Can 'Sodium Carbonate' be used as 'Sodium sesquicarbonate' to treat Bronze Disease?

And if you happen to have coins in your pocket...ta da...all done.

 

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Just use baking soda - no need to mix the two.

 

not too much good

 

The reason I set the mass of sodium bicarbonate as 1 gram is to make it easier to scale down or scale up the mass of the mixture.

I am unsure what you meant by backwards. "In terms of grams, you can use the following mass ratio: for every 1 gram of sodium bicarbonate use 1.26 grams of sodium carbonate." These ratios are correct.

 

What Kentucky was saying is that:
For a 1:1 mole ratio, the heavier molecule (sodium bicarbonate since there are 2 carbonates) would be the 1.26 grams : 1 gram of sodium carbonate ( lighter molecule), since it is the ratio of one molecule to one molecule.

 

Not sure from memory but I might have got the Lectra washing soda in Coles it's in one or the other.

 

I wouldn't know about eBay in Australia. I live in the U.S. 225g of SSC costs $10 plus $3 shipping.

I'm pretty sure you won't need 5 lbs of it.

But do you really need SSC? The point is to neutralize the acid and remove any traces of chlorine and/or sulfur that might react with moisture to form more acid.
Wouldn't just some repeated, long-term soaking in baking soda and water accomplish the same thing? I'm not a chemist, so I don't know the answer. Has anyone tried this?

 

I don't mean to beat this to a pulp, but sodium bicarbonate has a lower molar mass than sodium carbonate. Both compounds have one carbonate ion per formula unit. The word "bicarbonate" is an older word and does not mean that there are two carbonate ions. A more modern/systematic name for sodium bicarbonate is sodium hydrogen carbonate. Chemists tend to use the older name since it is easier to pronounce "sodium bicarb" than "sodium hydrogen carbonate."

 

I apologize, much too late in the evening when I posted that.Jim

 

Others have posted about whether sodium carbonate is hydrated. It looks like there are four stable forms of the stuff:

anhydrous -- just sodium carbonate
monohydrate -- one molecule of water for each molecule of carbonate
heptahydrate -- seven molecules of water for each molecule of carbonate
decahydrate -- ten molecules of water for each molecule of carbonate

It also looks like the decahydrate tends to lose water easily if it's left open, and the anhydrous form tends to absorb water easily. But if you're starting with the decahydrate, you need to use almost three times as much!

The box I've got is Arm and Hammer brand. Here's a thread where someone actually tried to test its water content:

https://www.flickr.com/groups/53495661@N00/discuss/72157623545233076/

It looks to me like it ships as the anhydrous form, but tends to absorb some water over time. If you're being meticulous, you'd want to bake it for an hour or so to drive off any extra water.

But how critical is the composition, really, for this application?

 

Sorry, my bad, I somehow missed that FOR and read it without it. You are correct...in teaching, I try and use sodium hydrogen carbonate and this is one of the reasons...

 

Sorry, the devil made me do that...after all when do I ever get to use those words.

 

I came across "efflorescent", but decided not to use it, because the only way I've ever heard it used was to describe the behavior where a salt percolates out of a matrix and forms a deposit on the surface. I guess it's technically correct, but I don't think I'll be adopting that usage just yet.

My favorite is "deliquescent" -- so hygroscopic, it turns into a puddle if you leave it out. Calcium chloride will do this; keep your ice-melt sealed tightly!

 

Actually it's not the salt percolation out of the matrix, it's water percolating out and carrying the salt with it.