Posted on 08/13/2016 10:53:00 AM PDT by rey
I know never to mix cleaners and to certainly never mix ammonia and chlorine but many cleaners contain ammonium chloride. Is this not essentially ammonia and chlorine? If not, how does it differ? If it is similar, what is done to it so it doesn't kill the user?
I am obviously not a chemist and have merely an nodding acquaintance with the periodic table, so I would ask that your explanations be simplified as much as possible, as Einstein said, "As simple as possible but no simpler."
Thanks
I mixed bleach and ammonia once at a steakhouse, gonna mop the floor.
I was in the back near the loading door. The reaction was intense. I couldn’t breathe and got that mix of hell out the door and on the pavement.
It filtered through the work areas. I was 17 and didn’t have a clue.
Needless to say that never happened again.
My favorite Gallagher line. “I wish there was a way to increase the intelligence on television. They have a knob that says “Brightness”, but it doesn’t work.”
Chemist, here.
You get ammonium chloride, a salt, from the reaction of an acid, hydrochloric acid, with a base, ammonia.
This is very different from mixing ammonia with *an oxidizing agent*, chlorine. In that case, the primary result is that you don’t get a salt, the product of an acid-base reaction, but rather various products of the redox reaction, although hydrogen chloride is liberated and that does react with additional ammonia to form ammonium chloride, but this isn’t the redox product.
Intermediates are chloramines (highly toxic and smelly, probably the main reason why people are poisoned mixing ammonia with bleach), and these can dimerize into hydrazine (very toxic, used as rocket fuel), or go to completion with dimerization to form nitrogen trichloride, an oily and highly explosive liquid, somewhat analogous to the widely known, more sensitive, but less poisonous nitrogen triiodide.
When nitrogen trichloride explodes, you get nitrogen and chlorine. Sunlight, cracked glass, or modest impact is enough to set it off. Note that the explosion products are nitrogen (not ammonia) and chlorine - you don’t get the explosion energy for free; the reaction consumes ammonia and turns it into highly stable nitrogen.
Mixing 1 gal ammonia and 1 gal common bleach works for getting rid of beaver infestations when shooting or trapping is not practical. Much more humane than snaring or foot hold trapping.
Safely done when containers in a very large funnel are placed on top of air hole and perforated with a .22 from a safe distance.
I just read that and the voice reading it in my head was gallergar s
Had a job as a cook for awhile and a troubled teen was my helper. Had her clean the floors and told her never mix the ammonia and bleach. She did just that and we almost lost the kid. One scary afternoon.
Wasn't he the blimp guy?
Let me add, the chlorine gas in this reaction will kill you.
More fun to mix ammonia with iodine crystals.
Nah. Heisenberg was indecisive.
I see a new NCIS: Geriatric Crimes episode from this one.
Bump......
Yeah.
In high school, chemistry class, after having learned that, for the next few weeks was a riot...
It is safe to mix sulfur, charcoal and potassium nitrate.
It makes the cleaning a blast......
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