hey guys so we're finally getting around
to making the calcium acetate that I've
been promising for a while now
the calcium acetate that we make here is
going to be used to make acetone and
it's also going to be used to make
flammable jelly to make the calcium
acetate it's actually really simple and
all we need to do is mix some form of
calcium carbonate with vinegar there are
a lot of different sources of calcium
carbonate but in this video I'm going to
be using eggshells so as you can see
here I have my eggshells on the left and
my vinegar on the right
the vinegar that I'm using is actually
cleaning vinegar which means it's a 10%
solution of acetic acid which is twice
as strong as normal vinegar because the
procedure requires that we boil away all
the water that we add if you use 5%
vinegar it will also work you're just
going to have to boil away twice as much
water I used in total about 76 grams of
eggshells and about 800 milliliters of
the cleaning vinegar I use slightly more
eggshells than I needed so there was an
excess of calcium carbonate which means
that all of the acetic acid should be
consumed so when we do the boiling down
step we don't boil acetic acid into the
air to a 1 liter beaker was added about
800 milliliters of the 10% vinegar to
the vinegar we start to add the 76 grams
of egg shells that were crushed up a
little bit I was a little bit afraid of
too much foaming occurring so I only
added about half of the egg shells at
first I then use a glass stir rod to try
to mix things around because right now
it's just all sitting at the top as I do
this a lot of co2 bubbles are formed and
you can see that it leads to a little
bit of foaming once it seems like things
won't get too out of control I add the
rest of the eggshells I try to control
some of the foaming and bubbling using
the glass stir rod but you can see that
it actually almost overflowed I was
lucky that it didn't but I would highly
suggest using a larger container if you
plan to do it on the same scale as I did
after several minutes though the foaming
should decrease and at this point it's
pretty much just a waiting game
every so often I mixed it around so the
eggshells would sink to the bottom but
they would very quickly produce co2
which carries them back up to the
surface I thought this was pretty
annoying
but it's something that you can't really
avoid if you're using eggshells so we
just need to keep doing that
stirring letting it sink to the bottom
and have it go back to the top the
reaction that's occurring is pretty
simple and it's effectively just an
acid-base reaction between our base
calcium carbonate and our acid acetic
acid to produce calcium acetate water
and carbon dioxide gas the calcium
carbonate is very insoluble in water so
the extra calcium carbonate will be
filtered off but the calcium acetate is
soluble and will remain in solution I
let it react over a day or so until it
seemed like there wasn't much co2 being
produced anymore because we use an
excess of eggshells and the yolk sac of
the eggs are not made of calcium
carbonate there is going to be a bunch
of stuff left over to get rid of all of
the extra junk I filtered the solution
through four filter papers the solution
that makes it through is going to be
much more clear but it's still going to
be a little bit cloudy just be patient
and let everything filter through and in
the end you should be left with a
relatively clear solution which might be
a little bit off colored like you see
here once everything is filtered through
I remove the funnel I added a stir bar
and I turned on the hot plate this is
the boiling step that I mentioned
earlier and what we're doing here is
we're heating up our solution to boil
away all of the water so that we're left
with just our calcium acetate what's
interesting is the solubility of calcium
acetate actually decreases as we raise
the temperature so eventually when it
gets hot enough some of the calcium
acetate actually precipitates out of
solution you'll know when this point is
reached because the solution will become
cloudy like you see here as we keep
boiling down the solution the color
might become more and more yellow we get
around to this point we have to be
careful because the solution might
spontaneously freeze once the amount of
water decreases to a certain point that
it can't contain the calcium acetate
everything's going to crash out and you
really need to take it off the hot plate
when this happens I didn't take it off
right away and if you look at the bottom
it started to turn brown a little bit
because the impurities in the calcium
acetate started to burn on the hot plate
anyway what we have to do now is we
scoop out the calcium
state from the beaker and we do our best
not to include any of the brown stuff on
the bottom this was actually quite easy
to do and just after a few minutes I was
left with a nice large pile of calcium
acetate paste I laid it out to dry and
then I crushed it up into the fine
powder that you see here one important
thing to know is that although the
product here looks very white and clean
it's not actually super pure a bunch of
the yellow impurity whatever that is
from the eggs is actually still present
so when you add this calcium acetate to
water the water might take on a slight
yellow color for our purposes it really
really doesn't matter because we're just
trying to make some alcohol jelly and
we're just trying to make some acetone
from it and purity in these cases are
really not a big issue just as a side
note for this method
tums don't work as a calcium carbonate
source if you try to do the same thing
it will turn to a brown mess when you
try to boil it this is mostly due to the
presence of sucrose in the tums that's
breaking down in the future I might make
a video of using tums as a calcium
carbonate source for calcium acetate but
I'm not sure what I'll do that I want to
thank you guys a lot because just as of
recently I've gotten a lot more
supporters the unfortunate part is now I
have a lot of $5 supporters but it's
going to be really hard to read out
everybody's name individually so I'm sad
to say that in this video I'm not going
to be reading out names and I don't
think I'm going to be doing that in the
future I will of course still include
your name in the credits I just think
it's getting to the point where it's
kind of ridiculous to read out each one
you