Acid!

[jem]

Hydrochloride acid is a very common product in Spain,it can be bought in any supermarket, or pool place, it seems to be of pretty high concentration, a drop on concrete goes through it like the proverbial rat! It is used for cleaning calcium from our very hard water in loos etc. If you look on you tube, you will see that people have poured water onto acid with no problem, however it is not really a good idea.

Jem

[92220]

I am guessing the acid is already dilute, to be able to add water to hydrochloric acid. To add water to hydrochloric acid, or any other strong acid, is just asking to be blinded! It will cause the acid to instantly boil and spurt. I always remember, this was demonstrated in our chemistry class at school, outside in the yard. The teacher dropped one tiny drop of water, with a pole, at about 6 feet distance, into a teaspoon of hydrochloric acid and the acid spurted 2 feet into the air....so definitely not a good idea!!

Bob.

[uuu]

The famous last words of our teacher: So you'll see that hydrogen burns with a squeaky pop.

Wilf

[goldstar31]

Back to the topic


Brown Sauce! Of course, one can swallow a bit- as stomachs are full of ------hydrochloric acid. So I'm advised.
I presume that sword swallowers de- rusted their swords that way. Then there was the LARGest exprt from the Tyne-- urine.

A fairly close relative of Alice in Wonderland was blown up in Gateshead. His dad designed the Newcastle Central Station --- but I digress.

Rge Horse chestnuts are coming down on my lawns. Anyone want then- apparently to make cordite. I'm doing something wrong because the magpies don't seem bothered.

Back to sulphuric acid. When I was a titchy little horror, the friendly locall chemist sold us all sorts of chemicals because our science master had gone to war-- and we did our chemistry school cert- the hard way.

I kept my conc. sulphuric in the outside 'netty'

[timparker]

This is my first post

I am a goldsmith as well as re- building a 31/2 inch Heilan Lassie. Luckily I am much better at the goldsmithing as I am very new to model engineering.

I used to use Sulfuric acid for all my work including 9ct gold, this reacts in very similar ways to brass and copper. I recently in the last couple of years have started using citric acid and it does not have any disadvantages to using acid but much safer however it does work better warm. All my annealed copper pipes have come up well and removed all oxidisation within seconds

Hope people may be able to help with my loco rebuild as I need all the help I can get. I need it. I am currently building a double lubricator as it had a single one fitted and we dont think this is right of a 3 cylinder engine according to Curly, unless some can correct me.

[jem]

Just as a matter of interest, if you were to sulphuric acid of 15 % would you get a higher consecration of acid? I have no reason to do this, but I dont like being told what to do by a nanny state.

Jem

[glynmar]

When I bought my Hielan Lassie as a project the it was missing the lubricator. As this was a more complicated piece to make I bought a ready made pump assembly from Polly Engineering and made the tank myself as that was within my capabilities. The only downside was the outlet sizes were bigger so I had to make reducing adaptors to fit to the existing pipe work which in turn lead to problems of fitting in a small space.

[jem]

Just as a matter of interest, if you were to boil sulphuric acid of 15 % would you get a higher consecration of acid? I have no reason to do this, but I dont like being told what to do by a nanny state.

Jem

ed it seems that I missed the word BOIL out of the previous reply, sorry!!!

[uuu]

Here's a video of purifying sulphuric acid by distillation: YouTube

So it looks like the water and acid don't boil off together, and can be separated.

Wilf

[chrisb]

Although I am no longer in the UK, when I was and still working in the power industry, getting 96% Conc H2S04 was easy as we used it by the lorry load in the water treatment plant.

[ettingtonliam]

OK, next time I need a lorry load of the stuff I'll remember that. In the 1960's I remember buying it at the local chemist, but these days, citric acid is so much less scary.

[jem]

Thanks very much Wilf, very interesting, but sounds rather dodgy, so I dont think that I will try that at home! At school in the chemistry lab back in the 60ies we had conc sulphuric acid, also nitric and hydrochloride acid, we used to "play" with the acids and apart from getting brown fingers from the nitric acid, we came to no harm, so just how conc was these acids? pity we are so wimpish now a days.

best wishes
Jem

[uuu]

We had a teacher bubbling a gas through "concentrated" sulphuric acid to dry it. Backpressure caused a pipe to come adrift and spray acid over the class. New uniforms all round! But no serious injuries, so I think that, like with you, it wasn't as pure as the labelling suggested.

We used to play with mercury too, sloshing about in wooden trays.

Wilf