Help Making NaBr or KBr?

[Athiril]

Living in Australia there is only 1 photographic chemical supplier, they have MSDS sheets on their site for Potassium and Sodium Bromide... but they dont sell either, they also list for sale sodium and potassium thiosulphate.. but dont sell it now either.. plus a bunch of other critical stuff in photographic processing they no longer sell :/

Managed to find various alternate supplies for a lot of things, and get the last of stock of some of the things they do have (sodium thiocyanate, benzotriazole)


Anyway long story short, I cant find any Sodium Bromide suppliers - apart from AceChem, which will supply it directly to residential addresses.. but at like $60-$70 before shipping (which they charge a lot for as well :/) for 500g (1.1lb) for tech grade - Pool Shops dont seem to carry it.

The best I've found from pool shops are bromine tablets - 'Active constituent: 650g/kg available Bromine. 280g/kg available Chlorine present as Bromochlorodimethylyydantoin.'

Wikipedia mentions production of Potassium Bromide though (without any reference :/)

'A traditional method for the manufacture of KBr is the reaction of potassium carbonate with a bromide of iron, Fe3Br8, made by treating scrap iron under water with excess bromine:[citation needed]

4 K2CO3 + Fe3Br8 → 8 KBr + Fe3O4 + 4 CO2 '

So using bromine tablets I can possibly do this since I have both sodium and potassium carbonate.

Can anyone give me some pointers?

Im assuming I could just filter out the iron oxide after wards as it should be indissolvable?

 

[dancqu]

I'd shop a few Pharmacies.
Let them know you need some
little for photographic use. Dan

 

[keithwms]

Are there any nearby universities? If so you could befriend someone there...

Otherwise I guess some of these salts might be available via aquarium stores.

 

[Athiril]

Looking at a chemical list from an Australia univesity, its in List "2B"
"Chemicals and substances which can be supplied by companies which export to educational institutions, and are not usually available locally"

hmmm...

 

[Alan Johnson]

Could try telephoning www.photoformulary.com ,they answer the phone and can tell how much it would cost to send out.I have had stuff from them,no problems.

 

[Alex Bishop-Thorpe]

A lot of chemistry cant be shipped internationally because of air-freight restrictions. I can't order Rodinal from the states, for example. I've had terrible trouble trying to find Silver Nitrate in Australia, and for now I've given up - Ace Chemicals was the name given to me as well.

 

[Athiril]

AceChem unfortunately overcharge about 3x-5x for tech grade chems making them expensive, then freight on top of that, some chemicals they wont supply to consumer/residential, some they will, I know there were a couple of other Aussie ones too.

If you ring AceChem up they will help you, AceChem have Silver Nitrate in AR and Tech grade according to their site http://acechem.com.au/S.html

Most of these places you have to ring (AceChem do help you out if you ring), as most never get back to you unless youre a business or registered client etc.

Vanbar sells Rodinal.

You can get Silver Nitrate from other countries - http://cgi.ebay.com.au/10g-Silver-n...emQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item3ca672724b

same seller - http://www.hottdealss.com/Silver nitrate.html

You can also get it from http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/ the cheapest being about $110 for 25g though..


I found one place that might be selling "Leisure Time" branded spa/pool chemicals - if so they would have straight sodium bromide instead of mixed down to 15% with other stuff.



You can also get some stuff (like ppd in massive cheap bulk - really cheap) through Asia through ali baba http://www.alibaba.com/

 

[Jordan]

I can see many ways for your proposed reaction to go wrong. Is there no foreign supplier that could ship you some KBr? It's pretty cheap stuff. Photographer's Formulary sells it for $6 / 100g.

 

[Athiril]

Vanbar has the msds listed, but conveniently being the only photographic chemical supplier in the whole country they just lack things, and stop selling cruicial things (like thiosulphates for example!) - they also take months to get in colour processing kits (tetenal, fuji, kodak).


Asking some ebay sellers if they'll do international postage.

I know its cheap, but the problem is, soon as they add the AUSTRALIA SHIPPING RAPE TAX for shipping, it becomes expensive, for example,

Buying film here can cost up to $20 a roll and another $20 for processing if its E6, hence everyone imports their film, but the cheap suppliers like to start charging at $60+ US for shipping to Australia, even though it would only cost an individual $10-$20 to post the same thing themselves here :/ - so people usually do group buys and get a lot to push the cost down.


I'll try a few more places.

 

[Photo Engineer]

Sodium Bromide was a common pharmaceutical available from most pharmacies in OTC remedies called "Bromides" for upset stomach and nervous conditions. They are now out of style, but the salt might be available.

The pool chemical you list is not a good source of NaBr or KBr. It has too much excess baggage in the form of the organic molecule that will be present as decomposition products if you try to turn it into a pure Bromide salt.

Another route is to try and find Hydro Bromic acid. This is not common but can be obtained. Mixing it 1 Mole to 1 Mole of Sodium or Potassium Hydroxide solution (with great care, cooling, mixing etc) you will generate a solution of the same concentration of the Na or K Bromide salt. This is the last resort if your pharmacist cannot get you Na or K Bromide.

The Formulary does indeed sell both salts and does ship to OZ, but it is expensive I would think. Try moving OZ closer to the US. That might help.

PE

 

[Athiril]

And then I might hae to get my hands on bromine and sulfur dioxide to get hydro bromic acid :3 argh!

If it comes down to it, AceChem, and SigmaAldrich both offer it.

Dont worry, I plan on leaving this film-heathen country once I finish my degree in Feb/March.

I'll miss living here (which is also next to the beach) and the kayaking and dolphins and landscapes and such.. but oh well.

Is Leisure Time not a good source? It says 99%

 

[Jordan]

Your halogenated dimethylhydantoin is an N-chlorinated and N-brominated imide. Looks like a good source of electrophilic bromine (like N-bromosuccinimide for doing electrophilic brominations).

In terms of your experiment, if you understand what I wrote above, go for it Otherwise, I would advise caution. There's experimentation, then there's experimentation...

PE and I are both chemists by training, and I think we would both balk at trying to make a clean bromide salt from your chlorobromodimethylhydantoin. There is no easy way to do it and get a photographically useful salt. You will get a hopeless mixture of bromide and chloride, hydantoin, its hydrolysis and oxidation products, etc. and you will have iron salts contaminating your developer, which is bad news.

 

[Murray Kelly]

How much do you need? I know I have some among my souvenirs because I found some saturated solution to add to paper developer that I'd made up. The mother lode must about, someplace.
Murray

 

[Murray Kelly]

Also ask around the local pharmacies. Most don't do extemporaneous scripts anymore but there's usually one in or near the street where all the medical specialists have rooms and the locals know who they are and will direct you there. Manufacturing pharmacists is the label. They would be the best chance for a small qty. q.s. as they say in the game.
Murray

 

[Lowell Huff]

We have no difficulty shipping chemicals to Australia. askus@claytonchem.com

 

[mattmoy_2000]

You gotta be careful in what you ask for in combination at pharmacies. I wanted high purity ascorbic and Citric acids (for developer and stop respectively, so I didn't want the fizzy tablets because of all the chalk and crud that comes in them). Asking for either one is OK (unless you've got a super-paranoid pharmacist) but if you ask for one, and then the other when the first is unavailable, they'll throw you out of the shop with an ear bashing.
Turns out you can use them for cutting heroin to make it more soluble for injection, something that I didn't know when I asked for them, and resulted in great confusion.

 

[minerva]

I'm not sure about this, ask the other chemists here for input, but you may be able to get a usable bromide solution from the bromochlorodimethylhydantoin used for pool sanitiser.

Try adding acid (eg. conc HCl) to some of the bromochlorodimethylhydantoin. (For the love of zombie jesus you'll do this outside) You'll probably get a whole load of vapor of both Cl and Br. If you warm up the reaction mixture, you should be able to distill off some bromine and let the more volatile chlorine escape to the atmosphere.

Then, you can add the bromine to an excess of cold aqueous NaOH, and you should have a NaBr solution (maybe with some bromate in the solution, too.)

Something like this:

Dead Link Removed

But instead of trying to condense straight bromine, pass it into NaOH to react.

I know, I know, this sounds like a rather daring chemistry experiment. But it might work. See what the resident chemists here say.

 

[Kirk Keyes]

Bromine gas/liquid is really nasty stuff.

When not just email the Photographers Formulary ask how much for shipping to Australia or where ever?

 

[Photo Engineer]

Even if everything went perfectly, having Bromate in the Bromide is not good either!

PE

 

[sun of sand]

teach your dog a new trick

 

[Jordan]

Passing bromine through aqueous sodium hydroxide gives you a hypobromite solution. Plus bromates. Both are oxidizing agents which you most decidedly do not want in your developer.

The proposed experiments are like trying to turn a loaf of fine French bread back into flour -- not worth it if you have any alternative source of flour. I'd take Murray up on his offer.

 

[neelin]

Potassium Iodide might be easy to find in Australia, i.e. "Tincture of Iodine" for cuts, or Thyroid protection from radiation overdose pills--a big hazard in the Southern Hemisphere .

From Anchel/Troop, Darkroom Cookbook (p47):

"Although it is recommended by no less an authority than Geoffrey Crawley, former editor of the BJP and formulator of FX and Paterson developers, KI has not been thoroughly investigated for its use as a restrainer. However, what little research has been done indicates that it is superior to KBr. As a substitute, it is usually recommended to use 1/10 to 1/100 the weight of bromide. Iodine can also be used in combination with bromide."

Thiosulphates.

Don't anyone be getting a heart attack, but I use liquid 12-0-0 plant fertilizer, pure Ammonium Thiosulfate solution. 2.5usg for $50. in Canada Datasheet

 

[Photo Engineer]

That only proves my contention that some Blixes, Fixes and Bleaches can be used as plant food. They contain Ammonia and Iron. Good for evergreens and other iron loving plants. Only be careful, you have to dilute it or you can burn plants. Also, the silver will not hurt them if there is a low enough level but dont use it on your garden in that case.



Iodide is used to control development rate in most developing solutions used for color processes. Do NOT try to use Iodine itself.

PE

 

[neelin]

My tincture of iodine bottle says it is a "KI in alcohol"

Perhaps you can use the steel wool trick in the old fixer to exchange iron for silver in old fixer & then use it for plant food, and discard/drop in recycle, the old steel wool.

 

[Photo Engineer]

KI is not very soluable in alcohol. Reread the label. Mine says 2% Iodine and 1% KI in a mixture of alcohol and water.

The Iodine in there will be a real killer for photo products.

PE