Carbonate contamination removal from sodium hydroxide

Casualties/personnel Remove contaminated clothing immediately. Remove as much of the agent from the skin as fast as possible without spreading the material. Wash the entire potentially exposed area with a bleach solution avoiding contact with sensitive areas such as the eyes. The bleach solution should be no less than one part household bleach in nine parts water. Rinse with copious amounts of water. Small Areas Consolidate as much material as possible and place into containers. In heavily contaminated areas, employ vacuum devices equipped with High Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) filters to remove as much agent as possible. Decontaminate the area with copious amounts of aqueous sodium hydroxide solution (a minimum of 10 percent by weight). If sodium hydroxide solution is not available, then sodium carbonate may be used. 

Carbon tetrachloride is prepared by chlorinating methane or carbon disulfide. In the latter case the solvent always contains traces of disulfur dichloride or carbon disulfide as impurity it cannot be freed from these contaminants by distillation, but they are removed by vigorous shaking with dilute sodium hydroxide solution.4 Further purification, if necessary, can be effected as for methylene dichloride. All higher chloroalkanes can be purified by essentially the above methods. 

A process has been described by McKee in which beryl is treated with about three times its weight of a 75 per cent aqueous solution of sodium hydroxide at a temperature of about 185 C. The beryl is first crushed and ground to pass a 300-mesh sieve and is then stirred slowly into the alkali for 20 to 24 hr at temperature. After cooling, the reaction paste is poured into an excess of water at normal temperature. The suspended beryllium oxide is settled and after removal of the supernatant liquor it is extracted with a 10 per cent solution of cold sodium bicarbonate, for about 16 hr. This dissolves principally the beryllium which, after filtration away from other oxides, can be reprecipitated by boiling. In this way a fairly pure hydroxide, contaminated with a little sodium carbonate, can be obtained. Ignition and leaching with water then gives a beryllium oxide of 99 per cent purity. 

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