A Potassium Chlorate Cell 

Perhaps for security reasons salt, sugar and electricity will be prohibited in eu

Yeah better watch out

If I am not mistaken, isn't one of those water soluable and the other one is not? Couldn't you just rinse and see how much of the non sol was left, giving you an idea of how much more to convert?

Hello my friend can you give me the steps to prepare potassium chlorate from electrolysis

Clips are consumables in these cells. I use quick-disconnect connectors on my leads and just swap out clips when they disappear. No matter how convoluted my exhaust setup gets, I haven't been able to avoid this happening eventually. There are worse problems to have.

It only takes a couple of minutes for the hydroxide concentration to build up, so I wouldn't worry about it honestly. Also, it would likely be very difficult to prevent overshooting the pH. Even just adding an extra half of a gram of KOH to a cell of this size would push the pH way above the ideal value of 9-10, and possibly damage the anode with the strongly basic conditions (though I'm not sure how bad this would actually be for the electrodes). You can definitely do it if you want to minimise the chlorine generated at the start of the cell run, but be careful of overshooting the amount of KOH you need.

also its good when the cathode has only half the size of the anode so less hydrogen disolve in the solution and reduce the chlorate

Inside the jar, the hose is not submerged. We just want gas to flow through it, not solution.

Yep, persulfate is also a common additive that works well with MMO anodes. I was going to get some (since I can get persulfate easily) but it honestly wasn't worth the expense since I don't actually need the chlorate for anything. I would have run the cell at a much higher current, but 20-30 A would likely require a larger cell and spot welded connections to the electrodes. I was basically just using 3 A because I had the contact resistance of the alligator clips in mind. A proper cell could definitely be run much better. Glad you enjoyed!

Yes! You can. Note that the anode will slowly disintegrate and you’ll need to filter out the resulting carbon dust before crystallising the product though.

@@ScrapScience thx

Yeah, I pretty much just slowly spooned it in. The chloride was added directly to the solution in the cell. I think I also added a bit of water to bring the volume back up to what it was at the start, but I can't quite remember.

I haven't made a Castner-Kellner cell yet, and I don't plan on it due to the requirement of using mercury. However, I have a bunch of videos on the diaphragm process (which does the exact same thing): 1) ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-2-d4dIXQN78.html (this one's a really old video, and I didn't really understand the chemistry at the time, I wouldn't bother with this one honestly) 2) ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-TTAg4F5sIYw.html (this one explains the chemistry of a diaphragm cell in detail) 3) ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-OrEQkBOxmxg.html (this one has me determining the optimal conditions for building a diaphragm cell) 4) ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-iZH5fB0iM7U.html (this one goes over building a practical cell) 5) ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-83jX5Tkhd_Q.html (this one goes over the whole process for potassium hydroxide instead of sodium hydroxide) The videos are mostly centred on making sodium hydroxide (or for the last one, potassium hydroxide) rather than hypochlorite, but the process can be easily augmented to make hypochlorite by reacting the chlorine gas output with the generated hydroxide solution in each case.

can you show with a video how to make an ideal anode with available materials?

@@ivanmercaldi9863 Look for Platinum coated Ti with a black IR Oxide layer over the Platinum. They last for about 15,000 hours. That's how we do it at Johnson Matthey for industry professionsals.

I talk about the electrodes from 1:08 to 2:47. Titanium and MMO are what I'm using here.

I think it's 12

I think because sodium chlorate is soluble in water making it hard to extract while potassium chlorate isn't soluble making it easy to extract as it can just be filtered out

Hmmm. I’m currently working on a video about converting ammonia into nitrate by a different method (don’t know if it’s going to work yet). The ozone route seems like it gives a terrible yield from what I’ve seen. Maybe if I can find an easy way of generating large quantities of ozone, I’ll give it a go.

@@ScrapScience Interesting, I can't wait to see the results, and for the ozone route I assume you could increase the efficiency by maybe turning up the temperature and putting in some mild UV just to get things going a bit faster

I had an similar idea bubbling ozone throught an Glycine solution. It should form nitromethan.

Does it mean that the electrolytic tank is sealed if the gas comes out well through the rubber tube?

Leaks are not a big concern when doing this outside. The amount of chlorine generated is rather minimal (most of the gas is hydrogen). And yes, if gas flows through the tube, it means the cell is adequately sealed.

can you explain the science behind it?

@@user-eh2se3rb5f No. It's complicated. You need to look elsewhere for that explanation.

That's a fair concern. However, the amount of chlorine is incredibly minimal compared to the amount of hydrogen flowing through the tube (they're not generated in equivalent stoichiometric amounts). It doesn't pose a large explosion hazard in this particular mixture.

yeah

@@karolus28 with the same setup ?

It really depends on how your lead dioxide electrodes have been made. If they are professionally made PbO2 anodes, or you've made them by plating PbO2 onto titanium or graphite, you can use them in a cell just like this one (though you can't use any dichromate additives). If your anodes are homemade, they're likely to fall apart slightly and contaminate your product with toxic lead salts, which you'll need to remove somehow. If your PbO2 anode is simply made by anodising lead metal, it shouldn't ever be used to make chlorate, as it will fall apart and generate a highly toxic mess in your cell without yielding much chlorate at all.

@@ScrapScience I had made the PbO2 electrodes by electrolysis of Lead metal in 20% H2SO4.But when I made it some brown stuff had fallen on the chlorate ,I think it can be potassium plumbate.

Yeah, please don't poison yourself with those anodes. PbO2 on lead metal should never be used for electrolysis of anything other than a sulfate or carbonate solution (even then, great care should be taken). If you want to make chlorate safely, you need a proper anode in order to avoid contaminating your product with various toxic lead salts.

Perchlorates are definitely a plan for a future video. Electrolysis of potassium chlorate to make potassium perchlorate isn't actually a viable option though (the solubility of the chlorate salt is just too low for it to be meaningfully efficient). Instead, the plan is to first produce sodium perchlorate (by electrolysis of the sodium chlorate we made in a different video), and then convert that product to the potassium salt by double displacement. So ultimately, it'll involve a bit of both electrolysis and double displacement. It's a little while away at this stage though, I'm still in the process of getting hold of the right type of anode for the electrolysis step.

@@ScrapScience nice! The anodes are expensive and lots of fake out there. A platinum coated titanium anode could work but i think lead dioxide is better for perchlorates. Could be wrong though. Love your videos, very instructional and entertaining!

@@MrJebus015 Also, you could make your own Pt coated anodes, but apparently the process is very finicky, and the application of an even layer of Pt can be hard to achieve.

​@@bromisovalum8417and dangerous! Platinosis sounds horrible!

​@@ScrapScienceBrother, have you ever made lead gunpowder? I heard that lead is smokeless gunpowder. I searched all over the Internet and found no videos of making lead gunpowder. There are also impact powders. The firing pin will ring when it hits.

At this stage it's actually just sodium hypochlorite in the gas scrubber. But yes, I could convert it into chlorate with heat. Sadly though, there wouldn't be enough to extract.

A great question! The answer lies in the fact that my explanation of the reaction is a little oversimplified so that I could keep things brief. In reality, it's not just OH- ions that are able to react with chlorine. Even in water at the ideal pH=6.7, the vast majority of chlorine is still dissolved to form hypochlorite and hypochlorous acid. You can see the form that chlorine likes to take at any pH under equilibrium conditions on a graph like this: tinyurl.com/yckf2t3j We do still lose a miniscule amount of chlorine under these conditions (because the timeframe for this equilibrium to stabilise is longer than the timeframe of chlorine leaving the cell), hence why the pH slowly raises as the cell runs. The amount of efficiency lost by this chlorine-loss process is so small that it would be ridiculous to put any effort into preventing it. You can see on this (somewhat accurate) graph that a pH of 6.7 leads to a drop in efficiency of less than 0.5% due to this issue: www.chlorates.exrockets.com/_img/clescape.gif All in all, the chlorine still happily dissolves into solution at pH=6.7 - it just reacts with water instead of OH-. As a result, cycling of pH and unique cell designs are completely unnecessary, and will actually probably lead to inefficiencies, as you generally just want to avoid having a high pH anywhere in the cell. Even though it's good for dissolving chlorine, increasing the chlorine dissolution efficiency by less than 0.5% is not worth it if you're decreasing the hypochlorite oxidation efficiency by doing so. Anyway, for a hyper-efficient chlorate cell, all you really need are a few things: - Good stirring - pH control (aiming for pH=6.7) - Temperature control to around 70 C - A small addition of dichromate or persulfate to prevent back-reduction on the cathode

most likely C

Yep, Celsius

@@ScrapScience Thanks!

Disappointingly, titanium alone will definitely not work as an anode. The oxidising conditions lead to complete passivation of the titanium surface. The only viable options for anode choices are graphite, MMO, and platinum.

@@ScrapScience Thank you for your answear. Also what is the soulobility of kcl in distilted water?

@Alex-yn5gp it will depend on temperature. You will find detailed information if you just Google “KCl solubility”.

The crystal size is dependent on many factors including the temperature, rate of production, trace contaminants in solution, and many more, so it's nearly impossible to predict the overall size of the crystals you make. If you want bigger crystals, you can just recrystallise your product.

@@ScrapScience i really appreciate your answer, i don't know how you manage to reply to all off those comments. im guessing the crystals could be the way they are because of the carbon contamination and temperature, contamination isn't terrible but still there(grey crystals) and temperature stays pretty low, production rate is medium, i got 3cm layer in 2 days. thanks anyways.

For this video, I got my electrodes from electrodesupply.com/

Yep! Just be aware that if you use it as an anode, it will fill your solution with carbon particles as it falls apart, so you’ll likely need to recrystallise your final product.

@@ScrapScience not problem bro I'll filter it

5 grams is nowhere near enough material to run a cell like this (unless your design only had a volume of 15 mL). You need to start with a saturated solution and will likely need to continue adding sodium chloride as electrolysis progresses in order to start precipitating chlorate.

@@ScrapScience thank you bro , you helped me so much

Yes. Recrystallisation is the only means of doing this.

It depends on the purity you need. Generally it will require a recrystallisation or two.

Yep, it certainly would! It won’t increase the efficiency much (since the initial hydroxide production in a cell only takes a few minutes), but it will definitely reduce the amount of chlorine which is initially made. I’d avoid adding too much though, since a super high pH is bad for the electrodes. I’d estimate that you’d need less than 20mg of KOH in order to get the pH to the desired 9 or 10 in a cell this size.

In the first few days of the cell running, the produced chlorate simply remains in solution, so you don't see it. It's only after you hit the saturation limit that your chlorate product will crystallise. The first few days are a waiting game, but then once it crystallises out, you start to see the true production rate. Regardless, electrolytic reactions are very slow, since a mole of electrons is equivalent to around 27 amp-hours of charge. To make a mole of chlorate in the 9-electron process, we need over 240 amp-hours at 100% efficiency.

I'm afraid it's really not that simple. The substrates of battery electrodes are nowhere near sufficient for surviving the conditions of a chlorate cell. You also can't just make an electrode out of magnetite you find or dig up.

I mean, titanium definitely isn't ideal, but it shouldn't fall apart unless you run it very incorrectly. MMO and platinum are excellent as anode materials, but are a complete waste of money when used as a cathode. In the case of MMO, using it as a cathode will even destroy the electrocatalytic ability of the metal oxides to perform chloride oxidation effectively. Regular mild steel is a good cathode material if you really don't like titanium, provided you don't leave it in the solution when it's not running.

In that case, the chlorine would not be absorbed properly and most of it would end up passing right through into the air.

Any salt bridge will introduce serious inefficiencies due to resistance. Yes, it's possible, but if you're looking for efficiency, this is not the solution. You could try with a cation exchange membrane if you're really keen, but this will require constant pumping of exact quantities of the cathodic NaOH solution into the anode compartment. Without perfect control, your cell would simply run like a chloralkali cell instead of a chlorate one. Additionally, adding extra volume to the anode compartment to maintain the pH would require some way of removing water (reverse osmosis or boiling, maybe) so that a constant volume could be maintained. A solvable problem probably, but you're the one who has to decide whether or not it's worth it... Industry generally doesn't bother with divided cells, since they only offer tiny increases in efficiency and are significantly more complicated to set up and run when compared to an undivided cell. Feel free to experiment though, and let me know if it turns out well! And yes, there are many more complex things you can do in the field of bulk electrolysis. Basically half of my videos are about these kinds of electrolytic syntheses. On the topic of doing organic reactions, I have this video here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE--OpWbSun2d8.htmlsi=jW2SZHNIpA7p4GbS Other more complex things include the synthesis of permanganate or nitrate - both of which I've done in the past: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-dRYxc1o-xPg.htmlsi=iJQpTLeoHXuVqeyK ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-AbrmHN5wOY8.htmlsi=3RCqEuNTIYY9fYbK I have a whole playlist called 'electrochemistry' with nearly 50 videos in it, if you're interested in more. As for getting hold of electrodes, the seller I bought mine from appears to no longer exist, which is a shame since they sold great quality products. I'm afraid I can't give any specific recommendations, as I can't guarantee the authenticity or quality of any current sellers. Ebay or AliExpress are generally good places to get them (same for membranes and separators), but be on the lookout for fakes (they are very common, particularly for platinum).

You should do a fractional crystalisation. Use the filtrate in the next run

@@basvisscher934 yes that's true. I'm just so disappointed in the yield when I do it like that as most of it remains in the solution. Btw I'm going to buy the book "The selective physical chemistry of inorganic chlorates and perchlorates" by Jared Ledgard. And hope it will help me make a good cell.

​@@mittnamn8776 Might be worth trying to cool the solution prior to filtration, should reduce the solubility of the NaClO4, not sure by how much though.

Provided you’re doing this outside, an improperly sealed cell isn’t really a problem. A yellow colour, however, is generally an issue. I’ve asked you some questions about this in your other comment.

I am having the exactly same problem

@@gabriel-wv1cb hey, I did solve it. I don't know if you are referring to the color, but it's apparently nanoparticles of the graphite electrode, and if you are referring to not seeing any bubbles, i just used a whole lot of hot glue and it solved it. Hope it helps.

Sorry, I don't plan on ever covering the basics of the maths and the stoichiometry of the cell. This is something you'll have to do some research for if you want to understand the process of calculation. As a starting point, this website gives a thorough explanation of how to make rough predictions of the cell runtime and production rate: www.chlorates.exrockets.com/runtime.html

@@ScrapScience I found a book with all the calculations in chemistry. It has 650 pages!

Definitely not. Stainless steel will easily oxidise under the conditions of a chlorate cell. The only electrodes you can reasonably use as an anode are the ones I mention from 1:55 - 2:50.

Only if the current collectors aren't insulated themselves. I used a small piece of heat-shrink tubing to ensure they didn't contact the metal part of the lid.

No. You get a mixture of chloride and chlorate.

@@ScrapScience Thank U 고맙습니다

That will do the trick. However, potassium nitrate isn't the best choice here, since it exhibits a low solubility at low temperatures. In order to separate out some pure potassium chlorate, you'll probably need to keep the solution relatively warm after you mix the two together (room temperature should do) in order to avoid crystallising any nitrate out with your product. If potassium nitrate is the only potassium salt you can get, then go for it. Otherwise, potassium chloride is definitely better.

@@ScrapScience so youre saying double displacement isn't efficient? that there is still NaClO3 and KNO3 in the soloution? if thats the case i should be able to squeeze almost everything out by concentrating it again by boiling it further down. if i understand that correctly i think rhere should be no problem, just gotta deal with the chloride

@@ScrapScience oh and one last thing before i quit bothering you😅😂 i thought of adding KNO3 directly to the chlorate cell. my only concern is that maybe it will somehow interfere with the electrolysis process

The problem is more in the fact that potassium nitrate will crystallise out with your potassium chlorate if you let the solution get too cold (making your crystals impure). Provided you keep the solution relatively warm, this won't be a problem though. You can definitely boil down the solution if you need to get a bit of extra yield from your crystallisation. And yeah, I'm afraid adding potassium nitrate to the cell will ruin the electrolysis process to a large degree. The nitrate ion isn't really electrochemically inert. I'm not sure exactly what would happen, but the best case scenario is that the efficiency of the cell might decrease drastically, and the worst case scenario is that you might make ammonium chlorate in solution, which has a tendency to explode or violently decompose. It's definitely something I'd avoid. Don't be concerned about bothering me either. Responding to genuine comments like yours is my favourite part of being on RU-vid!

@@ScrapScience thank you for everything man. you obviously have quite a bit more knowledge in chemistry. i will experiment with the kno3 and will see how it goes. thanks again, keep up the good work! 💪

Gold will quickly fall apart as an anode I'm afraid. Sodium chloride will work pretty much the same, but sodium chlorate is actually more soluble than the original sodium chloride, so you have to run a few cycles before anything starts crystallising.

thank you very much.

@@ScrapScience but gold supposed to be inert like Platinum isn't it

@@omsingharjit Yes, gold is very inert, but not quite inert enough for this process, since the combination of oxidisers is enough to attack it quite quickly. Platinum is even less reactive, so it can be used without degradation.

I had initially calculated a run-time based on a 60% cell efficiency such that there was still 50 g/L worth of chloride in the cell. Additionally, I checked the cell daily and tried my best to estimate the point where ~80 g of chlorate had crystallised (which I had also calculated to be the point where ~50 g of chloride remained). Now that I know the average cell efficiency (50%), in any future runs, I’d just calculate the whole thing stoichiometrically. Additionally, you could probably watch for a spike in voltage as the chloride concentration drops (though this is risky for your electrodes). Or you could take regular density measurements of the solution, and add more KCl whenever the density drops below 1.1 g/L.

@@ScrapScience awesome info, thanks! 😁👍

I had no idea this was a viable option. How would you suggest differentiating between chlorate and chloride by chromatography?

@@ScrapScience make a chromatography solution of pure KClO3 and a chromatography solution of your product, take a drop of each solution with a glass rode and pose it on the paper. Then wait until the drops dry. Then you have to hold the paper with a side dripping into a solvant bath, the solvant will rise into the paper by capilarity and it will bring with it some stuff that were disolve into your first solutions. Finaly wait until the paper is dry and you should see appear some spots on the paper (with uv light i think). One spot is for one spice, two spots is for two spicies. You can know if your product is pure or not by comparing the differents dots. I know my explanations aren't that clear (i am a french student) but you can find more infos on fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromatographie

@@masterfail8450 Yeah okay, that makes sense, but I'm concerned as to which solvent to use here. Most solvents used in chromatography won't dissolve potassium chloride/chlorate, and even if I could find one (water comes to mind), KCl and KClO3 probably won't colour the solution and won't react with UV light. Even heating the chromatography paper would, at best, only show the dot for chlorate (since chloride doesn't decompose or react under heat). It seems a little tricky to actually get results with, even if I had professional TLC plates or something like that.

www.gamry.com/assets/Application-Notes/Getting-Started-with-Electrochemical-Corrosion-Measurement.pdf I think it would be simple to check the amps and convert it to electrochemical potential, and then use it to differentiate the solution. Though the math is not so simple. Also the article say's corrosion because it function basically the same as electrolysis.

Perchlorates are considerably more difficult than chlorates, but yes, a perchlorate cell is definitely in the list of future video ideas. It'll be a long way off though. I need to make a whole bunch of sodium chlorate before I can even start on a perchlorate cell. I'll also need a much fancier anode. I'll get there one day.

You can't simply electrolyse NH4Cl into APC, you'd get nasty nitrogen compounds. Moreover, ammonium chlorate is one hell of a sensitive compound. You need to go from PURE sodium perchlorate and do a double displacement, which is easier said than done.

@@ScrapScience you can use thermal decomposition to make perchlorate from chlorate. Its not as efficient but it doesnt require pbo2 anodes. Let me know if you are interested. I have done this before. Both with pbo2 aswell as thermal decomp.

@@basvisscher934 I considered making perchlorate by thermal decomposition, but I reckon the electrolytic synthesis will be more interesting anyway (and more fun!). I still haven't yet decided whether to get PbO2 or a piece of platinum foil to use as an anode (I'm leaning towards platinum at this stage since I can use it for other things as well).

@@ScrapScience make a video about sodium chlorate cell as well... There is little content about that in RU-vid... Mostly they make potassium chlorate which is easier to remove....

The concentration of sodium hydroxide in the gas scrubber isn't important at all, it just needs to remain basic so that it can absorb the chlorine gas.

​@@ScrapScience It's obvious and logical that it can only handle so much before it can't absorb anymore or am I wrong? During the whole process, did you smell any chlorine?

Yes that's correct, and you'll need to have enough sodium hydroxide in solution to absorb all of the chorine. However, predicting how much you'll need is nearly impossible because the amount of chlorine generated in one of these cells depends on too many factors. You can just start with a solution of ~10 g of sodium hydroxide, and then if you notice the scrubber getting less basic over time, you can add more as you go.

While PbO2 itself does do an excellent job at chlorate production in most cases, the lead dioxide cathode plates in a car battery sadly have terrible structural integrity when used for anything other than electrolysis of sulfates. Many people have tried them for chlorate production, but as far as I know, nobody has had any meaningful success.

Thank you very much indeed!

@@nicoschadjidemetriou4373 you can harvest the PbO2 from them, mix with a little epoxy and either coat carbon electrodes, or just use it rolled or pressed into the shape you want. If you want to deal with toxic lead salts, you can make a much more durable electrode mysteriusbhoice has LOTS about making them and other electrochemistry on his channel. The main advantage of PbO2 electrodes is that they can make perchlorates if you run them long enough, they also handle pretty high current densities.

Neither. The power supply should be current controlled such that the correct DC voltage is applied to give you the required 3 amps. The voltage you need will generally sit around 4-5 volts.

@@ScrapScience Thank you very much. can I do that with a normal transformer?

A transformer will give you AC, so I'm afraid not. You need a proper DC power supply with controllable voltage and current in order to do this.

@@ScrapScience can i use a titan strip and a mmo mesh? MMO Ir-Ru anode? Ti cathode?

@@luca-xx7ec Yes, a titanium cathode and an MMO anode is ideal

That’s an extremely broad question. Yes, potassium chloride is the starting material. The runtime of the cell will depend on many factors, including: - The size of the cell - The current - The anode/cathode choice - The current density on the anode/cathode - The temperature of the cell - The pH control For any given cell, you can calculate the theoretical production rate. This requires some understanding of stoichiometry and how charge transfer relates to current, and isn’t something I can explain in a single RU-vid comment. You’ll need to do some research here if this type of calculation isn’t familiar to you.

@@ScrapScience ok sir thank you so much for replying

Sorry, I'm not planning on making any chlorate cells more advanced than this one.

I'm not sure I understand your question. Cl2 is only generated in large quantities at the start of the process, before the cell becomes basic enough for hypochlorite production. After the cell becomes basic, the production of chlorine gas is a very minor by-product of the cell, and most of the current goes towards hypochlorite/chlorate production.

@@ScrapScience now i understand thanks

The titanium should be on the negative side. What do you use as anode? I think your anode is the wrong material. Also what boltage do you run the cell at?

@@basvisscher934 I am using Iron as the anode because I am doing batches of ferric oxide and I wanted a cathode that didn't corrode.

@@basvisscher934 the voltage is 5v.

It really depends on what solution you're electrolysing. If you're making iron oxide, it might be various iron hydroxides forming on the cathode, or maybe your electrolyte has some impurity causing the brown coating.

@@ScrapScience why would iron hydroxide form on the cathode, aren't they supposed to form on the anode? I am using tap water, what electrolyte would you recommend?

Any current controlled power supply will do the trick. In this case, I'm using the 12 volt output of an ATX power supply coupled to a buck converter with full voltage and current control.

I'm not sure what you're asking here. We're using water as the solvent?

Mixed metal oxide. I talk about what it's made of at around 2:03.

Yes. In most cases, leaving the electrodes in the solution without current flowing through them will damage them significantly over long periods of time.

I'm going to need a little more information to figure out what's going on here. First of all, how big is your cell? The runtime will be proportional to the volume you're using. Additionally, how are you maintaining 1 amp? Do you have a current controlled power supply or are you relying on an AC adaptor? And finally, how are you attempting to extract the chlorate? What do you mean by 'leaving or drying'?

1) Sodium chlorate is more soluble than sodium chloride, so it will not gather in the bottom of the cell in the same way potassium chlorate does. Sodium chlorate will only crystallise once you have added multiple batches of sodium chloride to the cell, though a large portion will still remain in solution. 2) Those electrodes will work, yes. Though I'm not sure what you mean by 'mixed metal' in this context. Since you're using a carbon anode, you will need to filter the resulting carbon powder out of your product at the end, and your final chlorate will likely be slightly discoloured by microscopic carbon dust. 3) You'll need to calculate when you need to add more sodium chloride based on when you predict the chloride concentrations will drop below 50g/L. To do this, you'll need to work out how quickly you're consuming chloride based on the reaction stoichiometry, current, and cell efficiency (the latter usually being around 55%).

@@inarinukka7729 I know lab power supplies work, but I was hoping for a cheaper alternative. Thanks for the information though!

I actually use an ATX power supply from an old PC, coupled with a $15 adjustable buck converter from Ebay. The ATX power supplies are free if you extract them from an old or broken computer, and can supply up to 20 amps at 3.3/5/12 volts in most cases, so I've found them extremely useful in the past. I actually have a video on converting an old ATX power supply into a usable lab power supply, but it's a VERY old video, and not one of my best: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ygvbdwl-0bM.html

@@ScrapScience Thanks for the info! I actually just ended up splurging and buying a lab power supply for other chem projects as well. My cell is running well and some chlorate is precipitating out already. One thing I was wondering is how to calculate the total theoretical yield based on the amount of KCl used and amperage/ volts. Thanks!

@@firework7516Brother, please reply, is it necessary to measure the acidity and put materials to reduce it continuously?

@@ScrapScienceBrother, please reply, is it necessary to measure the acidity and put materials to reduce it continuously?

I got my electrodes from an electrode supply website that seems to no longer exist (which is a shame, since they sold high quality platinum and MMO anodes). For now, I can't actually guarantee the authenticity of any sellers, but you can often find some MMO anodes (and titanium cathodes) on Ebay or AliExpress.

electrodesupply.com/ is the best high-quality source I've found.