Making Chloroform from Acetone and Bleach 

not really happening

Same

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😂😂😂

that and a healthy dose of shaking

That’s a great idea I might actually try out myself someday. What’s the yield? BTW: the funnel attached to the top in case of foam production is genius!

@@THYZOID I stole the funnel idea from Nurdrage, I think it was his hydrazine sulphate video. I've never really calculated the yield to be honest, I'm just intending to make a bunch at once. I use an excess of hypochlorite so the acetone is the limiting reagent. You have to be really careful to add the acetone really slowly otherwise it will foam almost explosively. Ever since I ended up with some reaction mixture on my ceiling I'm careful and I do it outside. The reaction starts pretty suddenly and it is delayed. Good luck with it!

I just poured acetone in 100ml portions to 18l of 12% sodium hypochlorite solution over several days to get about 400ml of CHCl3. The yield should be at least 40% which is quite good considering that I pretty much estimated the stoichiometry and that it was cooled by rainwater.

@@THYZOID ترجمة بالعربي لوسمحت

​@Chemistry of Questionable Quality I don't know why but I can't stop giggling about the foam on the ceiling haha

Omg i'm ugly you did it 🤦

When your calcium chloride is made from really course granules and the liquid you are drying isn’t too wet it won’t clog the funnel

about a half teaspoon or so will do the trick

@@pauls5745 alrighty, half a teaspoon, then I just huff it and pull it away?

​@@soaktinbleech1106 it's not a instant reaction... gonna take a few minutes of huffing. Continued administration of chloroform is needed to keep you knocked out.

@@codyramos3200 ah ok, how about laying the rag on my face and breathing through it as I fall asleep

Of course! That is industrial method of production formic acid

It makes acetic acid, not formic acid. To make formic acid you would need acetaldehyde But yeah, you can. And you can also make propanoic acid with MEK, which is a somewhat decent way of obtaining it for the amateur

you could also just hydrolize the chloroform to formic acid if for some reason you can‘t get acetaldehyd, no?

The idea is to use ethanol or, even better, acetaldehyde, instead of acetone. That will create sodium formate instead of sodium acetate and you can react the chloroform with sodium hydroxide to generate more sodium formate. The sodium chloride byproduct can be separated from the sodium formate with ethanol, which will dissolve the latter. From there´s just acidify the sodium formate with a strong acid and distill the aqueous formic acid.

@@ficolas2 MEK is not MEK anymore MAP gas is not MAP gas anymore... A lot of things have started to use other chemicals than what's on the the label.. at least mek says mek substitute in fine print underneath... Apparently that's ethyl acetate now which is also very useful... But as far as I know map gas doesn't have a different label, I wonder if I could sue?

It can be made from chloroform but if you can´t get DCM you will probably not get chloroform as well. If you make it though you can turn chloroform to DCM.

Distilling won’t be that dangerous but I don’t need ultra pure chloroform anyway.

Completely pure freshly prepared bleach can be nearly colorless but it gets yellow quickly. This isn’t a sign that the bleach is bad or good though. Your bleach is either degraded or contains extremely low amounts of NaOCl. Did the solution went from clear to milky upon adding acetone?

I did not observe a change in color or cloudiness. The faint smell of chlorine was completely gone and replaced by smell of acetone. The bleach was manufactured in August, so should have been still good. Thank you for taking the time to respond.

No problem mate! If your bleach did not get at least a little bit cloudy it has been degraded. You or the supplier might have left it in a warm place for a few days which lead to decomposition of NaOCl.

Bleach decomposes in heat and sun or simply during time. The more bleach is concentrated... the more it decomposes faster. Essentially bleach is made out of a mix of NaCl, NaOCl, water and NaOH for better stability. The only unstable compound is the hypochlorite. It oxido-reduces itself (disproportionate) into sodium chloride and chlorate. The NaCl adds up to the inert NaCl already present into the mix and the NaClO3 remains stable (in basic or neutral mefia); it doesnt decompose amines or ammonia or proteins (amides) or urea into chloroamines what display yellower color and incredible characteristic smell what hypochlorite does. So lighter yellower color and no smell vs fabrication means the product is no more valid for sanitization and contains almost no (if any at all) hypochlorite (NaOCl) and it has turned into NaOClO2 (NaClO3) what is not a sanitizing material but a weed-killer or oxidizer for some hazardous pyro compositions if no knowledge of the chemistry behind and related dangers (storage, properties, incompatibilities, mixings, sensitivities to heat, friction, ...) NaOCl + 2 NaOCl --> NaOClO2 + 2 NaCl Of course it can be written shorter and simplified (not taking into account the real atomic connectivity of the molecule and not putting into evidence the fact one molecule gets oxidized while two are reduced) 3 NaClO --> NaClO3 + 2 NaCl Usually strong bleach or weak bleach decompose in a few monthes at ambiant heat (the stronger the faster)...even into the shadow, into the conventional freshness of the fridge and even in a freezer (more time stable) it decomposes. It is better to make fresh NaOCl into ice by bubling Cl2 into glacial NaOH/ice mix when needed and ready use it. Ideally you have to titrate the bleach to be sure of the active chlorine (hypochlorite) present as it changes each day or add an excess or large excess if possible. PHZ (PHILOU Zrealone from the Science Madness forum)

I have bought jugs of bleach from the supermarket, which were almost completely inert when I opened them at home. Now I always keep a small piece of blue denim handy, to test a new jug. I put a few drops of bleach on the cloth, and if the bleach is fresh, it quickly removes the color; otherwise it does nothing. Obviously this is not an accurate lab analysis, but it gives a general idea, and serves my purpose of using the bleach as a disinfectant and mold remover.

Chloroform ain´t that bad. It´s not like in the movies.

On Television they just put a few drops on a cloth and it knocks somebody out in seconds. It's just a TV/Movie trope - it doesn't actually work like that at all.

For an academic you are stupid

You cannot extract piperidine from black pepper. You can only hydrolize the piperine to make piperidine. I guess NileRed already did a complete video on this procedure.

yes you can use hdpe for the reaction. just don´t use it for storage

I mean, nobody can stop you from using it on yourself. I've done it once, but chloroform is a suspected carcinogen. It also doesn't work like in the movies, it takes about 5 minutes to put someone to sleep and the vapors aren't terribly pleasant. You'll also wake up with a hell of a headache. Doesn't last long either unless it's being continuously administered. Back when they used it as an anesthetic it was usually mixed with ether and was dripped on a handkerchief draped over a wicker basket covering the patient's face.

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Same family

Theres a post on sciencemadness for this. It’s possible but other molar ratios are needed

I guess it would work. It would produce chloroform and oxalic acid as a side product.

@@THYZOID nicee thanks!

In the video he recommends using 1.9l of bleach with 53ml of acetone.

I wouldn’t recommend smelling chloroform because it’s a weak carcinogen. How long does it put a person to sleep? I guess approximately as long as they are inhaling chloroform (+5-20 after chloroform exposure is stopped). Chloroform does not work the way it is portrayed in movies.

@@THYZOID If you experience "Sudden sniffer's death", you will sleep for a long-long time.

Meaning I’ll be left with CHCl3 contaminated with at least 2% water ?

@@THYZOID yes thats correct. At least I have experimentally confirmed this for at least methanol. But it should be around the same value for chloroform. To really dry it, you need to distill it. With methanol you can dry with magnesium, not so sure about chloroform. Edit: drying over cacl2 for several hours and then distilling should yield mostly dry chloroform.

@@THYZOID @Justin Koenig As almost always, for storing dry solvents I recommend molecular sieves :) And I recommend a lot "Purification of laboratory chemicals". This is one of the most important books in organic laboratory with all protocols for purification, drying, storing and so on of chemicals with varying degrees of purity.

Haven’t thought about sieves yet but it might be time to order some. A great book. Just took a glimpse into it.

@@THYZOID I hope book would be very useful for your future videos :)

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Your hypochlorite solution was likely extremely weak. The amount of chloroform formed wasn’t enough and therefore stayed dissolved. Did it get cloudy?

@@THYZOID yes it got cloudy. And there was so much chloroform that it almost incapacitated me. I sniffed it too much and wanted sleep

Please don’t smell chloroform. It’s toxic and carcinogenic.

A distillation should be conducted if pure chloroform is desired

@@THYZOID I know, but if we prepare chloroform from the reaction of acetone and bleach, is it possible? The use of chloroform yield in chemical reactions, or must it be distilled and purified as well? Thank you

@@THYZOID what is the chloroform contaminated with when not distilled?

Chlorate cells are normally pretty damn hot to degrade freshly produced hypochlorite directly into chlorate. Unless you therefore specifically ran your chlorate cell at a really low temperature (cooled your cell way below the decomp. point of hypochlorite for the entire time) you will not get any chloroform.

@@THYZOID well I had my test cell run at like 25*C, because the graphite block I used was only submerged 1/3 so it was acting like a heat sink

@@karolus28 then it could possibly work. Just try it out. And please report back to me if it worked because if it did I’d build a hypochlorite cell.

@@THYZOID So I think electeolite from a chlorate cell can't be used because most of the hypochlorides get oxidised into chlorates without heat. It deas seem to produse tiny amounts of chloroform but not much. So I'm going to make a not saturated solution of NaCl - electrolize that only for a few hours so clo3 doesn't get produced and try using that. (Also when I added acetone to my saturated electrolyte the water concentration decreased and stuff participated out which is kinda cool)

@@THYZOID I actually had a potassium chlorate cell and there is always lots of hypochlorites but the thing is that I think that potassium hypochlorite just doesn't react with acetone(ok maybe it _does_ react but idk anymore) so I'd have to build a sodium chlorate cell but I don't need sodium chlorate so I wont make it, although I can assure you that if you built a NaOCl cell it would work. I also wanna see how you make it

It’s for getting it reasonably dry.

Yes, but there may be some lab work in your education.

did you use chlorine bleach? was it strong enough? if too much acetone is used you will also not get any product

Although I cooled it multiple times (but didn't freeze). I'm afraid that if I keep having this chloroform water solution, I will end up with phosgene

With a chloroform in water solution you won’t get any phosgene. It would quickly hydrolize to form CO2 and HCl. For this preparation to work efficiently one must use a concentrated hypochlorite solution to get a considerable amount of chloroform. If a really dilute solution is used the only way to obtain the dissolved chloroform would be a distillation.

@@THYZOID I think there was hypochlorite in the solution. The composition contained 20%

Just a theory but dissolving some sodium chloride without heating the solution might allow more CHCl3 to “precipitate“.

@@THYZOID thank you for answers. Though with only 1 thing I probably dissent: many sources say that phosgene doesn't react readily with water. This is would be also true because phosgene was used in World War 1. It didn't immediately hydrolized by moisture