Caustic Soda

[AlanG]

Most of the talk has been on industrial quantities. You will not be needing that. If you buy it at a chemists or ironmongers you'll get it in a kilo or half kilo container in which it can be stored indefinitely. Use what you need according to the instructions and keep the rest sealed up safely away from children. The stuff can be dangerous but no more so than some oven cleaners.

-- Alan G "The corporate life [of society] must be subservient to the lives of the parts instead of the lives of the parts being subservient to the corporate life." (Herbert Spencer)

[Mark Evans]

I can't see why it should, since the active part of the soap is the organic acid ion. Unless using the different hydroxides leaves differing amounts of the original ester in the resulting soap.

[Mark Evans]

Also you add the solid hydroxide to water, slowly. Doing it the other way around means you are likely to wind up with a combination of boiling saturated solution and steam.

[Mark Evans]

Whilst alkali metal hydroxides are not nice chemicals they hardly compare with various alkaloids which can have lethal doses measured in 10's on mg.

[Mark Evans]

What it's probably producing is single oxygen atoms, which are highly reactive. What you have is an unstable compound which releases oxygen. Similar to hydrogen peroxide and sodium hypochlorite.

[Mark Evans]

If you use a wooden spoon you shouldn't use it for anything else afterwards.

Aluminium is actually a highly reactive element. It dosn't usually look that way since it will usually become quickly covered in aluminium oxide. Without this protective oxide barrier aluminium will react with quite a lot of things, including water.

Worst case senario is that the metal will catch fire!

Trying to store it in a plastic bottle is more likely to result in a caustic gooey mess. Which is going to be a lot harder to clean up than a pile of dust.

[Mark Evans]

Hardly a concentrated solution.

Yuk, what's wrong with glass bottles?

[Mark Evans]

A while back a crashing petrol tanker in Birmingham caused some very major damage.

If anything burning petrol is likely to be the most damaging.

It's not as if it can be washed away by the fire brigade.

[nightjar]

The main problem with milk spills, from a fire brigade viewpoint, is that they can't just be hosed away. A large volume of milk entering a waterway will de-oxygenate it and kill all the fish.

An equal sized diesel spill will do more damage to the road. Petrol, burning or not, tends to evaporate while diesel just sits there dissolving the tarmac.

Colin Bignell

[Mary Fisher]

All that had no relevance to our mediaeval ancestors. It cleaned clothes, that was the only criterion.

Mary

[Mary Fisher]

I like you, Mark Evans.

Mary

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