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sodium hydroxide minus the aluminum

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prurigro

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Hi all, I apologise if this has been posted before and answered, I did check the search tho.. anyway, I bought some Draino for sodium hydroxide (I've searched everywhere for lye and had no success) and I know it has alluminum flecks ontop of the active chem, but I was wondering if I could still use this if I take the alluminum out with tweasers or something-- it might take a good half hour but I dont need 'that' much and I figure it'd be better than wasting gas searching for lye

any thoughts?

thanks
 
You could TRY putting the impure NaOH you have in a big, fine filter paper, and then running hot H2O through it quickly. You might be able to get most of the very soluble NaOH through, and the Al gets stuck on the filter, with a minimum of it having reacted with the NaOH because you do it quickly.
THEORETICALLY. WEAR MASK, GLOVES AND FULL BODY CLOTHING WHILE DOING THIS. If that shit decides to splatter you are NOT going to like it one bit (think "Fight Club", but whole body action)!

Personally, i'd stop fucking around and get some proper lye. N,N-DMT is something you should prepare with the care it deserves :) . Anything worth doing is worth doing well.
 
Why even fuck around with that kind of stuff?

If you are going to use hardware store stuff for this, at least get lye. There are two large national (US), very common hardware stores that carry it. Ask if you can't find it.
 
Do NOT try what MattPsy said, that is just plain stupid.
 
MattPsy said:
You could TRY putting the impure NaOH you have in a big, fine filter paper, and then running hot H2O through it quickly. You might be able to get most of the very soluble NaOH through, and the Al gets stuck on the filter, with a minimum of it having reacted with the NaOH because you do it quickly.
THEORETICALLY. WEAR MASK, GLOVES AND FULL BODY CLOTHING WHILE DOING THIS. If that shit decides to splatter you are NOT going to like it one bit (think "Fight Club", but whole body action)!

Personally, i'd stop fucking around and get some proper lye. N,N-DMT is something you should prepare with the care it deserves :) . Anything worth doing is worth doing well.
Click to expand...

That's the most retarded chemical advice I've heard in a while. NaOH plus water is an exothermic reaction. At a minimum the bag would probably melt and spill lye all over you, and even worse, if the water boiled, you could have boiling lye on you! That post should probably be deleted in the spirit of harm minimization.
 
prurigro said:
Hi all, I apologise if this has been posted before and answered, I did check the search tho.. anyway, I bought some Draino for sodium hydroxide (I've searched everywhere for lye and had no success) and I know it has alluminum flecks ontop of the active chem, but I was wondering if I could still use this if I take the alluminum out with tweasers or something-- it might take a good half hour but I dont need 'that' much and I figure it'd be better than wasting gas searching for lye

any thoughts?

thanks
Click to expand...
I think draino has both blue and white/clear crystals. You'll need to seperate those. Alot of work, have you checked grocery stores? That's where I used to find lye.
 
Lye is used to make soap. Lye is hard to find nowadays. Certain districts have stopped selling in in their hardware stores. Fuck this seperation bullshit and try to find an online company that will sell it to you. And make sure to buy some aloe vera oil with it, just to be on the safe side.
 
As people have said, NaOH grains can be found in most common hardware stores. Do not fuck aroudn with inferior stuff. Just shop around.

And as people have said, do not pour hot water on NaOH.
 
Relatively pure OTC NaOH is somewhat more difficult to obtain these days. However, as mentioned it is an ingredient in soap making. I've just checked an online international supplier of soap ingredients, raw materials, essential oils etc. NaOH is available although KOH is no longer listed on this particular site, which is rather surprising considering it is used in "soft" soaps, liquid soaps etc.

Also, both NaOH and KOH are used in biodiesel production. I know of people who have nothing to do with chemistry other than to make their own biodiesel. Some of these guys buy lots of 20kg+ without any problems.

At the risk of sounding repetitive; Don't use drain cleaning preparations as they usually contain things you don't want present, and don't attempt to purify by adding hot water to NaOH.
 
I know it's dangerous but seriously, if you did it with the right safety equipment (HEAVY DUTY covering), you might be okay.
SWIM has reacted 5M NaOH dissolved in hot H2O with Al foil before... it actually takes over 10 seconds before it starts to really ramp up to a full exothermic reaction because Al naturally has a Al2O3 layer which prevents/slows it's reaction with oxygen, acids, bases and the like.

Umm, the only other workable reaction I can think of is adding HCl (slowly!) to your Draino mix - yes, lots of the NaOH will react with the HCl to give NaCl, but so will some of the Al (turning it to AlCl3), which will then react with the NaOH to give insoluble Al(OH)3... fliter it off and voila, NaOH with no Al.. but heavily contaminated with NaCl. No idea what to do after that. But, if you're using it for a DMT extraction, it won't come through when you A/B it anyway :) . The yeild of NaOH would be absolute shit, but if you can't get anything else...

I'm sure with enough looking you'll find pure NaOH anyway :) .
 
Right. I did it, just to prove you guys wrong.
Welders mask and suit were used for protection, along with vinyl, latex and finally some welders gloves over my hands.

Water at 60 degrees centigrade was used. A 600ml pyrex beaker was fitted with a double layer of coffee filters, taped to the side, and the filter filled half way up with a Drano NaOH-Al mix (even though I actually have pure stuff, but as I say this was for demonstration purposes).

I then stood a little back and began pouring the hot H2O on top of the cake of Drano. Almost immediately, a stream of clearish liquid began pouring from the bottom of the filter, steaming. Everything was steaming, but it appeared to just be the NaOH going into solution causing the exotherm at this stage. I got about 2/3's of the water through before the Al began visibly reaxting, with gray bubbles forming. A little gray filtrate wient through the fliter, but not too much.

Thus completed, I then evaporated off the solution in the beaker off in a Pyrex recrystallization dish, and was left with slightly gray crystal sheets of NaOH.
 
^Honestly, don't recomend that advice to anyone. Not everybody can buy welder's equipment. Not to mention most people doing DMT and Mescaline extractions probably don't have extensive chemistry knowledge. The point of these techniques is simplicity and ease. It is mostly for people who have completed only so far as qualitative analysis, and have the basics of lab safety down. What you are recomending is a little bit over the top for somebody who is looking at the easiest extractions possible. And somebody who has gone further than that would probably buy pure NaOH anyways.

I'm not trying to put you down or anything, but you are giving really dangerous advice and that problem can be avoided quite easily.
 
Ya, that's true. Very OTT for those who aren't experienced. Apologies :)
prurigro, look for Red Devil lye (or so i've heard) at a convenience store, assuming you're based in the US :) .

Or is that not avaliable anymore...? I'm not living in the US so yeah, I wouldn't know.
All the hardware stores and such didn't have NaOH for me. No chemical suppliers would sell it to me. And then, whadda'ya know, I walk into a convenience store to buy milk, bread and soft drink; what catches my eye!? A stack of 1kg tubs of 100% NaOH! Yay :) !
 
Probably. The domestic product ("Recochem" - 2Kg) I use for toilet and drain cleaning contains 98% sodium hydroxide. The impurity is likely to be sodium chloride & maybe a small amount of carbonate or sulphate.
 
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