue for perchlorate. About 5 hours later, I noticed this: http://www.5bears.com/perc/abt003.jpg Wow! It was creating perchlorate fast, and here it is, falling out of solution! An amazing breakthrough! I was all set to announce my fabulous discovery... pool ozonators would fly off the shelves as people threw away their Pt anodes. Then I thought a while... You can't cheat when it comes to energy. A LOT of energy is necessary to make even this bit of perchlorate. 5 hours with an aquarium ozonator is NOT going to convert 10 grams of chlorate to perchlorate. Sure enough, the solids were plain old potassium chlorate. The bubbling had evaporated some of the water, and it had cooled off a bit, causing some of the chlorate to crystallize. Damn. I really thought I was on to something. This might work, and I think I did make a few milligrams of perchlorate that clogged the tube, but to do meaningful transformation would require 1,000X the ozone that this rig generates. Regardless, I'll let it go overnight to see if any perc falls out. I added enough water to redissolve the chlorate. Too bad.
Gunzway Posted September 6, 2008 Posted September 6, 2008 (edited) Ah, Damn. I could just imagine your face when you thought it was KClO4 and then later realizing that was just the KClO3. HAPPY ---> DISAPPOINTED. Oh well, at least your experimenting. Hopefully in a month I should have my cell up and running, just need to get more confident with it before going out and buying a Platinum wire.Good luck with finding more alternatives for making KClO4! Edited September 6, 2008 by Gunzway
Swede Posted September 6, 2008 Author Posted September 6, 2008 It was kind of disappointing. It would have been REAL embarrassing to put pics of that rig up declaring an ozonator that draws 50 watts had converted 10 grams of chlorate to perc in 5 hours. Chemical oxidation is possible, but the oxidizer needs to be cheap, the setup relatively easy, and the perc needs to be easy to clean up, which it should with any soluble oxidizer. "Oxone" comes to mind, potassium peroxymonosulfate. It can be bought at pool stores, and is fairly powerful, but on a gram basis, I think it will not be economical. Still, if you MUST have 400 grams of perc, and don't mind paying $4 for a pouch of this stuff, it might be worthwhile Something for the future.
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