So, yesterday, I converted 454g baking soda to sodium carbonate...500F for 3-ish hours.

I used an aluminum baking pan.

Well, today I'm freebasing some alkaloids from an acidic caapi tea...

...and so I'm making my sodium carbonate saturated solution. I put in the rest of the sodium carbonate I have from FV, and then I open up the jar of the sodium carbonate I made myself...and it doesn't smell the same as the FV stuff.

The sodium carb from FV smells kinda chalky.

My sodium carb has this....stinky smell. (my nose is very dry, so 'stinky smell' is the best I can do without sniffing too hard and getting it in my nose)

So I'm wondering if this is just residual carbon dioxide, or if I toxified my soda ash somehow with the aluminum pan.

This is the first time I've done this conversion. I didn't think the pan would be a problem, but...perhaps it was?

Can anyone say what's WRONG WITH or DIFFERENT about my sodium carbonate? As opposed to the benign smelling FV sodium carbonate.

Aluminum reacts (and dissolves) in bases such as sodium carbonate, sodium hydroxide, calcium hydroxide, etc.
Do NOT use aluminum pots and pans for chemistry experiments if you want pure results.

OF

It will be discarded then.


Thank you OF.


Time to redo the conversion with a GLASS pan.




God, what a dumb thing to do. I take such care with my methods and materials in my extractions...and then I go and do this.


Be conscious of what you're doing people! Don't be stupid...like ME.

yeah, aluminum can be very useful, just not in the lab, or the KITCHEN!

dont feel bad.

Oh but I do.

My head's just been muddled lately from being sick...chronic type illnesses. Not anything I'd like to go into.

Yeah, it feels super stupid. But at least it's here in a post, in the safety forum, as a lesson in what not to do.

i do hope you feel better

what about a pyrex pan with aluminum foil covering it? I read you were supposed to cover your pan with Al foil during a bicarb bake, in order to keep it from coating your oven.

The only reason I ask is because my sodium carb (which I baked from sodium bicarb) also had a slightly "funky" smell...

I thought aluminum was only oxidized by strong acids/bases? do I have this wrong?

@ Dimitrius: how stinky on a scale of 1-10 would you say you soda ash is? Is it possible to describe the smell of your soda ash? Mine had a faint "funky" smell, somewhat like a leftover MJ roach or the smell of a cigarette smoker's clothes.

I never read anything about covering the pan with alum foil. Coating the oven with carbon dioxide??

What I did was leave the oven door open just a bit, maybe a 5-6" gap at the top, and had a window open right by it to let the CO2 escape.




No mine doesn't smell like that. It's uhhh, I don't know. Like I say, I have very dry nostrils (scarred even) and it's difficult to get an accurate reading...lol. I don't want to smell it again. Smells get stuck in my nose because of the dryness...so that's no fun.

It's a chemical sort of thing though. It certainly doesn't smell like a roach. I KNOW what that smells like.

Thank you biopsylo.

Me too.