Making a deadly chemical in my parents' garage

this video has been sponsored by display i've been doing youtube now for about six and a half years but in the last few years it's grown at a pretty crazy rate when i first started i was just in my parents garage and i pretty much had nothing i remember that it was a struggle to get even basic chemicals and glassware now though i have this office that i work in and i also have this entire lab that i built with my dad and when i think about it it's almost unbelievable i mean i have things like real chemical storage cabinets you know equipment like gas cylinders uh i have a fume hood or actually two fume hoods which are slightly better than what i used to have which was just a fan and an open garage door i also have a drawer almost exclusively for hammers and another drawer just for blow torches and when i think about all of this i am super happy with how things are and i'm really thankful for all the support and everything that i've gotten over the years but i can't help but kind of miss how bad it was like i said before i used to do everything in my parents garage and it was far from ideal to say the least i filmed all my projects on one table and there was barely any space for anything else i almost didn't even have space for a camera stand and everything was so crammed i did my best to organize it and to be safe but it was still undeniably some sort of hazard however i found that the added danger factor was kind of fun and exciting the chemistry itself was challenging and dangerous enough but i think i like the bonus that my terrible setup added it made everything that i did much more difficult and i had to be way more precise and careful this made many of my projects a lot more nerve-wracking and high stakes but i think it also made them significantly more exciting now though it's much more official i pay rent for my own space and i have my brother and my friend working with me i mean it's way safer and still a lot of fun and i'm able to do some higher end stuff that i never even dreamed of however i've been feeling that there's a part of me that misses that struggle and that danger so what i've been wanting to do for a while is go back and do some chemistry in my parents garage i've been really wanting to relive how things were and to see if i actually miss it i didn't just want to do any random project though and i specifically wanted to make bromine bromine's an element that's similar to chlorine and it's a very angry blood red liquid it's also one of my favorite elements but that isn't the only reason that i wanted to make it it's because it was one of my first garage projects that i felt was really pushing the boundary of safety it has always stuck out in my mind as the first video that i really started to challenge myself and to push the limit of what i could do at home i remember preparing for ages to make sure that i could handle everything and anything that could go wrong i also remember some of my chemist friends telling me that i was gonna die doing it but anyway now to get started the first thing that i had to do was ask my dad for permission to use the garage i have a question to ask you can we use the garage sometime this week to make some bromine you need just like a verbal contract or something i i'm there's nothing in the garage is totally flexible to make bromine yes okay okay that's it not a nuclear weapon i'm fine with that out of the way i started putting together a little chemistry kit that i could take home to know exactly what i needed i just rewatched my old bromine video and i did my best not to forget anything based on what i saw this seemed about right and it was mostly just basic glassware and equipment some of it like the funnels the condenser and the stands were actually the exact same ones that i used in the original video now for the chemicals the main ones that i needed were muriatic acid sodium bromide solution and chlorine pool tablets i originally bought all of these at my local hardware store and i figured i could just get them there again when i went to go buy them though they only had the acid and the pool tablets they'd apparently stopped selling the sodium bromide years ago which i think might be good because we don't need more people making bromine in their garage however this did make me a bit sad and i started worrying that this project wouldn't be possible or at least possible in the way that i wanted to do it but luckily after searching my lab for a while i actually found the sodium bromide that i had used in the original video it was super old and only half full but i figured that it would still be okay now with all the chemicals and equipment i took the 40 minute drive back to the garage the moment i walked in though i remembered exactly why i left this sucks okay that's a start oh god [Music] okay i know what to say i uh i don't feel good about this it was even more cluttered and worse than i remembered but either way the first thing that i had to do was clear the table this ended up being a lot easier than i thought and there wasn't actually very much to move the hardest part was finding somewhere to put everything and i ended up just shoving things wherever they would fit okay with the table open it was more or less good to go but i wanted to see if i could find something to cover it i spent a few minutes looking around the room and i was very surprised to find my old glass tabletop for most of my time in the garage though i actually used a different one that came from my grandma's old table however in 2017 that one exploded from an accidental lithium fire and i replaced it with this one it was just a cheap table top from ikea but what was kind of funny was that for years i thought that it had a zebra pattern i also called it a zebra pattern at least a few times while setting it up and my friend couldn't help but say something it's also a fingerprint not a zebra i i thought it was a zebra thing definitely looks a lot more like a fingerprint now that i look at it i think it was even called fingerprint tabletop either way good to go now with a completely clear and covered table i was ready to start doing some chemistry in my later garage videos i filmed from the side that was closer to the bench and i attached a backdrop to the garage door track thing in the beginning though when i made the bromine video i wasn't nearly as advanced and i filmed everything from the other side i'm not exactly sure why i did it like that because there was definitely less space on that side and i think it was just because i liked the workbench background but either way i decided that i had to do it just like i did in the original video and i started putting things together awesome what was sad though was that after not even five minutes i was already starting to get a bit frustrated in my normal videos i kind of obsess about having everything clean and proper and that just wasn't happening here the background's gonna be this garage everything's gonna be crooked i'm gonna be doing stuff out of mop buckets i don't know why i'm trying so hard to make it look nice oh well no no no the point of this is to just to relive what it was and i should just i should i should enjoy it here we go amazing with both my stands in place i attached a large flask to one of them what i had to do next involved concentrated sulfuric acid so it was time to put on my lab coat and goggles up until now i think most of what i had felt was just annoyance but after getting geared up i started getting hit with that sense of danger it feels very now it feels very inappropriate to be in a lab coat and goggles in this garage it doesn't feel illegal or too sketchy actually just it just feels dangerous i don't even have a running tap around here so if i spill any of this acid on me what do i do i i mean i can run to the tap down there but it's just over 24 obstacles what i had to do now was put together the rest of the setup and i had to seal every joint with the sulfuric acid this would prevent any bromine that i made from leaking out and i couldn't use regular grease because the bromine would just instantly react with it after i'd covered most of it i wiped off the lower part with a paper towel and i dropped it into the flask i then added a three-way adapter and an addition funnel along with a thermometer and a condenser to the other end of the condenser i attached a smaller flask and this was where i'd be collecting all the bromine now with all this glassware in place the main part of the setup was done so far it's not as bad as i thought it would be just safety wise it's awful still but we also haven't started anything so uh i guess we'll see there still might be a disaster now the next thing that i had to do was weigh out some of the pool tablets to do that though i needed a scale and i had totally forgotten one but thankfully that wasn't a problem because earlier when i was just looking around the garage i happened to find one we have a high quality scale right here uh it's broken it's just permanent oh maybe it's not broken it works i don't know if i'll trust it uh i mean it's all we have but anyway with this hopefully accurate scale i had to weigh out about 75 grams of the tablets which were made of something called tcca it turned out that each pellet was almost exactly 15 grams and i ended up only needing five of them this was very convenient when it came to weighing them out but in this large puck form it would be impossible to get them in the flask so i was gonna have to turn them into a powder when it looked good enough i found some scissors that i last used when i was like six and i cut off part of the bag i then went back to the large flask swapped out one of the stoppers for a funnel and dropped in a stir bar on top of this i then dumped in all the powdered tcca after that i added 30 mls of water to a beaker along with another 30 ml of the muriatic acid this was all added to the addition funnel and i sealed it with another glass stopper and some sulfuric acid the next thing to do was to add a hot plate and unlike the original video i also included a container this container was very important in terms of safety just in case the flask broke or started leaking or something it still wasn't the most ideal setup but at least now if some sort of catastrophe happened it would at least be somewhat contained now under the other flask i added a bowl and i filled it with ice this would help keep the bromine cool and it would reduce how much angry vapor it let off there would still be some vapor that managed to escape out this part here though and i had to put together an inverted funnel trap to do this i basically just connected a tube to a funnel and hovered that in a beaker i then got another beaker and i had to add something called sodium thiosulfate but i forgot that i can live without it whatever you forgot the offer this operation was an operation this thiosulfate is really good at neutralizing bromine and i just had to dissolve a bunch of it in some water it took a while because they were all big crystals but they did eventually all disappear after that i poured it into the inverted funnel trap and i brought it up until it was just above the funnel with this setup there shouldn't be any bromine vapors that are able to get out and i'll talk more about how it all works later now as another quick point of safety i also mixed up a bunch of extra sodium thiosulfate solution it was very important to do this just in case i had any accidental spills or splashes if any bromine ended up somewhere it shouldn't have been i had to be able to destroy it as quickly as possible now at this point i thought that i was good to go but then i realized i completely forgot about the water for the condenser to make this happen i first had to fill a mop bucket with some hose water i then dropped in a small water recirculator which is usually meant for a pond or a fountain after that i brought it back into the garage connected the tubing to the condenser and i plugged it in i was expecting water to immediately start rushing through the condenser but nothing happened and it was apparently broken i wasn't too surprised by this though because it was the same pump that i'd used in the original video which meant that it was super old i kind of thought that this might happen so just in case i'd bought a new one and i quickly swapped it out this time when i plugged it in it worked but the water was moving way too quickly and i was a bit worried that the tubing might pop itself off i feel like there's way too much pressure in that for no reason hopefully one of the tubes just fly after all this the setup was finally ready and everything was more or less good to go so this is the moment to make the bromine i feel a bit anxious i'll admit when i felt that i was ready i started pouring in 400 mils of that sodium bromide pool solution the moment that it touched the tcca it started turning yellow and i think this was because bromine was forming i'm not exactly sure what the reaction is but i think somehow the chlorine in the tcca was swapping with the bromine in the sodium bromide if this were happening it could be turning it into sodium chloride and releasing bromine i then turned on the stirring and i let it sit there for a few minutes when i felt that it all looked okay i opened the funnel with the acid in it and i let it slowly drip in this caused it to start getting even darker and this was because a lot more bromine was being made unlike the other reaction this one was very well known and the acid was reacting with the tcca and releasing chlorine gas this chlorine gas was then reacting with the sodium bromide to make sodium chloride and bromine after all the acid was added i let it stir for a few minutes and i took away the funnel i also filled the bucket with a bunch of ice and i cranked up the hot plate now i basically just had to wait i should mention though that this method of heating the flask with an open hot plate wasn't exactly ideal i mean it's okay and it does work but it's much better to use something else like a heating mantle i just did it this way because again it was how i did it before when i didn't have any equipment as it warmed up it didn't get that much darker but it was slowly climbing out of the flask i also started seeing it at the beginning of the condenser and i eventually started collecting some blood red liquid this was all bromine and from this point on it was usually pretty steady state it was mostly just a matter of waiting for all the bromine to make it over this would take at least a few hours though and i decided to use some of the time to ask my parents a few questions that i'd somehow never asked good lord what's happening it's it's excellent i uh applaud the effort my name is science this is the science everyone what did you think was going to be the outcome of donating the desk um i haven't i didn't have an outcome um do you thought it was just indefinitely going to be just a hobby i i didn't i couldn't tell you know i mean you were a chemistry student i figured you know if you were a musician be playing music or or a football player you'd be exercising so i figured it was just part of the the ritual of uh of being that i knew that possibly being interrogated as having a math lab might be on because when the door is open and the neighbors are looking in what else can they conclude okay that's excellent thank you what what did you think when i first started doing this in the garage it was interesting that's it were you ever scared were you ever like thinking that it was dangerous maybe did you ever did you ever have fears that there would be a disaster no i had fears that we might be all getting poisoned [Laughter] slowly slowly uh but yeah so you were never afraid when you saw something like that no why because i thought you had it under control no it was it was it was all under control but what happens if i just had too much confidence in myself then we'd all die but anyway now back to the bromine as i kept distilling it the flask slowly cleared up and it gradually looked less and less scary i then looked over at the other flask and i had a decent amount of bromine there was also a bunch of water in there though that had come over as well but it was just really hard to see also up until now i hadn't smelled any bromine and when i looked at the trap i could tell that it was working hard it was now completely white because of sulfur which was being released as the bromine reacted with the thiosulfate eventually after a total of about seven hours it was looking pretty good and even the condenser was becoming colorless at this point there was probably still some bromine left but it just wasn't worth waiting for it so i decided to end it here and i turned off the hot plate i then left it there for a couple hours to cool down to room temperature when i came back to it the flask was colored again which meant that there was definitely still some bromine in there but either way now that it was back to room temperature it was safe to take apart and i started by pulling out the thermometer i then shot in some water to wash out any residual bromine that might have been in the adapter or the condenser with this all clean i was able to pop it apart and then i moved on to the other side i started by removing the trap and then i got rid of everything else now taking a closer look at what i had it was actually about half water it was a little bit hard to see but almost all of this water was floating as a layer above the bromine this was happening because bromine and water don't mix very well and bromine is also over three times denser up until now the bromine had been clamped to the stand and had been either partially sealed by the distillation setup or completely sealed by a stopper so while making it was still definitely dangerous it wasn't terrible the real dangerous and scary part was what i had to do next to get rid of the water i was gonna have to pour it and bromine just loves vaporizing which meant that i was gonna be making a lot of fumes also handling it in general meant that there was a risk of dropping it which would be a catastrophic disaster that'd actually be a huge disaster as a basic safety precaution i was going to be doing everything over a plastic container so that any disaster could at least be somewhat contained just in case i also mixed up even more sodium thiosulfate solution which i figured i could throw on the bromine before running out of the room when i felt that i was ready i got out my respirator because i no longer had the luxury of a fume hood i also opened the garage and i turned on the fan that i used to use which i was honestly surprised was still there with the mask on and the fan going i was pretty much good to go the only thing that i was still missing was a face shield but i didn't bring one that wasn't a huge problem though and i just have to be even more careful and not let any of it splash [Music] when i transferred everything to a separatory funnel i wash things down with some distilled water the lower almost black bromine layer was then drained directly into a smaller separatory funnel now what i had to do next was the worst part even though there wasn't any visible water left there was still a small amount dissolved in the bromine that i had to get rid of to do this i had to add some concentrated sulfuric acid which wouldn't mix with the bromine but it loves to pull and hold on to water the danger here is that if there were a lot of water left it could cause the sulfuric acid to heat up enough that it could boil the bromine so i added it very carefully and it turned out to be okay however the boiling risk wasn't quite over yet because like with the water it doesn't mix very well with the bromine it was just floating on top of it and i was gonna have to shake it and in case it wasn't already obvious shaking a mixture of sulfuric acid and bromine isn't exactly the safest thing to do also it was possible that there was still a decent amount of water left which could cause things to heat up build some pressure pop out the stopper and spill bromine everywhere that exact accident actually happened to me once but it was thankfully with something that wasn't dangerous to prevent this i had to make sure that i vented it often and quickly by opening the valve another added danger was something that didn't really have anything to do with chemistry it's something that you can't really tell from the videos but to make it look nice i often have to awkwardly reach over and around the camera in my entire time filming chemistry i've never really had a major accident because of this but it definitely increases the risk thankfully though this wasn't the day for a disaster and it all went okay now as we saw before bromine is very angry and it likes to build up pressure it's not so much that it would crack the container that it's in but it's bad because it really likes to push itself out of everything when it escapes it then reacts with everything around it and it turns it all rusty and crusty the only way to really tame it is to completely seal it in a glass ampoule to do this i had to make one using a big test tube and a blow torch i heated it until it got nice and gooey and then i pulled it to thin it out after waiting about 10 minutes for it to cool down i started draining the bromine into it [Applause] this ventilator makes some of the noise so it's held my breath with it now safely in the ampule i blasted it again with the blow torch and as i pulled away the top part the glass sealed itself when i looked at it closer it seemed like it was completely sealed but i had to wait for it to cool down to room temperature before actually testing it one of the biggest mistakes someone can make is making the ampule and then testing it right away you have to wait till it's like completely cooled otherwise flip it over boil when i came back about 10 minutes later i did the old flip it upside down and see if it leaks everywhere test it was thankfully totally fine though i then made a special padded chamber for it using a water bottle and some random foam that i found then as an extra layer of protection i then put this into another container now at this point the bromine was safe and secure but i wasn't quite done yet i still had a bunch of dirty glassware and waste all over the table in general i often don't show how i cleaned everything up but it's a major part of chemistry and it has to be taken seriously when i was working out of the garage this was always the worst part and it brought back some bad memories i just really wasn't set up to deal with waste and cleaning my glassware in general was a huge pain thankfully though this stuff was pretty easy to deal with for the most part i just had to neutralize things with baking soda and then blast it with sodium thiosulfate this destroyed all the bromine and it made the waste much more inert however the problem was that it was still waste and even though it wasn't deadly anymore i still couldn't just pour it down the drain i'll instead be taking it all with me and storing it temporarily and eventually giving it to a chemical waste company but anyway with that all dealt with i cleaned up the garage and i put it back to how it was i then thanked my parents and i very cautiously brought the bromine back to the lab thankfully i was able to make it back without dying and i guess that meant that i survived making bromine in my parents garage when i first came up with the idea for this video i assumed that i'd know exactly how i felt about the whole experience the moment it was done however it took at least a few weeks to actually get my thoughts in order i honestly still don't know exactly how i feel about it but one thing that i do know for certain is that what i have now is better in almost every way especially in terms of space and safety i've also realized that the excitement that i thought i felt back then had very little to do with danger and i think that danger might have actually taken away from the enjoyment when i think about it i actually still feel that excitement with all my projects and in fact i think i'm a lot more excited about the stuff that i'm doing now i think i was just suffering from the classic problem with nostalgia where i was only selectively remembering the good parts after experiencing how things were i think it's pretty clear to me that i never want to go back i'm now even more thankful for all the support i've received over the years and i'm really excited about what i have planned for 2021 and the first big project that i'm going to be doing is moving again but now with all that being said i want to give a big thanks to all my patrons for supporting me and to display for sponsoring this video display's a company that sells posters but what makes them different is that all their posters are made of metal this makes them a lot more durable and they're also a lot easier to set up i'm kind of lazy and i just lean them on stuff but they do have a simple magnet mounting system that lets you easily put them on any wall a couple years ago i had them print a few of my own photos including the one that i just mounted some of these can actually be seen in the intro of some of my older videos and i've always been really impressed with the quality they also recently sent me these much larger ones and i'm really happy with them these are just a few examples though and they have about 800 000 other designs in almost all possible areas they also offer really fast delivery and they plant a tree in africa for everyone that's sold but anyway if you're someone who's into high quality posters and art i definitely recommend checking out display if you decide to pick some up you should also be sure to use my special link in the description it'll give you up to 35 off depending on how many you get it also applies automatically at checkout and you don't need to put in a code or anything both all that being said uh i hope you liked the video and that's it as usual a big thanks goes out to all my supporters on patreon everyone who supports me can see all my new videos at least 24 hours before i post them to youtube you'll also get access to all the older videos that i had to take down and if you support me with five dollars or more you'll get your name at the end like you see here foreign [Music] so you

Channel: NileRed

Views: 1,807,583

Rating: 4.9570022 out of 5

Keywords: nile, red, nilered, science, chemistry, bromine, garage, pool, sodium, bromide, tcca, supplies, chemical, making

Id: SIfIZqXaR0g

Length: 34min 10sec (2050 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 31 2021