I was informed that we're no longer living in the year 2002, so I've uploaded at 1080p instead of 720p, so the MS paint drawings will have more pixels now.
Organic chemistry, stoichiometry, mechanical engineering, 3d printing, analog circuit design, and finally refrigerant testing. This video is a massive filter, you have to be one heck of a mega-geek to follow every bit of it. Amazing work!
Happy mega-geek noises. This is what I want to do but don’t have the perseverance to actually pull off a project like this, never mind documenting it in an interesting video
Please, never stop making these videos. I’ve been following all the TH-cam STEM channels for 10+ years and this is peak multi-discipline engineering and design. 3d printing Organic chemistry Cascade Refrigeration systems Refrigerant synthesis Raw Electronics PCB design Glass forming I couldn’t stop smiling with joy throughout the video due to the depth and overall production quality and excellent humour throughout.
@@wazittuyoo2147 You surely are very beloved at work and have a lot of fun in your life😂😂 Had to look for the definition of a sycophant: "A person who acts obsequiously towards someone important in order to gain advantage." Synonyme: toady, creep, crawler, fawner, flatterer, flunkey, truckler, groveller, doormat, lickspittle, kowtower, obsequious person, minion, hanger-on, leech, puppet, spaniel, Uriah Heep, bootlicker, yes-man, brown-nose, suck-up, arse-licker, arse-kisser, suckhole, ass-licker, ass-kisser.
Yeah, it's fun to hear about the stuff and all, but to see the science and engineering actually applied to solve a problem by pulling multiple disciplines together is just so very satisfying. On another level.
It might sound pretty weird but im pretty sure the oily layer you got is acetic acid. Because you have so much salts dissolved in the water (the sodium acetate) it causes the solubility of acetic acid to decrease to a point that it actually separates from the solution cus of the Ionic strength of the salts (fancy physico-chemistry crap). This effect is called the Salting Out effect, I have done that to separate ethanol from water so this could totally happen with acetic acid as well. As you noted later on, the layer disappeared after a couple of days cus, as you explained, the solution becomes more basic causing the deprotonation of the acid and putting it into solution. Also before someone "uhm aktchualu"`s me, even thought acetic acid has a density of 1.05 g/mL, the water solution is still heavier cus it has a lot of salts dissolved which cause the density to drastically increase.
Yep, strongly suspect this. Essentially crashing out the acetic by increasing the ionic strength. Honestly can't think what else it could be unless there's some major impurity in the vinegar.
As much as most of their stuff is plastic garbage, I've had a lot of luck buying components off Temu. It's basically where a lot of those components come from anyway, so I've never had an issue with the quality.
@@6022The real advantage of Radio Shack in my opinion was the “latency” for lack of a better word. To be able to walk over (or drive over, rip) and grab a few components needed and finish the project in 1 day, rather than wait 1 day+ for the components to ship in was amazing. I think a well stocked Makerspace is the solution to an extent, along with something like a LumenPNP / Circuit Mill or DIY Etch Setup, but yeah.
The South American licensees/operators of the RadioShack stores have apparently bought up the full company, so maybe we'll be lucky enough to see some revitalization.
@@ericlotze7724 what makes these kind of stores close is that since the internet they basicly became an emergency service. if my project can wait a few days why would i drive to radio shack for my parts when i can just order them in a matter of seconds and work on something else until they arrive. and they cant stay in business if everybody only goes there for emergencies and orders everything else online, its just not sustainable for these kind of stores to have such low sale volume
We're all nerds here with interest in multiple disciplines of engineering and science and you're absolutely killing it. Ben from Applied Science is the closest comparison I can think of and I think most will agree he had a massive impact on the youtube engineering community. We love every minute of your videos, keep it up!
To Bend a Glass Tube without Kinking the Glass you can First Fill the Tube with Fine Quartz Sand (not sharp). This will keep the form of the tube while allowing you to make the bend and then drain out the sand to finish.
Wouldn't the quartz particles stick inside the glass tube? Neon tube makers cork both ends of the tube and somehow let out a bit of the air so that the molten part doesn’t balloon up.
The reason your ph is around 5.5 is because you made a buffer solution which will be made when you have a weak acid and it's associated anion. If you want to more carefully adjust your ph use the Henderson-hasselvoc equation and look up a table of pka
You could in theory bubble the gaz in some water saturated with sodium hydroxide : NaOH. The CO2 would react with the OH anions to produce at the end Na2CO3 which is basically sodium bicarbonate but stronger. At first your solution would be around 1kg/L of lye if you're around 20°C, CO2 would dissolve in the water to give H2CO3 which reacts with NaOH to give water and Na2CO3. The lye is consumed and the concentration sodium carbonate rises. You'll reach a point where it will be saturated. CO2 will dissolve and basically fall down as cristals at the bottom. You can use the sodium carbonate back on the sodium acetate to deprotonate it. Ideally you'd want to make this in cold water (near 0) because the CO2 is more soluble at that temperature where Na2CO3 is not so it will precipitate quicker. Lye is also two times less soluble in cold water but that's ok ig. Ah and ethane is not soluble in water. Like just no it would influence the yield in any way
As someone that occasionally teaches electronics to teenagers, I would like to note that the 741 opamp is entirely adequate as used in this circuit. And it reminds me of when I was a teenager in the 1970s and shopping at Radio Shack. I made a power supply that outputted plus and minus 15 volts for the opamps and plus 5 for the digital electronics. However, it is far from ideal for learning how to use opamps today because it won't comfortably run off of the same power supply as a modern microprocessor. A modern low voltage rail-to-rail opamp can drive the output to within a millivolt of either power supply connection and can handle input voltages across a slightly wider range all while behaving like an almost ideal textbook opamp. The 741 became far less than ideal when you got within a couple volts of the power rail. Once again, none of this detracts from this nostalgia fueled design. It is just a bad place for a person to start learning.
@frankroberts9320 It is chemical engineering but with a specialty in using metals to catalyze reactions....I went to Pharmacy school before and did not want to stand behind a counter. I wanted to design quicker methods for making pharmaceuticals ......It has been a very interesting journey. I will have to tell you about it face to face someday.......
This man know about engineering, plumbing, chemistry, electronics, physics... A literal genius By the way your videos helped me a lot to build a big cloud chamber using a vapour compression refrigeration cycle (I still have some leaks but it's working great !) Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge !! :)
Great video of applied organic chemistry and electronics. I majored in chemistry for 3 years and then switched to electrical engineering graduating in 85 with a bsee, and yet without a lot of refreshing I could never do what you have done in this video simply because I never used any of what I learned in college. I love.watching your videos and your explanations are great.
On your level float sw, if i believe to be correct, you have a c clip on the bottom of it. You can remove it and flip around the float. This will probably turn your float switch from normally closed to normally opened and vice versa. At leasted it worked with mine haha. Great video as usual.
I usually watch TH-cam videos sort of ambiently, in the background, while doing other things. If I DARE attempt to multitask for so much as TEN SECONDS while your vid is playing I get lost and have to rewind. Why would I admit this publicly? Well, as the admission reveals, I am, in fact, stupid.
Yes, the stuff packed with information. Usually watch or listen the regular stuff at 1.75x speed, but here I decided - well I'll go easier on myself and watch it 1x, maybe even 0.75 next time, so it lasts longer)))
Some tips/notes: * You can use the same ABS slurry (or a thinner mix of the same) to paint onto your ABS pipe to seal it to prevent gas leaking out of it. * There was no need to use a transistorized inverter to flip the state of your float switch; simply by placing it either tied to ground with a pull-up resistor vs tied to your positive rail with a pull-down resistor (something small-value like a 1-5k so it's strong vs your other resistors) would allow you to get the inverted behaviour you're looking for, and the impedance on the op-amp inputs is so high that you absolutely don't need the amplification your transistor is providing. * As designed, there's some amount of interdependence on the switch on/off timing of your two op-amps; depending on how they cycle on/off, one will back-feed some current into the other and alter its timings. This may not be important enough to matter for your application, but you could avoid it by placing diodes inline with your 100k input resistors (possibly adjusting the resistor values accordingly). * You can actually eliminate all three of your extra 2N3904 safety transistors. If you flip the inputs on your bottom op-amp (and reverse the polarity of the feedback diode) you'll get an output that latches _low_ during your fault condition instead of _high._ From there, you can drive the electrolysis cell shut-off FET directly with no inverting transistor required. You can tie the cathode of the fault LED directly to the output of the op-amp (through a current-limiting resistor), since an LM741 (or just about any fairly normal op-amp) can sink 20mA without much issue and 5mA or so is plenty for modern indicator LEDs. Then, for your pump motor shut-off, ditch the extra 2N3904 and instead hook up your lower op-amp's output to the non-inverting input of your upper op-amp with a diode (anode toward the non-inverting input of the upper op-amp). It will not conduct in normal operation (with the lower output high) but will pull the node down when the circuit faults out, shutting off the upper op-amp's output. Great video though, and pretty successful! I look forward to your next one, always interesting to see what you come up with. I was surprised you dried your gas _after_ pumping it into your sausage tank; I would have been very concerned about potentially corroding the inside of the tank when it's initially filled, but maybe that's not much of an issue if you're not pumping any oxygen into the tank and it gets dried by cycling back and forth into it.
I would also share the same concern about pumping the crude gas mixture directly into the tank. The crude gas probably contains a significant amount of acetic acid vapors, which surely can't be good for a metal tank.
These electronics are far better than an arduino. It may not seem so at first glance, but doing analogue circuitry this way counts as 'sufficiently simple' that you can relatively easily get it safety-rated, and many 'safety critical' systems still do things this way. Safety-rating *anything* programming is a massive undertaking, almost no matter how simple the program, because the number of failure-modes that exist skyrocket. Don't be afraid to use relays for logic also: It's fairly easy to rig them up in fail-safe mode, so you have to hit a 'start' switch to latch a relay to enable something to run: This gives you the additional feature that a process doen't just resume after an unexpected power outage, it just stays off until manually reset. You'd then have some parameter a comparitor is 'watching' which would cause an alarm to trip which would also disable the load. Bonus points if your 'start/reset' button also makes the alarm run: this means you can confirm your alarm beeper actually works, each time you start it. Great work! Also, atlas-scientific has very good pH probe kits including analog outputs. They also do liquid dosing pumps, which could be useful to add vinegar as needed.
Thank you for keeping youtube alive with content of the highest quality. I wish you all of the sponsors so you can buy all of the junk to create more lab equipment.
Great project. Regarding the float valve, they can usually be switched between NO/NC by removing the C clip and reinserting the float in the reverse orientation.
I seem to recall you can take off the plastic C clip and flip the float around, and it will go from NO to NC. Been a while, but it's quick to try if you want/need to.
Very interesting. I think that it will be vendor specific depending on where they install the magnet but definitely worth checking, it would be a disaster if the float is not marked in any way on a professional device.
I've had good results electroplating platinum onto stainless steel screens (for rocketry). This requires much less platinum, and still works as a catalyst.
You must be the smartest person I've ever seen on youtube...chemistry, electronics, thermodynamics...wow!!! I'm quite handy and love to build my own stuff but you are magnitudes above everyone else!! A true genius!!!
I mean, i love his work, but if you want a probably smarter man, check out applied science, who built his own electron microscope, and mass spectrometer, just because.
Awesome video. I suggested the vinegar electrolyses on a past video and you responded that you would look into it. Very cool seeing you did and that the results were good :) and very cool seeing the math play out
Note that ethane is EXTREMELY flammable and is explosive as natural gas. Have a fire extinguisher handy and put the apparatus outdoors away from buildings. Steam cracking would be more practical for the quantity of ethane you need.
To give you a few ideas on how to improve on the design of the „kolbe-electrolyzer“. First off, you can get so called MMO electrodes (mixed metal oxide), which are somewhat cheaper than platinum and also very durable. However I‘d suggest against lead diode electrodes as lead dioxide rather easily dissolves in organic acid environments. Perhaps carbon fiber? It’s more stable towards oxidation and shouldn’t easily break down into various more or less oxidized graphite/carbon sludge/graphene oxide … stuff. That aside, perhaps you‘d want to make a membrane separated cell. Whilst terracotta should work just fine, a polymer membrane would be far better. You can easily crosslink PVA with various aldehydes such as glutaraldehyde, glyoxal and even benzaldehyde (synthetic bitter almond aroma). Just add 10-20% of PVA weight equivalent of aldehyde into an acidic PVA solution containing ~10% PVA and 2% HCl aq. With benzaldehyde the beauty is that you will flocculate out the hemiacetal (presumably), which can subsequently be washed from acid and redissolved (whilst wet) in hot ethanol. After drying you are getting a very veery tough membrane that forms a hydrogel in contact with water. To improve hydrophilicity you might add layered alumosilicates like bentonite. This will also give it proton conduction selectivity.
How sure are you that platinum electrodes are used just for their corrosion resistance and don't play a catalytic role (so that MMO electrodes are enough)? References would be highly appreciated, thank you.
@@col0342 Idk why, but it appears my initial comment disappeared, let‘s hope this one stays. Anyhow, it seems that the proposed mechanism is a radical mechanism, rather than a catalytic one, so I‘d assume that the electrode material doesn’t have a lot of influence on the reaction, except for overpotentials of course - which might even be a good thing if oxygen evolution is kinetically disfavored. Other than that I found very few sources on other electrode materials than platinum or platinized electrodes. However Hans J. Schäfer references some slavic source I couldn’t find in his paper: „With vitreous or baked carbon in protic solvents (methanol, ethanol, water) dimer yields nearly comparable to those at platinum have been obtained“ Hans J. Schäfer, Comprehensive Organic Synthesis, 1991, p. 633-658 Also I found the following: Abstract: „The use of some kinds of glasslike-hard carbons was found to lead to selective synthesis of the corresponding Kolbe coupled products in high yields comparable to the use of a Pt anode in anodic oxidation of some carboxylic acids“ Chemistry Letters, Volume 20, Issue 7, July 1991, Pages 1085-1088 I didn’t read the whole thing unfortunately as I don’t have the time for that rn, I merely skimmed it.
I love both of these videos, this video on ethAne and your video on ethEne (ethylene) production! Both were gasses I had to source for customers' ultralow refrigeration equipment last year. This is where it becomes challenging. Both gasses are easy to find, if you're buying low-grade gas by the tanker truck load. But try to find ultra-pure grade gasses in smaller quantities, and suddenly you're making a lot of calls, sending a lot of email inquiries, and spending a lot of money. I ended up spending over $4000 on these two gasses, and being the proud owner of a lot more than I needed. The whole endeavor made watching your videos that much richer. Great work doing it yourself from scratch!
you should use spiralina algae to consume co2 from the scrubber, as it grows very well in basic conditions, and as a bonus you get algae which is a good food source, or fetiliser.
Excellent work. General note for all electrolysis fans- stay away from cheap 'platinum,' MMO, etc. electrodes that abound on amazon. Even when they contain what they say they contain, they are hot garbage. There are some great independent sellers of ebay that make good ones. They're not cheap but if you treat them properly they last a long, long time.
I keep watching your videos because I have this idea of using excess solar production to generate a gas/liquid that can be stored for a long time and then used in a fuel cell to recover some of the energy for later. The roundtrip efficiency would be bad, but if storage is dense enough and the generator and fuel-cell are compact and lightweight enough, it could replace the need to have large batteries? The use case I have in mind is sailboats with electric propulsion. Most of the solar power captured is wasted every day because the batteries are full, but battery storage is heavy so the endurance of the vessel under electric propulsion is quite limited. The current solution is to bring diesel/gasoline and a generator. But that's annoying because it's not self sufficient, so you can't park your boat at an atoll and wait for it to replenish its energy stores. On the other hand, if the boat was equipped with (eg) a gas generator and compressor, stored that into tanks over weeks idling, and then generated power for the few hours/days needed when using electric propulsion, it could theoretically remain self-sufficient for years. Hydrogen is the easiest gas to produce because there's already systems to generate fresh water from the ocean on cruising boats. But hydrogen storage takes a lot of space and seems to not work well for long durations. Is there another reaction that you think could be done aboard a small vessel that would require only inputs available in the atmosphere/the ocean?
Thank you dear Hyperspace Pirate. Your videos inspire, entertain, and help dealing with breakups. They have everything - electronics, chemistry, physics, crafting; theory vs practice - importance of which is very often overlooked. Please never stop making your videos. Best of luck to you in everything
Very nice work with the analog circuitry. Now if you added a second safety shutoff based on the pH exceeding some set value you could walk away and let it do it's thing.
These sort of continuous service electrolysis reactors operate better when you have a reservoir tank separate to the cell. The conductivity and mass transfer rate over the electrodes will become limiting after any exhaustion of the cell from the ideal - run a small pump over the electrodes and have it circulating between the cell and the tank. The other advantage of this is being able to quickly change electrolyte. I've ran a bespoke electrowinning setup in an industrial environment for several months continuously using similar hardware to what you are using by utilising a reservoir.
I highly recommend you put a reverse polarity diode across the motor terminals to suppress the flyback from the motor when it stops. If you don't, you seriously risk blowing some components up every time it turns off. at 14:04 the pictogram for the transistor depicts a PNP transistor; on NPN, the current flows into the collector and base, out of the emitter.
Here's the recipie: Add: 8.7 mols of STEM knowledge 3.3 mols of research 4.5 mols of quality Memes 1.2 mols of MS Paint Mix it all together and you get this legendary channel. And it's fantastic! P.S. I think we need a short video on how you accidentally chugged that acetate
Very informative video thanks! At 11:28 you definitely need a freewheeling diode across your motor connectors (if your pump doesn't already contain one) in order to keep your mosfet alive. The cathode of the diode should be connected to +12V and the anode to the mosfet's drain.
Very nice tube. Your narration is very pleasant, the info is intriguing. Your witty use of graphics is great. This is a great combination for a fun channel. I can tell you put the time into these tubes. Keep up the good work.
Yup acetic acid layer which is oily and possibly glacial acetic acid as it floats to the top. All you need is 10% cleaning vinegar as well. Now is your sodium Bicarbonate pure without the filter materials or binder materials thats in it. Ordinary baking soda contains binders such as glycerine or gluten as well as alum to prevent clumping. What you should do is have a seperatory funnel and see if the top oily layer is actual acetic acid or liquid sodium acetate, or even precipitated glycerine product out of the baking soda Because. Also Sodium acetate can also become liquid when heated. If you decant the oily layer off the top, allow it to cool and throw a small grain of sodium bicarbonate in it, then you have sodium acetate for making hot ice. Also if the oily substance is slightly amber in color you may have Sodium tri-acetate.
you probably have some oxygen in the mixture, and if you want to remove oxygen from the gas, you can consider making oxygen scruber: activated charcoal, sodium chloride, iron powder and a little bit of water. Thats basically recipe for chemical hand warmer or food deoxydizer
Some recommendations for circuit making: 741s are not very good op-amps, you’d be better off using dedicated comparators like the LM393 in this application. But the delay fault latch is a good circuit, neat use of positive feedback via a diode. You should hack a pH meter (or make one by buying the reference electrodes yourself) in order to detect when pH changes automatically and trigger a pump to add more vinegar. You could also put the electrolysis cell atop a scale and use the weight to automatically add sodium bicarbonate solution, in order to keep the solution at a constant volume AND composition.
i love watching your videos for your electrical prototypes i recommend using solid copper wire which you can strip out of house wiring (scraps work well) i also use cat5 solid core if i want something with a lower capacitance it is a lot easier to work with than stranded wires, will be more durable and the final product looks a lot more tidy
Apparently the reaction forms some methabol at high ph in presence of bicarbonate, whoch us probably the layer of liquid- called the hofer-moest reaction, methanol separates because of the high salt concentration.
In the future, if you ever need to measure the level of solution (I’ve only done this with water, but I imagine with tweaks it could be used for any solution that’s moderately conductive), try using guitar strings! If you make a little frame that holds two guitar strings parallel to each other and set them at a known reference tension, you can measure the resistance between the two strings to determine what the water level is. It’s much more precise than a simple “on-off” switch because it’s based on the percentage of strings submerged and not an electrical contact that has to be either opened or closed. Plus, I think it may be more resistant to that acetic acid layer surface tension weirdness that you experienced as some portion of the string is always submerged. (If you wanted to be super accurate, you could probably incorporate some correction factor for its electrical effect as well!)
My good friend Pat Doherty taught me this trick. He’s a tech for a towing tank and this is the way he measures the height of the waves they simulate in the tank :)
Did anyone else feel bad when he released all of his liquified Ethane that took 2 weeks to produce in all of 5 seconds?!? I was like duuude, close the valve close the valve!
I love how you miss easy things but also have tons of complicated stuff but it's all a big experiment so it's okay and fun to watch. I'm learning with you and being taught things as well. Just for future reference, if you pop the clip off the end of that float valve you can flip the float around and it'll be normally open. Save you some trouble.
I just checked a paper on industrial scale synthesis using Kolbe electrolysis. Their main conditions were: current density 10 ampere per square dm, cell voltage 5 to 12 volt per pair of electrodes, temperature: 50 to 60°C (they typically run hot because of high current density.) Anode platinum plated titanium, cathode titanium.
Instead of the logic inverter, most float switches can be switched NC to NO by flipping the float around. The oily stuff might be ethyl acetate, a common organic solvent.
Acetate salts have some weird shenanigans going on, like how heating Calcium Acetate gives Acetone. Maybe you're producing some kind of side product that makes the oily layer appear from that
The oil was from the neutralization of acetic acid, and was probably an impurity in the vinegar. The reaction that produces ketones from calcium carboxylate salts is called Ketonic Decarboxylation. This is a completely different reaction from Kolbe Electrolysis. Ketonic Decarboxylation is thought to involve the formation of a carbanion similar to Claisen, Knoevenagel, or Aldol Condensation reactions. A radical mechanism has been proposed though while others think the mechanism is a concerted one. Regardless, the reaction always produces ketones, and is promoted by a base (the carboxylate salt itself acts as a weak base). On the other hand, Kolbe Electrolysis is a type of oxidative decarboxylation that involves the formation of carbon radicals. This reaction produces alkanes mainly, but can be used to add other functional groups. So, the only similarities are they both involve decarboxylation (though two different types of decarboxylation), and they might share the formation of carbon radicals in their respective mechanisms.
I am loving your videos! I really want to build a cascade cooler capable of producing liquid nitrogen. Just so I can have liquid nitrogen on hand whenever I want it. And your videos are so informative!
I was informed that we're no longer living in the year 2002, so I've uploaded at 1080p instead of 720p, so the MS paint drawings will have more pixels now.
Lol
Instead of sodium acetate I used vinegar and salt, with some copper pipe to make copper sulfate. Drew 10 amps and almost boiled the vinegar
MS Paint? I've seen you rotate drawings! That can't be possible!
It was incredibly hard to store any metal near it would instantly rust
1080p, woah that's impressive. I'm still using a single potato to record.
Organic chemistry, stoichiometry, mechanical engineering, 3d printing, analog circuit design, and finally refrigerant testing. This video is a massive filter, you have to be one heck of a mega-geek to follow every bit of it. Amazing work!
I was about to disagree, then I realized I am indeed a mega-geek.
@@Bobbiassad mega-geek noises 😢
Happy mega-geek noises.
This is what I want to do but don’t have the perseverance to actually pull off a project like this, never mind documenting it in an interesting video
This is rapidly becoming one of my favorite channels and this is exactly why.
Didn't need this call out with my morning coffee... but fair enoug
Please, never stop making these videos.
I’ve been following all the TH-cam STEM channels for 10+ years and this is peak multi-discipline engineering and design.
3d printing
Organic chemistry
Cascade Refrigeration systems
Refrigerant synthesis
Raw Electronics PCB design
Glass forming
I couldn’t stop smiling with joy throughout the video due to the depth and overall production quality and excellent humour throughout.
And then we got "tastes like pickle juice" just to keep it real.
Now I know I'm a sycophant.😊
@@wazittuyoo2147 You surely are very beloved at work and have a lot of fun in your life😂😂
Had to look for the definition of a sycophant: "A person who acts obsequiously towards someone important in order to gain advantage."
Synonyme: toady, creep, crawler, fawner, flatterer, flunkey, truckler, groveller, doormat, lickspittle, kowtower, obsequious person, minion, hanger-on, leech, puppet, spaniel, Uriah Heep, bootlicker, yes-man, brown-nose, suck-up, arse-licker, arse-kisser, suckhole, ass-licker, ass-kisser.
That is a good list and I was just thinking the same thing. I was ok with everything but the organic chem - -pushed my limit. I love this series,
Yeah, it's fun to hear about the stuff and all, but to see the science and engineering actually applied to solve a problem by pulling multiple disciplines together is just so very satisfying. On another level.
the 'accidently drank some' is somewhat concerning lol
Sodium acetate is the flavoring on most "salt and vinegar" potato chips
Only if you don't know what sodium acetate is and thus didn't realize that he was joking (about it being accidental, not about doing it) 😉
"accidentally" we all know he did it on purpose i'm sure.
Just always consult the MSDS before the accidental consumption, so it's safe.
It would be funnier if he drank something in the previous video
It might sound pretty weird but im pretty sure the oily layer you got is acetic acid. Because you have so much salts dissolved in the water (the sodium acetate) it causes the solubility of acetic acid to decrease to a point that it actually separates from the solution cus of the Ionic strength of the salts (fancy physico-chemistry crap). This effect is called the Salting Out effect, I have done that to separate ethanol from water so this could totally happen with acetic acid as well. As you noted later on, the layer disappeared after a couple of days cus, as you explained, the solution becomes more basic causing the deprotonation of the acid and putting it into solution.
Also before someone "uhm aktchualu"`s me, even thought acetic acid has a density of 1.05 g/mL, the water solution is still heavier cus it has a lot of salts dissolved which cause the density to drastically increase.
That makes sense. Also used for removing water from products. Add strong salt solution and mix in sep funnel.
Strong stirring should help with that.
I agree. Plus you started with 45% vinegar which is crazy.
Yep, strongly suspect this. Essentially crashing out the acetic by increasing the ionic strength. Honestly can't think what else it could be unless there's some major impurity in the vinegar.
That's also my best guess for it to be Acetic acid!
I concur with these smart people.
Yesss. Crazy fridge man is back
CRAZY FRIDGE MAN!!!!!!!
Thank goodness, I thought he'd been put on ice
the radioshack thing got me in the feels, when you could find stores for actual electrical components
As much as most of their stuff is plastic garbage, I've had a lot of luck buying components off Temu. It's basically where a lot of those components come from anyway, so I've never had an issue with the quality.
@@6022The real advantage of Radio Shack in my opinion was the “latency” for lack of a better word. To be able to walk over (or drive over, rip) and grab a few components needed and finish the project in 1 day, rather than wait 1 day+ for the components to ship in was amazing.
I think a well stocked Makerspace is the solution to an extent, along with something like a LumenPNP / Circuit Mill or DIY Etch Setup, but yeah.
The South American licensees/operators of the RadioShack stores have apparently bought up the full company, so maybe we'll be lucky enough to see some revitalization.
I do miss RadioShack. It was like a toys'r'us for nerds.
@@ericlotze7724 what makes these kind of stores close is that since the internet they basicly became an emergency service. if my project can wait a few days why would i drive to radio shack for my parts when i can just order them in a matter of seconds and work on something else until they arrive.
and they cant stay in business if everybody only goes there for emergencies and orders everything else online, its just not sustainable for these kind of stores to have such low sale volume
We're all nerds here with interest in multiple disciplines of engineering and science and you're absolutely killing it. Ben from Applied Science is the closest comparison I can think of and I think most will agree he had a massive impact on the youtube engineering community. We love every minute of your videos, keep it up!
I’m a mechanical engineer. Every time I see your new video, I get exited❤
Same here
Electrical-mechanical here but yeah.
Guy makes cools shit
@@idemanddonuts mechatronics ;)
excited*
Me too
To Bend a Glass Tube without Kinking the Glass you can First Fill the Tube with Fine Quartz Sand (not sharp).
This will keep the form of the tube while allowing you to make the bend and then drain out the sand to finish.
Wouldn't the quartz particles stick inside the glass tube? Neon tube makers cork both ends of the tube and somehow let out a bit of the air so that the molten part doesn’t balloon up.
Next time cork the other end and connect a tube which you can blow in some air through to smooth the bend.
This dude did more than all of pop science channels combined and cant wait for part 3 on Thompson cooler!
facts. and even explained his reasoning in multiple disciplines ... mans got source material!
The reason your ph is around 5.5 is because you made a buffer solution which will be made when you have a weak acid and it's associated anion. If you want to more carefully adjust your ph use the Henderson-hasselvoc equation and look up a table of pka
Bro you just unlocked a core memory of me by mentioning Henderson-Hasselbalch
I don't think David Hasslehoff has anything to do with it, but OK.
^que scenes of slowly played chicks with big chesticles running to some 80’s song..
Mmm yes.. the days of scrambled porn and telephones with cords..
Ouch, hit me right in the deleted archives!
9:38 You made your own circuit, just to see if you could???? You, my good sir are a certified madlad
Come to new Holland Pennsylvania we have one.
I built my own automated hydrogen generator using your design and it works amazingly. Thank you so much for your efforts!
You could in theory bubble the gaz in some water saturated with sodium hydroxide : NaOH. The CO2 would react with the OH anions to produce at the end Na2CO3 which is basically sodium bicarbonate but stronger. At first your solution would be around 1kg/L of lye if you're around 20°C, CO2 would dissolve in the water to give H2CO3 which reacts with NaOH to give water and Na2CO3. The lye is consumed and the concentration sodium carbonate rises. You'll reach a point where it will be saturated. CO2 will dissolve and basically fall down as cristals at the bottom.
You can use the sodium carbonate back on the sodium acetate to deprotonate it. Ideally you'd want to make this in cold water (near 0) because the CO2 is more soluble at that temperature where Na2CO3 is not so it will precipitate quicker. Lye is also two times less soluble in cold water but that's ok ig.
Ah and ethane is not soluble in water. Like just no it would influence the yield in any way
Just a guy doing almost every type of engineering in his house. Living the dream, I love your videos so much.
As someone that occasionally teaches electronics to teenagers, I would like to note that the 741 opamp is entirely adequate as used in this circuit. And it reminds me of when I was a teenager in the 1970s and shopping at Radio Shack. I made a power supply that outputted plus and minus 15 volts for the opamps and plus 5 for the digital electronics.
However, it is far from ideal for learning how to use opamps today because it won't comfortably run off of the same power supply as a modern microprocessor.
A modern low voltage rail-to-rail opamp can drive the output to within a millivolt of either power supply connection and can handle input voltages across a slightly wider range all while behaving like an almost ideal textbook opamp.
The 741 became far less than ideal when you got within a couple volts of the power rail.
Once again, none of this detracts from this nostalgia fueled design. It is just a bad place for a person to start learning.
Super cool!!! I have a PhD in Organo-metal transition catalysts and I love your practical chemistry.
@frankroberts9320 It is chemical engineering but with a specialty in using metals to catalyze reactions....I went to Pharmacy school before and did not want to stand behind a counter. I wanted to design quicker methods for making pharmaceuticals ......It has been a very interesting journey. I will have to tell you about it face to face someday.......
This man know about engineering, plumbing, chemistry, electronics, physics... A literal genius
By the way your videos helped me a lot to build a big cloud chamber using a vapour compression refrigeration cycle (I still have some leaks but it's working great !)
Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge !! :)
Great video of applied organic chemistry and electronics. I majored in chemistry for 3 years and then switched to electrical engineering graduating in 85 with a bsee, and yet without a lot of refreshing I could never do what you have done in this video simply because I never used any of what I learned in college. I love.watching your videos and your explanations are great.
On your level float sw, if i believe to be correct, you have a c clip on the bottom of it. You can remove it and flip around the float. This will probably turn your float switch from normally closed to normally opened and vice versa. At leasted it worked with mine haha.
Great video as usual.
You, projects in flight and huygens optics are 100% peak science/engineering TH-cam, just phenomenal work. Keep them comming!
I usually watch TH-cam videos sort of ambiently, in the background, while doing other things. If I DARE attempt to multitask for so much as TEN SECONDS while your vid is playing I get lost and have to rewind. Why would I admit this publicly? Well, as the admission reveals, I am, in fact, stupid.
Yes, the stuff packed with information. Usually watch or listen the regular stuff at 1.75x speed, but here I decided - well I'll go easier on myself and watch it 1x, maybe even 0.75 next time, so it lasts longer)))
You, sir, have once again produced gold. May you have convenient results in your hobbies
Bro I am crying laughing at the shiba bonking the double bond, you are so fucking funny
2:34
do not encourage the Floridaman @@Flashv28
Some tips/notes:
* You can use the same ABS slurry (or a thinner mix of the same) to paint onto your ABS pipe to seal it to prevent gas leaking out of it.
* There was no need to use a transistorized inverter to flip the state of your float switch; simply by placing it either tied to ground with a pull-up resistor vs tied to your positive rail with a pull-down resistor (something small-value like a 1-5k so it's strong vs your other resistors) would allow you to get the inverted behaviour you're looking for, and the impedance on the op-amp inputs is so high that you absolutely don't need the amplification your transistor is providing.
* As designed, there's some amount of interdependence on the switch on/off timing of your two op-amps; depending on how they cycle on/off, one will back-feed some current into the other and alter its timings. This may not be important enough to matter for your application, but you could avoid it by placing diodes inline with your 100k input resistors (possibly adjusting the resistor values accordingly).
* You can actually eliminate all three of your extra 2N3904 safety transistors. If you flip the inputs on your bottom op-amp (and reverse the polarity of the feedback diode) you'll get an output that latches _low_ during your fault condition instead of _high._ From there, you can drive the electrolysis cell shut-off FET directly with no inverting transistor required. You can tie the cathode of the fault LED directly to the output of the op-amp (through a current-limiting resistor), since an LM741 (or just about any fairly normal op-amp) can sink 20mA without much issue and 5mA or so is plenty for modern indicator LEDs. Then, for your pump motor shut-off, ditch the extra 2N3904 and instead hook up your lower op-amp's output to the non-inverting input of your upper op-amp with a diode (anode toward the non-inverting input of the upper op-amp). It will not conduct in normal operation (with the lower output high) but will pull the node down when the circuit faults out, shutting off the upper op-amp's output.
Great video though, and pretty successful! I look forward to your next one, always interesting to see what you come up with. I was surprised you dried your gas _after_ pumping it into your sausage tank; I would have been very concerned about potentially corroding the inside of the tank when it's initially filled, but maybe that's not much of an issue if you're not pumping any oxygen into the tank and it gets dried by cycling back and forth into it.
I would also share the same concern about pumping the crude gas mixture directly into the tank. The crude gas probably contains a significant amount of acetic acid vapors, which surely can't be good for a metal tank.
These electronics are far better than an arduino.
It may not seem so at first glance, but doing analogue circuitry this way counts as 'sufficiently simple' that you can relatively easily get it safety-rated, and many 'safety critical' systems still do things this way.
Safety-rating *anything* programming is a massive undertaking, almost no matter how simple the program, because the number of failure-modes that exist skyrocket.
Don't be afraid to use relays for logic also: It's fairly easy to rig them up in fail-safe mode, so you have to hit a 'start' switch to latch a relay to enable something to run: This gives you the additional feature that a process doen't just resume after an unexpected power outage, it just stays off until manually reset.
You'd then have some parameter a comparitor is 'watching' which would cause an alarm to trip which would also disable the load. Bonus points if your 'start/reset' button also makes the alarm run: this means you can confirm your alarm beeper actually works, each time you start it.
Great work!
Also, atlas-scientific has very good pH probe kits including analog outputs. They also do liquid dosing pumps, which could be useful to add vinegar as needed.
Dudes into Hydrocarbons he likes em Thicc like Ethane
Thank you for keeping youtube alive with content of the highest quality. I wish you all of the sponsors so you can buy all of the junk to create more lab equipment.
Congratulations on the extra pixels!
Great project. Regarding the float valve, they can usually be switched between NO/NC by removing the C clip and reinserting the float in the reverse orientation.
I seem to recall you can take off the plastic C clip and flip the float around, and it will go from NO to NC. Been a while, but it's quick to try if you want/need to.
Very interesting. I think that it will be vendor specific depending on where they install the magnet but definitely worth checking, it would be a disaster if the float is not marked in any way on a professional device.
I've had good results electroplating platinum onto stainless steel screens (for rocketry). This requires much less platinum, and still works as a catalyst.
You must be the smartest person I've ever seen on youtube...chemistry, electronics, thermodynamics...wow!!! I'm quite handy and love to build my own stuff but you are magnitudes above everyone else!! A true genius!!!
I mean, i love his work, but if you want a probably smarter man, check out applied science, who built his own electron microscope, and mass spectrometer, just because.
@@szabcsababcsa yes correct...forgot about him....yes these guys are out of this world
Most of those float switches can be swapped no
c by removing the little clip and flipping the float. Love the videos, one of my favorite channels
Idk why but these videos feel like a very good massage to my brain
Always love the in-depth explanation every video with the KSP music in the back. Keep up the great work!
Finally I found the channel I wanted to learn, about cooling systems
Awesome video. I suggested the vinegar electrolyses on a past video and you responded that you would look into it. Very cool seeing you did and that the results were good :) and very cool seeing the math play out
Im a refrigeration tech and i love every one of your uploads
Note that ethane is EXTREMELY flammable and is explosive as natural gas. Have a fire extinguisher handy and put the apparatus outdoors away from buildings. Steam cracking would be more practical for the quantity of ethane you need.
To give you a few ideas on how to improve on the design of the „kolbe-electrolyzer“. First off, you can get so called MMO electrodes (mixed metal oxide), which are somewhat cheaper than platinum and also very durable. However I‘d suggest against lead diode electrodes as lead dioxide rather easily dissolves in organic acid environments. Perhaps carbon fiber? It’s more stable towards oxidation and shouldn’t easily break down into various more or less oxidized graphite/carbon sludge/graphene oxide … stuff. That aside, perhaps you‘d want to make a membrane separated cell. Whilst terracotta should work just fine, a polymer membrane would be far better. You can easily crosslink PVA with various aldehydes such as glutaraldehyde, glyoxal and even benzaldehyde (synthetic bitter almond aroma). Just add 10-20% of PVA weight equivalent of aldehyde into an acidic PVA solution containing ~10% PVA and 2% HCl aq. With benzaldehyde the beauty is that you will flocculate out the hemiacetal (presumably), which can subsequently be washed from acid and redissolved (whilst wet) in hot ethanol. After drying you are getting a very veery tough membrane that forms a hydrogel in contact with water. To improve hydrophilicity you might add layered alumosilicates like bentonite. This will also give it proton conduction selectivity.
How the fuck do you know all this. I understand all the words, but not in the way they’re stringed together.
Is this part of your job?
Doing better than me. I read the whole thing and nothing clicked
How sure are you that platinum electrodes are used just for their corrosion resistance and don't play a catalytic role (so that MMO electrodes are enough)? References would be highly appreciated, thank you.
Watch out for fake MMO electrodes online.
@@col0342 Idk why, but it appears my initial comment disappeared, let‘s hope this one stays.
Anyhow, it seems that the proposed mechanism is a radical mechanism, rather than a catalytic one, so I‘d assume that the electrode material doesn’t have a lot of influence on the reaction, except for overpotentials of course - which might even be a good thing if oxygen evolution is kinetically disfavored.
Other than that I found very few sources on other electrode materials than platinum or platinized electrodes.
However Hans J. Schäfer references some slavic source I couldn’t find in his paper:
„With vitreous or baked carbon in protic solvents (methanol, ethanol, water) dimer yields nearly comparable to those at platinum have been obtained“
Hans J. Schäfer, Comprehensive Organic Synthesis, 1991, p. 633-658
Also I found the following:
Abstract: „The use of some kinds of glasslike-hard carbons was found to lead to selective synthesis of the corresponding Kolbe coupled products in high yields comparable to the use of a Pt anode in anodic oxidation of some carboxylic acids“
Chemistry Letters, Volume 20, Issue 7, July 1991, Pages 1085-1088
I didn’t read the whole thing unfortunately as I don’t have the time for that rn, I merely skimmed it.
I know you are a true engineer.
You never stop working and never get anywhere.
And does everything himself.
I love both of these videos, this video on ethAne and your video on ethEne (ethylene) production! Both were gasses I had to source for customers' ultralow refrigeration equipment last year. This is where it becomes challenging. Both gasses are easy to find, if you're buying low-grade gas by the tanker truck load. But try to find ultra-pure grade gasses in smaller quantities, and suddenly you're making a lot of calls, sending a lot of email inquiries, and spending a lot of money. I ended up spending over $4000 on these two gasses, and being the proud owner of a lot more than I needed. The whole endeavor made watching your videos that much richer. Great work doing it yourself from scratch!
Every time I see you upload I get so giddy and excited :D
you should use spiralina algae to consume co2 from the scrubber, as it grows very well in basic conditions, and as a bonus you get algae which is a good food source, or fetiliser.
babe wake up , new hyperspace video just dropped
I've got the coffee brewed!
I've got the Dictionary which clearly states that 'Droped' is not a real word...yet. XD
Its the past tense of draped, like the coat was droped over the chair yesterday.. ha!
I'm willing to watch these videos over any other video at any time.
Excellent work. General note for all electrolysis fans- stay away from cheap 'platinum,' MMO, etc. electrodes that abound on amazon. Even when they contain what they say they contain, they are hot garbage. There are some great independent sellers of ebay that make good ones. They're not cheap but if you treat them properly they last a long, long time.
Thank you for mentioning doubts in syringe marking accuracy. I used to expect it to be accurate.
I understood parts of this but enjoyed all of it! Thanks for making these videos!
I keep watching your videos because I have this idea of using excess solar production to generate a gas/liquid that can be stored for a long time and then used in a fuel cell to recover some of the energy for later. The roundtrip efficiency would be bad, but if storage is dense enough and the generator and fuel-cell are compact and lightweight enough, it could replace the need to have large batteries?
The use case I have in mind is sailboats with electric propulsion. Most of the solar power captured is wasted every day because the batteries are full, but battery storage is heavy so the endurance of the vessel under electric propulsion is quite limited. The current solution is to bring diesel/gasoline and a generator. But that's annoying because it's not self sufficient, so you can't park your boat at an atoll and wait for it to replenish its energy stores. On the other hand, if the boat was equipped with (eg) a gas generator and compressor, stored that into tanks over weeks idling, and then generated power for the few hours/days needed when using electric propulsion, it could theoretically remain self-sufficient for years.
Hydrogen is the easiest gas to produce because there's already systems to generate fresh water from the ocean on cruising boats. But hydrogen storage takes a lot of space and seems to not work well for long durations. Is there another reaction that you think could be done aboard a small vessel that would require only inputs available in the atmosphere/the ocean?
This guy is the reason why we need science in our life 🔨😅
Thank you dear Hyperspace Pirate. Your videos inspire, entertain, and help dealing with breakups. They have everything - electronics, chemistry, physics, crafting; theory vs practice - importance of which is very often overlooked. Please never stop making your videos. Best of luck to you in everything
Мужик ты Лев просто ! Обожаю твои пэйнты изображения и рисования! Так просто о сложном, талант преподавателя !
Insanity and *major* props for putting in the time and effort to build a discrete analog control circuit!
Very nice work with the analog circuitry. Now if you added a second safety shutoff based on the pH exceeding some set value you could walk away and let it do it's thing.
Yup. Or add some acetic acid automatically.
Float sensor you can remove float and turn up side down :)
These sort of continuous service electrolysis reactors operate better when you have a reservoir tank separate to the cell. The conductivity and mass transfer rate over the electrodes will become limiting after any exhaustion of the cell from the ideal - run a small pump over the electrodes and have it circulating between the cell and the tank. The other advantage of this is being able to quickly change electrolyte. I've ran a bespoke electrowinning setup in an industrial environment for several months continuously using similar hardware to what you are using by utilising a reservoir.
"lets test a sample to see if it burns-"
*Loud advertisement screams Yoooo!*
Didn't expect that big of an explosion -.-'
I highly recommend you put a reverse polarity diode across the motor terminals to suppress the flyback from the motor when it stops. If you don't, you seriously risk blowing some components up every time it turns off.
at 14:04 the pictogram for the transistor depicts a PNP transistor; on NPN, the current flows into the collector and base, out of the emitter.
Appreciate the upload. Really want to eventually try to replicate your fridge project.
अतिशय उत्तम विवेचन! रसायनशास्त्रापासून ते सुक्ष्म विद्युत शास्त्रापर्यंत! धन्यवाद.
Super cool! Love to see people giving this reaction a go!
The ad was worth watching
This guy is a modern day alchemist!
You should add a flyback diode for the pump command. Great work BTW.
I subscribed during seeing this. It's all so clear that a sense of tranquility comes over me.
Here's the recipie:
Add:
8.7 mols of STEM knowledge
3.3 mols of research
4.5 mols of quality Memes
1.2 mols of MS Paint
Mix it all together and you get this legendary channel. And it's fantastic!
P.S. I think we need a short video on how you accidentally chugged that acetate
Very informative video thanks! At 11:28 you definitely need a freewheeling diode across your motor connectors (if your pump doesn't already contain one) in order to keep your mosfet alive. The cathode of the diode should be connected to +12V and the anode to the mosfet's drain.
Just a note on your op-amp terminology, rails are the supplies to the op-amp, the inputs are referred to non-inverting and inverting inputs.
Very nice tube. Your narration is very pleasant, the info is intriguing. Your witty use of graphics is great. This is a great combination for a fun channel. I can tell you put the time into these tubes. Keep up the good work.
I understood about 5% of that. Great video, very enjoyable.
Yup acetic acid layer which is oily and possibly glacial acetic acid as it floats to the top. All you need is 10% cleaning vinegar as well. Now is your sodium Bicarbonate pure without the filter materials or binder materials thats in it. Ordinary baking soda contains binders such as glycerine or gluten as well as alum to prevent clumping. What you should do is have a seperatory funnel and see if the top oily layer is actual acetic acid or liquid sodium acetate, or even precipitated glycerine product out of the baking soda Because. Also Sodium acetate can also become liquid when heated. If you decant the oily layer off the top, allow it to cool and throw a small grain of sodium bicarbonate in it, then you have sodium acetate for making hot ice. Also if the oily substance is slightly amber in color you may have Sodium tri-acetate.
you probably have some oxygen in the mixture, and if you want to remove oxygen from the gas, you can consider making oxygen scruber: activated charcoal, sodium chloride, iron powder and a little bit of water. Thats basically recipe for chemical hand warmer or food deoxydizer
I think the oily stuff is acetic acid. Maybe the water is saturated so you have a layer of insoluble vinegar floating on top.
The circuit explenation was sick!
Some recommendations for circuit making: 741s are not very good op-amps, you’d be better off using dedicated comparators like the LM393 in this application. But the delay fault latch is a good circuit, neat use of positive feedback via a diode.
You should hack a pH meter (or make one by buying the reference electrodes yourself) in order to detect when pH changes automatically and trigger a pump to add more vinegar. You could also put the electrolysis cell atop a scale and use the weight to automatically add sodium bicarbonate solution, in order to keep the solution at a constant volume AND composition.
HE LIVES!!!!!!!!!
Surprisingly!
Those good old days of when there was a well stocked RadioShack full of electronic components just a short drive away.
Gives me NileRed vibes. I like.
I understand nothing but I love your videos 👌
Sir, your content and delivery are impeccable.
Thank you.
You make chemistry and physics seem fun! ❤
i love watching your videos
for your electrical prototypes i recommend using solid copper wire which you can strip out of house wiring (scraps work well)
i also use cat5 solid core if i want something with a lower capacitance
it is a lot easier to work with than stranded wires, will be more durable and the final product looks a lot more tidy
Apparently the reaction forms some methabol at high ph in presence of bicarbonate, whoch us probably the layer of liquid- called the hofer-moest reaction, methanol separates because of the high salt concentration.
Also explains the 'disappearance' or solubility of the compound under basic conditions.
That's what I came to the comments looking for.
Methanol is not oily.
I really love your gas production system.
I would have used an atTiny85 and a couple relays for the pump. You can program them with your arduino.
In the future, if you ever need to measure the level of solution (I’ve only done this with water, but I imagine with tweaks it could be used for any solution that’s moderately conductive), try using guitar strings!
If you make a little frame that holds two guitar strings parallel to each other and set them at a known reference tension, you can measure the resistance between the two strings to determine what the water level is. It’s much more precise than a simple “on-off” switch because it’s based on the percentage of strings submerged and not an electrical contact that has to be either opened or closed. Plus, I think it may be more resistant to that acetic acid layer surface tension weirdness that you experienced as some portion of the string is always submerged. (If you wanted to be super accurate, you could probably incorporate some correction factor for its electrical effect as well!)
My good friend Pat Doherty taught me this trick. He’s a tech for a towing tank and this is the way he measures the height of the waves they simulate in the tank :)
Thank you. Very nice. Your videos always inspire me to get more tinkering done and try to get more public media produced ^^
Did anyone else feel bad when he released all of his liquified Ethane that took 2 weeks to produce in all of 5 seconds?!? I was like duuude, close the valve close the valve!
I am enjoying this series. Thank you for sharing your work with us.
I love how you miss easy things but also have tons of complicated stuff but it's all a big experiment so it's okay and fun to watch. I'm learning with you and being taught things as well. Just for future reference, if you pop the clip off the end of that float valve you can flip the float around and it'll be normally open. Save you some trouble.
I just checked a paper on industrial scale synthesis using Kolbe electrolysis. Their main conditions were: current density 10 ampere per square dm, cell voltage 5 to 12 volt per pair of electrodes, temperature: 50 to 60°C (they typically run hot because of high current density.) Anode platinum plated titanium, cathode titanium.
There are reputable sellers on ebay that sell platinum plated titanium electrode 1cm x 10cm for 40 euros.
On some float switches you can reverse NO/NC mode by taking the floating magnet off and putting it back on the other way.
Regarding the NO/NC floating switch you can easily change the behavior rotating the float… check online.
Great job btw
Instead of the logic inverter, most float switches can be switched NC to NO by flipping the float around.
The oily stuff might be ethyl acetate, a common organic solvent.
Even though ethyl acetate doesn’t mix with water it isn’t very oily. It’s viscosity is around the same as acetone.
Acetate salts have some weird shenanigans going on, like how heating Calcium Acetate gives Acetone. Maybe you're producing some kind of side product that makes the oily layer appear from that
The oil was from the neutralization of acetic acid, and was probably an impurity in the vinegar. The reaction that produces ketones from calcium carboxylate salts is called Ketonic Decarboxylation. This is a completely different reaction from Kolbe Electrolysis. Ketonic Decarboxylation is thought to involve the formation of a carbanion similar to Claisen, Knoevenagel, or Aldol Condensation reactions. A radical mechanism has been proposed though while others think the mechanism is a concerted one. Regardless, the reaction always produces ketones, and is promoted by a base (the carboxylate salt itself acts as a weak base). On the other hand, Kolbe Electrolysis is a type of oxidative decarboxylation that involves the formation of carbon radicals. This reaction produces alkanes mainly, but can be used to add other functional groups. So, the only similarities are they both involve decarboxylation (though two different types of decarboxylation), and they might share the formation of carbon radicals in their respective mechanisms.
I am loving your videos! I really want to build a cascade cooler capable of producing liquid nitrogen. Just so I can have liquid nitrogen on hand whenever I want it. And your videos are so informative!
I love you so much your work keeps me motivated in even the worst slumps of my own research!