Ian Woollard wrote:
Purifying peroxide is extremely hazardous; even professionals have explosions whilst doing this.
Put another way: just coming up with a safe way to do safe peroxide purification would be a science project in and of itself. Perhaps our pine cone test could illustrate this... Sometimes, we want to verify the purity of certain batches of peroxide for various reasons. For instance, people sometimes send us peroxide and we wish to confirm its actual purity, or perhaps we wish to test some peroxide that's been in storage for a while. Of course, we have devices to safely give us an exact numerical readout, which we always prefer to use in practice, but we did discover an alternate way of measuring this using nothing more than an ordinary pine cone. The pine cone should be dry; not necessarily super dry, but this won't work with one that's just been in a rain storm. Spill a drop or two onto the pine cone. If it bursts into flame immediately, it's over 90% pure. If it smolders for a second or two then burns, it's 80-90%. And so forth. Now, the important part is that just about any organic material would suffice. Like, say, your hand, or most clothes. Also consider that an unanticipated peroxide explosion is likely to scatter at least a few drops of unreacted peroxide over everything, and everybody, nearby. When we have someone handling our peroxide, if there is even the slightest chance of a leak or explosion, the handler has a hazmat suit on, and we have someone else with a fire hose pointed at the handler, ready to spray at the first sign of trouble. We do not do this because the law requires it; we do this because we wish to survive to do it again. If you are determined to do this project regardless of all discouragement, which it looks like you are, I would strongly reccomend you take at least this level of safety measure, probably more. (Yes, it is not likely to be comfortable. 'Tis far better to be uncomfortable than to be disfigured or dead.) If you can find ways to handle it from a distance without increasing risk of spill, for instance setting up the purification to run without anyone in the immediate vicinity (say, peroxide remains sealed away while everything is set up, then flip a switch on a control panel some distance away to introduce peroxide into the system), so much the better. _______________________________________________ ERPS-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.erps.org/mailman/listinfo/erps-list
