[Glaudge]

new guy here again!
i had an idea a week or so ago, and i though i would try some chemical experiment, one that i had already new existed, and safe, but nobody had suggested me to doing this, one that i came up with my self

I have a gravel driveway, and i remembered that limestone, calcium carbonate, was easily dissolved by many acids, and i knew that i could never obtain strong ammounts of HCL or sulfuric acid, so i though about household acids, and vinegar came to mind, and i though that that would be a good experiment, so i got the last little bit of white vinegar we had and put it in a container(air sealed with plastic wrap and a rubber band) with a few limestone gravels and allowed it to set out for a few days, and i would like to know more about it and its products

observations: bubbles slowly appear and float up from the gravels (probibly CO2)
condensation constantly forms on inside of container.(is water one of the products?)
a precipitate slowly forms and starts fogging up the solution(is that the calcium acetate that ive heard is the other product of this reaction? or is that limestone particles in which calcium acetate may be vinegar or water soluable?

whats the real equation for this?
what are the properties of (and other interesting things or reactions that you can do with) calcium acetate?


2nd, less important experiment

i have been letting ashes set in water for months now, in an attempt to produce NAOH, do i need the white ashes for this, or will black ashes do the trick? how strong will this solution be?(ph and baseicity wise) how else can you use households stuff to make the dangerous naoh?
how can you concentrate it and seperate most of it from the water solution?


woah....this is the longest article i have ever typed, exept school projects, in the long history of Glaudge!

[Glaudge]

ahh! could an admin quickly move this topicf to the citizen experiments place? or will this one be ok?

[enahs]

Couple of things. You can get concentrated HCl from your local home center. It is labeled Muriatic acid, and would be in the cleaning supplies or solvents. Be careful though, please.

2 HCl + CaCO3  -> CO₂ + CaCl₂ + H₂O


Your vinegar is mostly water and a small amount of acetic acid (CH₃COOH). Typically it is usually around ~5% by volume.

The acetic acid one is tricky to write to the uninitiated, if you go by basic AB rules.

2 CH₃COOH + CaCO₃ -> H₂CO₃ + Ca(CH₃COO)₂
But H₂CO₃ is carbonic acid, but the equilibrium for carbonic acid is highly in favor of CO₂ and H₂O
H₂CO₃ -> CO₂ + H₂O

So over all you can, and will find it written as:
2 CH₃COOH + CaCO₃ = H₂O + CO₂ + Ca(CH₃COO)₂

As for your other one, I am not sure what you mean by ash, I guess? To me ash is just carbon. So how would C + H₂O get NaOH? It will not.

[Glaudge]

how can you obtain stronger concentrations of acetic acid?

[billnotgatez]

Historically the ashes of broad leaf tree wood were used to make potash. I would think this would give more potassium hydroxide than sodium hydroxide.

If I had the ability to move this thread to citizen chemistry, I would do so as you requested, but I do not have that capability. Maybe an admin will.

[billnotgatez]

It is nice that in nature compounds are formed which are useful. But, at the same times other compounds are formed so that you have a mixture. It gets more involved due to the possibility that both compounds are soluble in water, which may be the natural solvent to the process or also produced by the process. Even if you evaporate the water you are left with a mixture with the molecules of each compound very commingled. Acetic acid has that situation in vinegar.