Laundry room bleach

Small Quantities. Wear butyl rubber gloves, laboratory coat, and eye protection. Work in the fume hood. Prepare a dilute (5%) aqueous solution of methylhydrazine by adding slowly to the appropriate volume of water. For each 1 g of methylhydrazine, place 41 mL (about 25% excess) of household laundry bleach (5.25% sodium hypochlorite) into a three-necked, round-bottom flask equipped with a stirrer, thermometer, and dropping funnel. Add the aqueous methylhydrazine dropwise to the stirred hypochlorite solution, monitoring the rate of addition by rise in temperature. The temperature is maintained at 45-50 ,C and addition takes about 1 hour. Continue stirring for 2 hours until the temperature gradually falls to room temperature. The cooled reaction mixture can be washed into the drain.7... 

Iodobenzene (1.01 g, 4.9 mmol) was dissolved in dichloromethane (75 ml) and stirred vigorously with hypochlorite solution (200 ml of commercial laundry bleach adjusted to pH 8.2 and containing 200 mg of tetrabutylammonium hydrogen sulphate) at room temperature for 45 min. The reaction mixture was allowed to stand for 1 h then the precipitate was filtered to give crude iodylbenzene (0.69-0.94 g, 59-81%). Purification may be effected by crystallization from water or acetic acid. 

The decomposition of hypochlorite ion in bleach is thus a spontaneous process, with a very large equilibrium constant at 25°C. But, this reaction is very slow at room temperature, so the laundry bleach solution remains stable. If the temperature is raised to about 75°C, the reaction occurs rapidly and the bleach solution decomposes. 

Formaldehyde is oxidized conveniently to formic acid and carbon dioxide by sodium hypochlorite. Thus 10 mL of formalin (37% formaldehyde) in 100 mL of water is stirred into 250 mL of hypochlorite laundry bleach (5.25% NaOCl) at room temperature and allowed to stand for 20 minutes before being flushed down the drain. This procedure is not recommended for other aliphatic aldehydes because it leads to chloro acids, which are more toxic and less biodegradable than corresponding unchlorinated acids. 

---