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3 Simple Ways to Share What You Make
With Instructables you can share what you make with the world and tap into an ever-growing community of creative experts.
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With Instructables you can share what you make with the world and tap into an ever-growing community of creative experts.
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Dec 28, 2011
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but can't the kinetics be improved? isn't there a catalyst which makes it a little bit faster,
no offense, but waiting hour(s) might seem like an eternity.
greetings
If you use fine magnesium powder, shake/stir the reaction mixture, and use much higher heating (250 Celsius or vigorous reflux), you can be finished in one hour.
thanks for the reply
Once you've got the potassium, what can you do with it?
How on earth do you work out how to do this - how you are going to make the reaction take place?
A paid chemist needs potassium as a reducing agent and sometimes as a drying agent. Although in practice, they would simply buy potassium directly instead of making their own.
An amateur might want potassium because it has nice flaming reactivity, or they might want it because they honestly need a reducing agent or a drying agent for their own synthetic work. Making it is actually somewhat cheaper than buying it since you don't have to pay hazmat fees to get the precursors.
OFcourse the number of amateurs that have true synthetic intentions with it could probably be counted on one hand.
So overall, the video is to explore the science.
There is also a published synth using sodium in ethanol to reduce naphthalene to tetralin and then on to decalin. I've actually run this reaction, and yields are a lot higher using a neutral (decane) hydrocarbon with naphthalene dissolved in it, adding sodium, and reducing with ethanol.
I love these videos! But you can't click on the How to coalesce potassium video link because of the youtube bar coming up every time :/ Great video though :)
Disclaimer: I am not responsible for any brain tumours or head explosions as a result of watching my videos :)