Economic chemical synthesis relying on Domestic methods

Synthesis of chemical compounds from commonly available house hold materials is not generally practiced. But many useful reagents may be prepared from commonly available chemicals. The synthesized materials are also of high purity (>90%). Among the various methods available e.g. oxidation, double decomposition etc. the method of electrolysis is very cheap and easy to conduct. This is so because most of the available chemicals are soluble in water and a battery can be used as the D.C source. The various chemicals that we come across are sodium chloride, sodium bicarbonate, sodium carbonate, hydrochloric acid to name a few. All of these are water soluble and hence electrolysis can be performed using their solutions. Metallic electrodes should be preferably used for this purpose. The commonest is copper used in electrical wires. Inert electrodes are not favorable because they give O₂ at anode the collection and purification of which is difficult because it is a gas. In this paper the electrolysis of commonly available compounds was performed. The physical and chemical properties of the products were studied. This was found to be a highly useful and inexpensive method.