Questions about doing manske using a funny smelling salt

[Jan e Kharabat]

So I'm doing a harmala extraction and at the place where I am right now, I had only two options for an iodine free salt, the super expensive NaCl from a chemical supplies store, and a super cheap salt mined from the mountains (literally 20-30 cents a kilo). Considering that it is widely used for normal consumption, I thought it would be more or less suitable for a manske.

When I dissolved it in water, some dirt and rock separated and settled at the bottom, that was not much of a problem as I could simply filter and get rid of it. After filtering I still noticed a slight yellow color, but I thought it's probably trace amounts of other salts. Then I started to boil the solution and I noticed a gunpowder smell... There's probably saltpeter in there... but it's still mostly NaCl. So, is it ok to use? Assuming there are sulphates and nitrates in the mixture, would it end up forming harmala sulphates and nitrates? Or would it still mostly form HCl?

 

[Transform]

So I'm doing a harmala extraction and at the place where I am right now, I had only two options for an iodine free salt, the super expensive NaCl from a chemical supplies store, and a super cheap salt mined from the mountains (literally 20-30 cents a kilo). Considering that it is widely used for normal consumption, I thought it would be more or less suitable for a manske.

When I dissolved it in water, some dirt and rock separated and settled at the bottom, that was not much of a problem as I could simply filter and get rid of it. After filtering I still noticed a slight yellow color, but I thought it's probably trace amounts of other salts. Then I started to boil the solution and I noticed a gunpowder smell... There's probably saltpeter in there... but it's still mostly NaCl. So, is it ok to use? Assuming there are sulphates and nitrates in the mixture, would it end up forming harmala sulphates and nitrates? Or would it still mostly form HCl?

A gunpowder smell will be from sulfides, and possibly native sulfur, but very likely not from nitrates. Nitrates will be odourless unless acidified. Speaking of which, it would probably be wise to test the pH of your solution as well. It's likely that the - would it be correct to say? - sulfurous smell will cause the pH to rise as it evaporates. The yellow colour is most likely iron residue and polysulphides. Thinking about it, it's starting to seem like a lot of work and/or energy investment, possibly along with additional materials, to purify that salt. Maybe you should try a precipitation with a small sample to see how it performs.

If that fails, and you can get cheap enough HCl, and cheap but pure sodium carbonate or bicarbonate you might be better off making your own NaCl by boiling the hydrochloric acid and passing the vapours through the sodium (bi)carbonate (unless you were confident enough in the quality of the HCl to use as-is, but cleaning-grade HCl usually contains enough metallic contaminants to give it a greenish colour IME).

Footnote: There could be a trace of nitrates which may possibly make the odour more gunpowdery through reduction to nitrite by the sulfides and subsequent release of nitrogen oxides due to reaction with acidic sulfur dioxide, except sulfur-nitrogen chemistry gets pretty complicated.

 

[Jan e Kharabat]

Well I went ahead and tried it out, the manske worked fine so I think it's good so far. I was wondering though, if sulphur salts can form harmala sulphate like NaCl forms harmala HCl.

 

[Transform]

Well I went ahead and tried it out, the manske worked fine so I think it's good so far. I was wondering though, if sulphur salts can form harmala sulphate like NaCl forms harmala HCl.

I can only assume that sulfates won't be present in high enough a concentration for this to be significant - unless you were planning to try an analogue to the Manske precip with a sulfate salt? I haven't looked at the data but I get the gut feeling that the bivalent sulfate anion may well introduce complexities such as hydration.

Edit: maybe the attached document will prove useful?