[tsr]

My friend and I are doing a project for the science fair that involves the electrolysis of hydrochloric acid. We we're hoping to obtain chlorine gas from it and then freeze it with dry ice to create a liquid which we would then combine with pure sodium to create table salt. We got something different however, when we attempted to electrolyze the hydrochloric acid it started to bubble, but we couldn't get the chlorine gas to travel into the beaker that we had sitting in the dry ice so it would freeze. We are sure we had everything sealed tight, but it didn't work. When we opened up the beaker containing the acid we smelled the smell of rotten eggs, we're assuming this is sulfur, but we can't be sure. We had nothing inside of the solution that contained sulfur. For the record we diluted 12 molar hydrochloric acid. Can anyone offer a solution for this?

Sincerely,

Shane Rose

[nj_bartel]

Sulfur doesn't smell like rotten eggs by itself - some sulfur compounds do, H₂S in particular.  You don't need to condense chlorine into a liquid to react with sodium - it reacts as a gas (explosively... assuming you know that).  You also don't need chlorine as a gas to handle it, as it's considerably denser than air.  To react, the mixture also requires heat, and there can't be an oxide layer covering the sodium.  These conditions are typically accomplished by placing a drop of water on the sodium while in contact with the chlorine.  That aside, I'm not sure what you're forming.

[Mitch]

First, are you sure you weren't smelling chlorine? Second, be careful smelling chlorine!