Sodium hydroxide

[Miami Reef]

What material are the jugs? Polyethylene and polypropylene are unharmed chemically by hydroxide at any strength, but they can melt.

Weird question, can a person use refrigerated RO/DI in HDPE prior to dissolving the sodium hydroxide in it?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Weird question, can a person use refrigerated RO/DI in HDPE prior to dissolving the sodium hydroxide in it?

Sure. Could even put ice in it. :)

 

[vahegan]

I use a relatively thick walled polyethylene container to mix sodium hydroxide. At 150 g/l, it gets pretty hot, but not to the point of melting. I put it in the bath tub and leave it there for an hour until it cools enough to handle safely (i.e. to pour it into the dosing container). If I want to cool it quickly, I fill the sink with cold water and put the container there.

 

[Miami Reef]

I use a relatively thick walled polyethylene container to mix sodium hydroxide. At 150 g/l, it gets pretty hot, but not to the point of melting. I put it in the bath tub and leave it there for an hour until it cools enough to handle safely (i.e. to pour it into the dosing container). If I want to cool it quickly, I fill the sink with cold water and put the container there.

That’s pretty smart, too! I could fill a tub of ice water and use that to cool it down quicker. Also using cold RO/DI water.

Lately I’ve been making sodium hydroxide in batches in beakers and decanting them into the HDPE container with a funnel. It’s a pain and risks spillage.

I’m much rather mix it directly in the HDPE container. This is genius.

 

[geko522]

Is a dosing pump that comes with the tubing ok to use sodium hydroxide. I have a reef factory dosing pump and was going to use sodium hydroxide to dose it or would a calcium dosing pump be better, I can use rodi tubing with it instead.

The dosing pump I have uses really small tubing, I think it maybe 2mm or 3mm if it was made of silicone, would it be okay?

 

[vahegan]

I use silicone tubing between the dosing pump and the container and the tank. Seen no issues in dosing sodium hydroxide for quite a few months. Switched to dosing calc slurry with the same a month ago