(how it) Works Wednesday: Bleach
(how it works) Wednesday:
Occasionally my curiosity seizes upon some random household object whose presence I normally don’t question.
Recently, it was bleach.
The stuff that turns hair and clothing and basically everything else colored white, kills germs, and if you drink it you die
I watched as somebody poured it into a sink with some blue-colored laundry soap, and watched the laundry soap turn red almost instantly
And I realized I had no idea how the stuff is even made.
So where else to go, but wikipedia?
As it turns out, “bleach” is a class of substances, not simply a single substance. The categories are three: Chlorine-based bleaches, of which common liquid bleach like Clorox is one; peroxide bleaches, which are used to bleach hair and flour and also in “color safe” bleaches; and reducing bleaches, which are a range of chemicals whose bleaching effects come from a different atomic mechanism and find use in niche manufacturing applications.
Common household bleach, such as the Clorox whose magic color-changing abilities I witnessed in the sink with the laundry soap, usually utilize a chemical called sodium hypochlorite as their active agent. There are various methods of making it, but the only large-scale industrial process capable of making it in scale is called the Hooker process, which is summarized as follows: pass an electrical current through saltwater brine, mix the resulting chlorine with the resulting sodium hydroxide, and VIOLA! Sodium Hypochlorite!
Who knew that electrocuting seawater could be so sanitary?
Occasionally my curiosity seizes upon some random household object whose presence I normally don’t question.
Recently, it was bleach.
The stuff that turns hair and clothing and basically everything else colored white, kills germs, and if you drink it you die
I watched as somebody poured it into a sink with some blue-colored laundry soap, and watched the laundry soap turn red almost instantly
And I realized I had no idea how the stuff is even made.
So where else to go, but wikipedia?
As it turns out, “bleach” is a class of substances, not simply a single substance. The categories are three: Chlorine-based bleaches, of which common liquid bleach like Clorox is one; peroxide bleaches, which are used to bleach hair and flour and also in “color safe” bleaches; and reducing bleaches, which are a range of chemicals whose bleaching effects come from a different atomic mechanism and find use in niche manufacturing applications.
Common household bleach, such as the Clorox whose magic color-changing abilities I witnessed in the sink with the laundry soap, usually utilize a chemical called sodium hypochlorite as their active agent. There are various methods of making it, but the only large-scale industrial process capable of making it in scale is called the Hooker process, which is summarized as follows: pass an electrical current through saltwater brine, mix the resulting chlorine with the resulting sodium hydroxide, and VIOLA! Sodium Hypochlorite!
Who knew that electrocuting seawater could be so sanitary?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleach#Chlorine-based_bleaches
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