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Topic: Did this produce Aluminum Chloride?  (Read 2873 times)

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Offline chrisrocks17

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Did this produce Aluminum Chloride?
« on: July 09, 2013, 01:53:49 PM »
2 Weeks ago me and my friend were bored and we were doing an electrolysis experiment. I took a party cup and filled about 1/8th of the cup with table salt and then added warm distilled water. We used aluminum foil as anodes and cathodes since we had nothing else. We ran it for under a minute when I realized chlorine gas might be produced. I unplugged it and then dumped it out. We used a 12v 850mah adapter for charging a flashlight as the power source. I know it probably produced Aluminum Chloride, Aluminum Oxide, Aluminum Hydroxide, and Sodium Hydroxide. I am kind of worried about Aluminum Chloride and Sodium Hydroxide because the MSDS sheets for those didn't look great. I did get a little bit on my skin but it never burned and those are corrosive so I guess it was in small quantities. Should I be worried? I felt perfectly fine, I was never burned, and I didn't have symptoms of any sort.

Offline Tdha

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Re: Did this produce Aluminum Chloride?
« Reply #1 on: July 09, 2013, 02:11:00 PM »
Stay calm. :) You're OK, your skin is OK too. Don't worry. If you had something wrong, you could know it.
My first language is Hungarian, so... Please, be tolerant.

Offline chrisrocks17

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Re: Did this produce Aluminum Chloride?
« Reply #2 on: July 09, 2013, 02:18:59 PM »
I am just worried about the toxicity. Those MSDS sheets worried me quite a bit.

Offline opsomath

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Re: Did this produce Aluminum Chloride?
« Reply #3 on: July 10, 2013, 10:50:32 AM »
MSDS sheets always sound like the end of the world. You probably produced a small amount of chlorine at the anode, much of which would react with the aluminum to make AlCl3 and then immediately hydrolyze to make aluminum oxides/hydroxides and hydrochloric acid. A teeny bit of hydrochloric acid isn't dangerous. As others said, you'd know if you had really done anything bad.

Cool experiment. :)

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