Sunday 16 September 2012

how to make potassium chlorate at home

Ok, before we start, i would recommend that this experiment be done outdoors or in a well ventilated room as trace amounts of chlorine is evolved during the first half of the experiment and i would also recommend that this experiment should be carried out with a small amounts of the ingredients. This is purely educational.
-please use suitable glass apparatus-
stuff you need:

1)CHLORINE bleach
2)Potassium Chloride (substitute for table salt)
3)Source of hat
4)Filter paper

First you need to get your hand on some chlorine bleach, this can be found at any hardware store and is inexpensive. Now we need to keep adding bleach to 500ml of water in a beaker till it forms a saturated solution, filter out the excess bleach and start boiling the solution (THE SOLUTION MUST BOIL this reaction will not take place if the solution is not boiling) at this point very small amounts of chlorine gas will be liberated but this shouldn't cause a problem as long as the location is well ventilated. When a white precipitate is observed at the bottom o the flask stop boiling the solution. Now wait for the solution to cool down and filter the solution.the liquid contains Sodium Chlorate (NaClO3)

After filtering discard the white precipitate and hold on to the liquid, get hold of some potassium chloride(this is sold as a substitute for normal table salt and is a breeze to obtain) and make a saturated solution of the the same amount as the remaining liquid and mix it with the liquid in a third beaker, to maximise the yield cool the solution to obtain a potassium chlorate precipitate, just filter this and dry the crystals to obtain a descent amount of potassium chlorate.

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