[suzi9spal]

Greetings chemists!
I am new to this forum and basically registered to ask a few questions about my project.
1) I am currently using graphite electrodes, about 2 mm in diameter and my power source is a car battery charger. I'm interested if I could use Higher voltage and ampage(250 volts at 10 amps) without burning the fuse. The electrodes are about 5cm apart, so I'm wondering if the salty, ionized water solution could jump a spark between them, burning the fuse. Is it safe to go to 250V and 10A?

2) After electrolyzing a saturated NaCl solution for about 20 hours, I boiled off the water and got about 200 grams of white crystals. The crystals are a mixture of NaCl and NaOH, the product of electrolysis(2NaCl + 2H₂O 2NaOH + Cl₂ + H₂). How can I separate the lye(NaOH) from the NaCl crystals? I have tried ethanol(since NaCl doesn't dissolve in ethanol, but NaOH does), but with no real success.

Thank you for your time,
 -suzi9spal

[Intanjir]

Like everything else which doesn't dissolve much Sodium Chloride, Ethanol is not a great solvent for NaOH. Still it is probably about as good an option as there is for this. You should achieve some level success with it, though you would wind up with substantially Sodium Ethoxide(not a big concern since you can readily convert it back to the hydroxide).

If you just want to remove a chlorine ion impurity then you could use some anion exchange resin charged with hydroxide ions. You could use ammonia (but not carbonate) to charge the resin. Or you could use sodium hydroxide...

[Intanjir]

Also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recrystallization_(chemistry)