[ahrecycling]

I work for a hazardous materials recycling company, and we are working on a project involving some very unstable sodium sludge. I need some ideas on how to stabilize the sodium during digestion. Our usual process involves digestion in aqua regia with heat, but this is a highly volatile situation with this sodium sludge material. Are there any liquids that can neutralize this material without generating a uncontrollable amount of heat. Should we try a totally different approach?

[fledarmus]

Aqua regia? And elemental sodium? This sounds very, very bad!

When we needed to quench sodium in our solvent stills in the lab, we did it by slowly adding isopropanol to the sodium mixture still in the solvent (usually THF), with very thorough stirring and careful temperature control. Sometimes the surface of the sodium had been somewhat passivated by the accumulation of sodium salts, but if the stirring was strong enough, that layer could be broken down and the sodium underneath would react. Once all the sodium had been oxidized and no more hydrogen was being generated, water was added carefully to dissolve all the salts, and the aqueous solution could be neutralized and disposed of.