NaOH and KOH are both known as "lye." It's the hydroxyl group (-OH) that does the job. It won't matter if the metallic ion is potassium or sodium. NaOH is a slightly stronger base than KOH.
Here's a page that says Red Devil Lye has been pulled from retail markets. It describes several other products that are NaOH or KOH, plus retail and online sources.
Not correct. Lye is specifically NaOH.
OK, fine, but "lye" and "potash lye" are not the same thing.
You can buy sodium hydroxide at a chemical supply house. It is inexpensive and can be purchased as pellets or flakes. It is very caustic, will dissolve flesh, can cause blindness if you get it into your eyes, and hydrophilic. It mixes well with water. Wear protective clothing, rubber gloves, and keep out of reach of children.
You can get sodium hydroxide (NaOH) from supply houses. Just google for places like Flynn Scientific, Sergeant-Welch, or Fischer Scientific.
If you can research to find out what the ideal concentration is, it will probably be expressed as some 'molarity,' like a 5M solution. To mix these kinds of solutions accurately, for each unit of molarity, use
40 grams of NaOH with enough water to make one liter, (about a quart + 2 oz.). So for instance, a 4M solution would be 160 grams of NaOH with enough water to make one liter. For smaller or larger amounts, just ratio it down or up. Make you solutions in glass. DO NOT put this in contact with metal.It will come as pellets. They must be kept under tight seal. They will pull moisture out of the air. If you look at them they will look dry, but if you were to rub a pellet between your fingers it will feel greasy. The grease is the fat in your own skin being dissolved.
Stray pellets must not be thrown in a garbage can. Just wash them down the sink. Drano is made mainly of NaOH.
Potassium hydroxide came first, as a result of the very natural and ancient process of rain falling on forest fires. It is the stuff for which the word "lye" was coined centuries ago.
Just like thousands of other words have had their accepted meanings changed in the last few hundred years. You can maintain what you want to, but if you went to any hardware store or chemical supplier and asked for lye, you'd get NaOH.
No lie! (Sorry couldn't resist)
Sorry to bust your bubble, but this simply isn't true. Water plus wood ash yields potassium *carbonate*, not potassium hydroxide.
Maintain what you want -- lye is NaOH, as you can discover by reading any *real* encyclopedia.
replying to Dhakala, The chemist wrote: You are wrong. Chemically it may be SIMILAR but similar is NOT the same. Different reactions and reactivities. While for some uses it might not matter, for other uses everything about it matters. True lye IS the true NaOH. I'm a chemist, I should know.
So while you are a "Chemist", the post is 13 years old.
Obviously he's a chemist, not a mathematician. You don't need math to do chemistry, right?
Puckdropper
Well, LOL, a good chemist needs to do math.
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