DISCLAIMER:
Sodium metal is very reactive, when in contact with water, it will explode. Don’t worry, the explosion is mostly harmless and won’t do much damage beyond harming your ears. Still, don’t do this at home. Not that you really can. Unless you have some chemistry equipment, but I doubt that.
What is Sodium?
First thing you think of when you hear sodium. I bet you it was salt, right? NaCl. Sodium Chloride. Salt is everywhere. On top our food, around our food, in our food, in our oceans. How could it be dangerous? You may also know we need a certain amount of sodium each day to function properly. 1.5-2.3 grams of it, in fact. How could this metal that we use every day be explosive? Well, in chemistry, chemical properties change very easily. When bonded with Chlorine, sodium becomes stable, making it easy to handle and taste like the salt we love. But people love exploding stuff, right? So naturally we want to take that sodium and make it unstable. But schools don’t have to worry, as this process is pretty difficult.
Sorry to Dissapoint
I want to be blunt with this. There is no way you can do this method. You are not getting sodium metal from salt. The process can only be done with equipment in the thousands of dollars in price. I also want to discourage you from trying, as the process itself is pretty dangerous. If you really just are desperate for sodium metal, go buy some. (Sike, there is a method but that’s in a separate article soon)
The Process
Ignoring what I said up top, how do you do it? Extract that juicy sodium metal from salt? Well, it is pretty complicated. If you are in 8th grade science, you should have learned about chemical bonds. You should also know that a stable bond is pretty difficult to separate. The number of joules required is pretty ridiculous. In order to solve this, we need some serious power. What is a powerful source of energy? Electricity. The process is called electrolysis. It is a technique that uses direct electrical current to separate elements from compounds and molecules. In order to generate sufficient current, the machine needs to be quite large. Now, if you search it up you will likely find hair removal machines. That is a commercial use for such machines. Electrolysis is also used in many factories to separate chemicals as well. Here is an image of a professional grade electrolysis machine.
As you can see, the machine is very large. It requires a lot of skill to install, making it very expensive and requires a lot of space. A single machine is guaranteed to be hundreds of dollars, and a machine of this size can be in the thousands. At this point, you should understand this is not possible to do at home. But that is only with salt. One of my next articles will be about doing this with more household chemicals. Anyways, the process is pretty simple. All you got to do is heat up some salt to over 800 degrees until it becomes a molten liquid and pump a couple thousand amps worth of electricity through it. It is to be noted that amps beyond about 200 means nothing to your health, because it is guaranteed death anyways. All it changes is how charred your body will be.
Extracting Sodium Metal, the Easy Way
So, we have established you can’t do the electrolysis method. And I have also mentioned above that there really isn’t any other good method. But what can you do? What you can do is not extract it from salt. It is simply too difficult. So how can you do it? Well, that is going to be in my next article as this one has gone on for too long, and I don’t have any subway surfers playing on the side. Bye, and use explosives responsibly. (I am looking at you Taarank)