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The easiest way to make sodium is to extract it from table salt by high temperature electrolysis. But before we do that, we should have to check the quality of the material. To make high quality sodium it is very important. First of all, we have to crush the salt to make a fine powder, then filtrate it many times to purify as possible. Purification can be done, by dissolving NaCl in distillate water, then pouring the solution through a filtration paper, used in chemistry. After this step the salt must be crystallized by evaporating the water in a dust free environment. (to speed up the crystallization higher temperatures can be used)
So now we have pure NaCl free of dust. If you use chemistry grade NaCl you can leave out the steps above. In order to electrolyse NaCl, it has to be heated up above its melting point. NaCl melts at about 800 degrees Celsius. Most important is, not to overheat the material, as sodium (Na) has a boiling point at around 883 degrees Celsius. It takes a lot of energy to melt salt, but with the right equipment you could do it. When salt is melted DC voltage has to be passed through to separate Chlorine from Sodium. Warning!!!! Chlorine is a very poisonous gas and it can kill you at even low dosages to. Chlorine can be liquefied in a high pressure cylinder, or it can be dissolved in water.
Our first attempt was to melt salt we didn’t purify it or anything. We poured 500g salt on the ground, and started to heat it with AC electric arc using two pieces of SiC electrodes. The intense heat of the arc melted some of the salt. After this we pushed the electrodes into the melt. The intense current flow melted the rest of the salt as you can see in the pictures.
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