[Darkroom] Hello and looking for liquid bromine

Jasmine Strong jasmine at electronpusher.org
Wed Jun 29 09:00:56 UTC 2011


On 29 Jun 2011, at 01:47, Christian Rice wrote:

> Another aspect of this procedure that seems like it wouldn't work for me is I don't want bromine water--I want to drip some liquid bromine onto a bed of silica gel crystals.  The moisture from bromine water is not good for my fuming process.

If you extract enough bromine, it should settle out as a layer;  water will only dissolve bromine to a strength of about 3% by volume.  Use strong hypochlorite bleach and you should be set.  The bromine is about 3x heavier than water, so it will sink to the bottom, where you can pick it out with a (glass!) teat pipette.

Remember also that you need this to be cold (in some countries, bromine is considered a gas...)

> I think distillation might be the answer to that (as if I'd know); but it's a lot easier to talk about than for me to accomplish. Isolating bromine is not something one wants to mess up with...

It is quite nasty stuff.  It is very fluid, has low surface tension, and is very corrosive-  it will cause severe burns if you get the tiniest drop on you.  It also dissolves most anything, including teflon, glass and lab partners.  It's not the kind of thing you want to keep around.  Did I mention that it reeks?

> You seem to be confident with chemistry...where does that come from, if I may ask?

It comes from long experience of hacking things...  film development and copper bromide lasers to name but two.

-J.


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