Caustic Soda

What do you mean by candlewax?

Mary

For once I was being totally serious, although I admit I did have my reply ready 2 minutes after posting the question.

I just bought some toffee apples covered deliquescent toffee from Sainsbury's. Less than 24 hrs later it has absorbed so much water from the air/apples that it has dissolved in it. Grrrr...

Would that be the same as stuff my mum used years (decades) ago? It was in a crappy wobbly cardboard box, half red and half white and said Soda Crystals on the outside? We weren't allowed to touch it, she had a special spoon reserved for digging bits out of it. She put a couple of spoonfuls in her mop bucket to take really stubborn stains off the very ancient kitchen tiles. It always brought them up like new.

What a way for the frog to go.

Paraffin wax.

No, that would have been washing soda - sodium carbonate.

Sodium bicarbonate is baking soda. Sodium hydroxide is caustic soda.

Sodium carbonate is hygroscopic, not deliquescent (like caustic). so you can store it in a cardboard box and it will go crappy and wobbly. Store caustic like that and you'll have a corrosive puddle before long. It's also a salt commonly found in dry "salt lakes". The ancient Egyptians knew it as "natron" and because it absorbs water, they packed dead bodies in it to dry them out for mummification.

I use washing soda for shifting grease (it saponifies fats by turning them into a crude soap), and I can do this in the kitchen sink while my hands are still in there. I lose some oil from my skin, but a little hand cream deals with that. I also use it to make tapwater conductive in my electrolytic derusting tank (DAGS)

-- Die Gotterspammerung - Junkmail of the Gods

It's never happened to me and I used to use the stuff all day long. It's possible the initial heat generated might be enough to melt nylon. Certainly synthetic bristle paint brushes are not affected

Hmm. Well I can only go by my own observations which are that the crystals are packaged in plastic tubs, which are obviously resistant because, once opened, they attract moisture, and the crystals would then be attacking the container big time. Also, dilute potassium hydroxide is sold in bog standard

On Wed, 29 Oct 2003 10:43:23 -0000, "stuart noble"

"stuart noble" wrote | Come to think of it I've stored 10% caustic in | plastic lemonade bottles before now.

Regardless of the properties of the plastic, storing Nasty Chemicals in lemonade bottles is irresponsible. Somebody sometime is going to make a mistake.

Although you might think they deserve it, you are laying yourself wide open to a hefty claim if any scrote breaks into your garden shed / chemical bunker and takes a quick swig of suspiciously cloudy Fizzy Pineapple.

Owain

If paraffin was meant it should have been stated.

Mary

On the local news this evening - a tanker carrying caustic soda has crashed on the A1 near Wetherby. The road is now closed and will have to be resurfaced. Does this answer some of the previous trivial messages underestimating dangers of this material?

Terry D.

No

so, it reacts with tar ...

No. A tanker load of just about anything would do the same. Petrol catchhingv fire Liquid nitrogen cracking the road. Even milk turning into cgeese would not be good news.

Learn some chemistry or bugger off.

As indeed does freezing water in the cracks.

DANGER ICE LOLLIES LETHAL SAYS MARTIN ROBBINS ECO WARRIOR EXTRORDINAIRE.

You live near Wetherby?

Mary Leeds

That was careless.

Would've resulted in the closure/resurfacing of the carriageway if 40 tonnes of heating fuel had spilt instead.

er.. that'll be TERRY D ECO WARRIOR EXTRODINAIRE I think? No?