Easy production of Sodium Chlorate

by philthemn

This is an easy guide to creating your favourite explosive sodium chlorate.

To produce sodium chlorate you need to electrolysize a salt water in a sealed container. To create a sealed electrolysis cell you will need:

1x 0.5 litre bottle (with screw on lid)

2x copper wire (preffereably enamelled)

1-3x 9v battery (you may need to change the battery a few times)

Uni-Bond - No More Nails

Corkscrew

Salt

Method

First lay the bottle lengthways and use the corkscrew to punch to holes in the bottle about 3/4 of the bottle apart. Then if your using enamelled copper wire, then use the hob on your cooker to burn the ends (to melt off the enamel and improve connectivity to the battery and across the water), burn about 1cm on one end and about 6-7cm on the other end. Do this to both wires.

Now, push each of the wires into the holes so that they reach almost to the other side of the bottle and are the same distance apart as the holes, make sure the 1cm enamel free end is in the bottle. Now use the No More Nails to seal up the holes and create a air/water tight seal, let this dry.

Next, fill the bottle up with a strong salt solution, and screw on the lid tightly. Make sure there is no air left inside.

Lastly, attach the other ends of the wire to the terminals of the battery, you can just wrap them round the terminals (becuase of the gap in enamel the wire will conduct).

Leave this outside or in a well ventilated place in case any chlorine leaks. Leave it until there is almost no water left, you may need to change the battery a few times. Once you feel it has run long enough empty the contents into a pan and heat GENTLY to boil of excess water.

You should have a pretty high percentage of sodium chlorate left over.

Note: Once you have runthe experiment a few times you could increase the size of the bottle and allow more to be produced at one time. You could also hook the electricity up to the mains usinbg a transformer of something (I have never tried this and do not no if it will work or not).

Science

The science explaining this is as follows:

In the solution you have Na+ and Cl- ions from the salt and ofcourse H2O.

With the electricity running through the water the ions travel towards the electrodes: Na+ to the negative electrode (anode I think, im not sure) and Cl- to the positive electrode. At the negative electrode the Na+ ion is given an electron from the electrode and becomes an Na atom. the same thing happens at the opposite electrode. The water molecules break up due to the electric difference and an H+ ion breaks off leaving OH-, this happens at the negative electrode as the 2H atoms in the water molecule provide a strong positive pull towards this electrode. As the molecules gets nearer the electrode the Oxygen will become very repellant from the negativity and breaks away from the hydrogen. This creates O- with is a stronger negativity than the electrode cuasing the remaining hydrogen to stay bonded with the oxygen, creating OH-.

Now a few irregularities may also occur in electrolysis, for example, instead of H+ an OH- every so often you might get 2H+ and O(2-), this is due to the uncertainty principle and that no-one can really tell where an electron will be at one set time.

So after this stage we get alot of different atoms and ions floating about the place:

The Na, OH- and H are at the positive electrode. The Cl and O atoms at the positive electrode. Now in a sealed container all the reactant are allowed to mix freely (and the electricity creates a flow of ions through the water). Many different reactions occur until the chlorine becomes Cl3- and reacts in a double bodn with 2 oxygen atoms and a single bond with an O- ion. The negative ion creates an ionic bond with Na+ and thus creates sodium chlorate:

   O
   ||
   Cl-O(-) Na(+)
   ||
   O