Can you make Sodium Chlorate from lead, then adding salt to water and H2SO4 then electrosis, and can you make explosive with this for replacing Potasium Chlorate?

Nice

Hi i need a better explanation please 🙏 😊

​@Lázár🏳️‍🌈⃠ ... Nile red likes to put on a show 😂 he is in if for the money, he only uploads when he wants to and his chemistry is expensive and inaccessible for most people. For learning and chemistry on a budget this is the best chanel online! No adverts and self promotion ❤

@@Jawstdon’t think it is for the money because he started at his parents garage and the got his dream fume hoodes setup and he pays rent for it, and from time to time he goes back to his parents garage for fun I DONT THINK IT IS A GOOD IDEA TO COMPARE THE CHANNELS BECAUSE NILE RED CAN DO A LOT OF SOLUTIONS AND ELEMENTS HE CANNOT DO but it is still a really good channel but not as good as nile red Edit: srry dictation mistake

​​@@Jawstyoure wrong, just wrong. If he was in for the money he would pump out more videos

Both are awesome Scrap Science is amateur accesible while nile red is fun to watch for the chemistry behind it, even tho it might not be accesible for the amateur I personally find myself rewatching scrapscience, nurdrage, thy's videos many times! they are great and that chemist has confirmed they actually are in some sort of network lmao

He is doing only stupid shit and faking the results. Don’t motivate this retardaned person…

How ı do chlorate? You have Instagram? I have a question please

but at the end of the cell's run the chloride levels are really low so it doesn't participate out much

Pool salt is the most straightforward. And cheap as hell.

I'm slowly building up to it, haha. I keep putting it off because I feel like I need to learn more about perchlorate cells before I actually build one. Additionally, given the size of my channel now, I think it's possible that any video I make on perchlorate cells might become one of the most widespread of its kind on KZfaq (that's not saying much - there are just so few videos about perchlorate cells here...), so I think it really needs to be a very well-researched production. It'll come eventually!

Evaporated seawater contains about 50% of NaCl, so it would be very impure

​@@foxpaw474official5I use salt from sea water and it still works fine

i don't mean to be an ass but man the way you write the formulas pains me deeply.

Sodium chlorate is more explosive ..tho

@@impatientpatient8270 considering I see people on yt write it as "KC103" all the time it could be worse

@@dc-gs3ld what a cursed piece of text

Which is better in combination with diesel if you know what I mean…

A good way to blow yourself to smitherines! Do not have any flame anywhere near the exhaust tube or cell! 💥🙈

What kind of furnace and how much electricity it takes

I've always wondered about these deposited PbO2 anodes. Doesn't something simpler work? Like anodizing some lead in sulfuric acid or copper sulfate or whatever. Make them nice and black with oxide. Or is that too thin?

Interesting... maybe I'll need to make some more at some point then. And yes! I'm a fan of your work on PbO2 anodes. It's a little beyond what I can manage myself, but it's very impressive to watch nonetheless.

​@@6alecapristrudel that will not work because you need either a nonporous or thick mesoporous PbO2 deposite which can only be done with careful electrodeposition. It also needs careful control of the plating current density and bath temperature to make a good enough anode for long term use.

@@CatboyChemicalSociety Ok fair enough. I was just wondering since it seemed so easy lol. I managed to make a PbO2 rod as thick as my pinky finger once by accident. I was making some acid from CuSO4 with this thick rod of solder as anode. It was holding up nicely, but after I plated out the copper I saw that I was leaching tin out of the anode. So I kept going. I got over 20g of tin out of the solder without it changing shape at all. I assume what was left in the rod is some sort of porous PbO2. It was noticeably lighter and cracked instead of bending. Not sure what alloy it was since 60/40 doesn't really leach tin IME. Higher tin content probably.

@@6alecapristrudel indeed its fine in an environment containing SO4 ions because the Pb2+ species is not very mobile in this liquid due to insolubility of PbSO4 and thus the anode will not corrode and instead oxidize to PbO2. but in electrolytes containing chloride/chlorate the ions will be more mobile which will cause them to migrate to the cathode and plate out lead metal. This also causes the anode structure to corrode if the liquid reaches the lead layer but while this process can be halted at pH of 9 it still will occur enough to create these stalactites of PbO2 due to this effect which still corrodes the substrate.

It only takes a couple of minutes for the hydroxide concentration to build up to the point where chlorine is retained, so I wouldn't worry about it honestly. Also, doing this makes it somewhat difficult to prevent overshooting the pH. Even just adding an extra half of a gram of NaOH to a cell of this size would push the pH way above the ideal value of 9-10, and possibly damage the anode with the strongly basic conditions. You can definitely do it if you want to minimise the chlorine generated at the start of the cell run, but be careful of overshooting the amount of hydroxide.

Yep, you got it. Just a bit of heat shrink around the rods prevents a short.

Yep! That'll do the trick. It's generally pretty difficult to filter out all of the graphite particles though, and your product might still have a slight colour after you crystallise it. This isn't a problem for most purposes though.

At that point in the video, I'm just filtering everything, and then placing the filtered solution back into the original beaker to be further boiled down. You've got the correct idea here.

I'm going to cast some extreme doubts on that, but alright...

Why would sodium percarbonate help with efficiency? I can't find any information on this.

@@ScrapScience realmente es una suposición, olvide colocar "podría ayudar". La razón de que suponga esto es que el percarbonato de sodio (según mi opinión) es algo parecido al persulfato de sodio qué han mencionado en los comentarios, entonces, supuse que al ser parecidos y el percarbonato además es alcalino podría mejorar esto. Pero, ahora pensándolo bien, creo que el peróxido de hidrógeno liberado por el percarbonato se descompone en estas condiciones

@@jorgetrigueros9070 I tried it but not really effective, carbon is not wellcome I suppose....and alcalin solution not a lot. For good electrolyse PH must be around 6.5, so chloridric acid needed. Try it and tell us please.

Depends how much you want to make. For large amounts it's neither particularly feasible or safe to use thermal decomposition. The anode for perchlorate should be lead dioxide or coated in platinum and it won't get eaten.

@@chemistryofquestionablequa6252 Platinized titanium corrodes very well if there is a little amount of chlorate, only PbO2 can oxidize chlorate until crisp. I read a lot of the literature since the comment above, this topic is extremely interesting

Yeah, I didn't re-dry the potassium salt before the test, that might be it. However, the potassium salt isn't actually hygroscopic, it's just the sodium salt in that regard, so it shouldn't have mattered anyway... Maybe I just didn't dry it well enough to begin with.

@@ScrapScience IDK I'm not much of a chemist, honestly just hoping I say something insightful.

Mixed metal oxide and carbon electrodes will only convert chloride to chlorate, and will not make any appreciable amount of perchlorate, so this isn't an issue for this type of cell. When using platinum or lead dioxide (which are able to make perchlorate), it still isn't too big of an issue. The presence of the initial chloride in the cell diminishes the efficiency of making perchlorate to a large extent, so you generally don't generate any unless you allow the cell to continue running for a very long time. If you were to run the cell for that long (which will ruin the electrodes to a large extent), the conversion to perchlorate is also accompanied by a sharp increase in voltage, so it's easy to spot when it starts.

If you want to know about the basics of the process, you should watch my video on the potassium chlorate cell. It's linked in the description, and goes over most parts of the general process. This particular video is more of a sequel to that one, where the process is modified for the sodium salt. As for the voltage and current, the general rule is that you should use whatever voltage will give you 20 mA per square centimetre of exposed anode area (for graphite electrodes specifically). If this requires more than 5 volts, you should ignore this rule and keep the supply at a 5 volt potential. A current and voltage controlled power supply is best here, since you can then set the maximum voltage to 5 V, and the maximum current to 20 mA per square centimetre of exposed anode area. For the amount of water you need, this will depend on how you want to run the cell, and how big you want the cell to be. Do you want a batch process where you will be slowly working through your 500 g of starting material? Or do you want to do everything in one go? The simplest way to go about this is to just use enough water to dissolve everything, and electrolyse from there. For the runtime, this is a subject too complex to explain in a KZfaq comment. It will rely on the quantity of starting material, the current, and the efficiency of your cell, among other things. You'll have to do some research and some stoichiometric calculations here. I haven't yet found a good resource for doing these calculations, but this is a relatively good start: www.chlorates.exrockets.com/runtime.html

If you went with those carbon rods from batteries you are probably still running the 500g salt cell 4 months later 😂

The more recrystallisations that are performed, the less NaCl will be included in the product. If exceptionally pure chlorate is required, three or four recrystallisations may be needed (though this will also lose product, so it's a tradeoff). And yes, recrystallisation of the starting salt could be done, but it's not really going to impact the overall process, since most common impurities won't interact through the electrolysis anyway.

At 40 amps, it definitely will go much faster. However, It's important to take the limits of a cell into account. For my cell here, 40 amps would be too much for my electrode surface area, would heat up the cell excessively, and would fry any of the electrical connections I'm relying on. With a bigger cell and electrodes that can handle it, 40 amps is an excellent idea if you want large quantities of chlorate.

@@ScrapScience Thank you very much, please tell me how much faster the process will go in one day is it possible?

I don't really understand your question. It will be nearly impossible to make this much chlorate in a day with a cell like this. You'll need a larger, better designed cell if you want to make reasonable amounts of product in such a short time.

Boiling the solution definitely won't decompose the sodium chlorate, so there are no worries there. However, a metal pot probably isn't the best, as it might be oxidised by the chlorate. Boiling it in glassware is the best way to go. It's probably not really necessary to put it back in the cell, since you're not really seeing decomposition here.

This exact procedure can be followed with the use of graphite anodes instead of MMO if you need. The only extra thing you'll have to do is filter the resulting graphite particles out of solution before you crystallise out your product.

​@@ScrapScienceDo graphite pencils work?

What if we put a cloth on the graphite to filter and prevent pollution

@@slimani373 They work, but they fall apart even faster than plain carbon/graphite, because they are technically a mixture of graphite and clay. Adding a fine filter during the electrolysis might work, but the filter itself might start acting as a diaphragm and preventing hydroxide ions from properly migrating towards the anode. Why not just filter the solution after it's finished? It will achieve the same effect as far as purification is concerned.

​@@ScrapScience That is, it is easier to filter and make potassium chlorate or sodium chlorate

Stainless steel will not work for this process when used as an anode. The only easily-purchased anode choices are platinum, MMO (as I've used in this video), and graphite/carbon electrodes. I go into this in more detail in my other video on chlorate cells (link in the description).

The problem isn't inherently the oxidation, because as you've noted, it's possible to remove oxides from solutions. The real issue is the fact that the oxidation of the anode will completely replace the desired reaction of forming chlorate ions. The oxidation of iron (or any other standard metal for that matter) is an easier reaction than the oxidation of chloride to chlorate, so all the energy you put into the cell will go towards destroying your anode, and virtually none will go towards the reaction you want.

Yet graphite also breaks down, albeit much more slowly, what reaction is going on there, and does it dominate ?

Yep, graphite does also break down. This is mostly due to an extremely small degree of oxidation on the graphite structure (a few small sections are oxidised to CO2, breaking apart the surface of the graphite material). In contrast to the reactions that occur on iron, nickel, copper, or any other standard metal, the oxidation of graphite is an extremely minor reaction, allowing most of the input energy to go towards chlorate generation.

It's possible. The small amount of iodate content in iodised salt won't affect the process to any large degree. Your final product will likely be contaminated with traces of iodate, but this is unlikely to be a big deal and can be fixed with good recrystallisation techniques.

One day

Sodium chlorate has a much steeper solubility curve than sodium chloride. So, by allowing a concentrated solution of the two salts to cool down from 100 C, only the chlorate will crystallise out with the decrease in solubility. The solubility of sodium chloride almost doesn't change at all with temperature, so it doesn't crystallise out until you reduce the volume drastically.

Yep! In fact, if you just leave the cell running for a couple of minutes, it generally makes enough sodium hypochlorite for cleaning things. There's no need to electrolyse all the way to make chlorate. A lot of companies actually sell cells like this for that very purpose (look up 'sodium hypochlorite generator' and you'll find many).

@@ScrapScience wow, thanks for the info! Gonna check it out

@@ScrapScience one more thing, can you be more elaborate with the cathodes in a hypochlorite cell? Does steel do a good job in that case. Also would a carbon anode contaminate it or does it only happen with chlorate cells. Or do the same rules apply with chlorate cells regarding the materials?

The electrode choices for a hypochlorite cell are exactly the same as for a chlorate cell, seeing as the two are technically the same thing anyway. Steel will do a perfectly good job as a cathode material in both cases, but you're correct on the fact that a carbon anode will slowly fill your solution with carbon dust contamination.

@@ScrapScience much thanks!

I don’t understand your question at all.

I'm afraid not. Electrolysis of ammonium chloride results in the generation of highly reactive nitrogen species, none of which I'd like to be around (nitrogen trichloride for instance). Definitely something to avoid in my opinion. Ammonium ions should definitely be kept away from this procedure at all times.

Nope. Stainless steel only works as the cathode. For the anode, you need either platinum, MMO, or graphite electrodes.

What about pure titanium

For the cathode, many metals can be used (titanium, stainless steel, mild steel, and nickel can all be good options). For the anode, stainless steel definitely won't work, and you are severely limited in your choice of anode material. The only reasonable choices here are platinum, graphite, or the mixed metal oxide I use in this video. Basically every other metal will oxidise, fall apart, and leave you with zero chlorate product. I talk about this in a little bit more detail in my other video on chlorate cells, which you can find in the description here.

Thank you very much for your answer!

Boiling and recrystallisation is much, much faster than evaporation. I'd definitely consider it the most convenient option, even if it's not technically as easy as evaporation.

No clue. Sorry. I'd never even heard of potassium chlorate's use as such before now.

A chlorate cell is (from a technical perspective, at least) extremely simple - electrolysis of a choride solution with inert electrodes. A chloralkali cell, on the other hand, requires a separator between the anode and cathode, to ensure that the products on each electrode are kept separate. In a chlorate cell, the cathode generates hydrogen and hydroxide ions. The anode will oxidise chloride ions, and with the hydroxide ions freely available to interact with the anode (no separator between the electrodes), this oxidation of chloride in the presence of hydroxide will yield hypochlorite ions. These hypochlorite ions can eventually be oxidised again by the anode to form chlorate ions. In a chloralkali cell, the cathode once again generates hydrogen and hydroxide ions. However, due to the separation of the cathode and the anode (with a porous diaphragm or an ion exchange membrane), the oxidation of chloride ions on the anode is not performed in the presence of the hydroxide ions, leading to the oxidation product of chlorine gas instead. Overall, the anode will make chlorine gas in this setup, whilst sodium hydroxide will accumulate around the cathode.

Nice...

Yeah just plain water. Distilled or deionised is best.

I don't know what you're talking about here. Are you asking about using lead as an anode material?

Glad you enjoyed! I'm not actually aware of any reasonably easy methods of measuring the purity of the chlorate (if you're aware of any, let me know!). However, given the flat nature of the sodium chloride solubility curve, we can be confident that the process of crystallising the product by cooling the solution will be extremely selective for separating out the chlorate. Seeing as we did two stages of this crystallisation, the final yield should have very minimal chloride content (though to completely eliminate it, I'll probably do one or two more recrystallisations...).

i have a question. what is the difference between naclo3 and kclo3? i've heard that sodium is a bit less reactive and unstable. i want to use sodium chlorate for flas powder but i am a bit scared that it wouldn't be good enough (to sensitive to explosion) and probably to weak. the problem is that potassium chlorate is way too expensive compared to sodium. do you have any idea to help me with? thanks@@ScrapScience

Nope, stainless steel is only usable as a cathode. For the anode, you need to use either graphite, platinum (with an optional titanium substrate), or MMO electrodes.

It's generally a very bad idea for regular MMO electrodes I'm afraid. They get utterly ruined when used in a low chloride concentration, so you should always stop before you run out of chloride.

@@ScrapScience how much should left over? Currently i have 210g kcl in the cell

@@ScrapScience below 10% chloride, perchlorate starts being generated but MMO can't handle perchlorates

@@Pyrokartoffel With MMO or graphite anodes, you generally want to leave at least 30g of chloride ions per litre of solution. For a potassium cell, this means that you should stop the cell before you get below 65g/L of KCl. To be safe, I usually stop at around around 100g/L. Similarly, for a sodium cell, you should stop at around 50g/L of NaCl in solution. Again, to be safe, I usually stop at 75g/L.

There are no reliable signs that will always tell you when the chloride concentration is low. You will need to work this out by calculations involving your expected cell efficiency, quantity of chloride, and cell current. I don't really understand anything else you're asking here, sorry.

Either way is fine, though adding a solution is generally a better option.

also a fun fact, I bought my KCl from a chemical supplier it sait 99% pure but it had anti-caking agents in it so I have to filter this stuff every time I use it :P

Ouch, unlucky... It's always annoying to have to filter your solution before you even start a synthesis.

how was that a fuckng year ago AAAAAAAAAAAA

MMO and titanium. I talk about this at 1:21, and go into it more extensively in my video on potassium chlorate cells.

Yep, I thought I did. I worked everything out using the solubility products. Still must have done my calculations wrong though.

@@ScrapScience hmmm what calculation method did you use?

Your current density might be too high. The plates should be oriented parallel to each other to avoid the current concentrating on any small spot on the anode. Excess current can eat the mmo protective layer.

Also, titanium is not necessary as a cathode. Use a piece of stainless steel. It has some chromium in it that will erode out and serves to protect the anode as well as makes the reaction move forward.

I’m not sure, sorry. I know nothing about pyrotechnics.

Bubbling chlorine through a solution of sodium hydroxide will give you sodium hypochlorite. Boiling this solution will decompose the hypochlorite into chlorate, resulting in the overall reaction you've described. Since the process is extremely inefficient (and I don't need to make any more chlorate), I'm not planning on giving it a go any time soon, sorry.

Yeah, definitely. I just wasn't too concerned about the efficiency for this one, and I didn't have a smaller cathode.

Would a porous membrane help? Or a using a salt bridge setup?

@@petrlaskevic1948 if you do that you'll end up with hydroxide on one side and hypochlorite on the other.

@@chemistryofquestionablequa6252 Oh right, so you need to mix the hypochlorite with the hydroxide to make chlorate while blocking the chlorate from reducing to chloride at the cathode, (which is done by adding dichromate, if you have it) What if you generated hypochlorite on one side, hydroxide on the other, turned off the electricity when both solutions are concentrated, and then mixed the two solutions to make chlorate. Would that work? With potassium ions, the formed chlorate would precipitate in potassium chlorate.

@@petrlaskevic1948 I suppose you could, hypochlorite disproportionates to chlorate and chloride when boiled, but you'd get terrible yields and make a lot of extra work for yourself.

A great question! This is rather complicated to explain in a single KZfaq comment, but I'll give it a try. In the case of having an equal stoichiometric amount of sodium chloride and sodium chlorate in solution, you're completely correct that chloride would precipitate if you boiled down the solution or cooled down a saturated mixture. However, we didn't have equal amounts of each in solution. We had a little bit of the chloride and a LOT of the chlorate. In this case here, we could rely on the difference in solubility curves between the two salts (which you can find here: shorturl.at/rOR48 ) to get our crystallisation to work. When crystallising, we aimed to boil down the solution (reducing its volume) to the point just before the chloride crystallised. At this point, we stopped heating the solution and allowed it to cool. The solubility of chloride is almost independent of temperature, as you will see from the linked graph, so none crystallised on cooling. However, the chlorate solubility sharply decreased with cooling, so since we had so much in solution, we forced the chlorate to drop out even though it's more soluble. Boiling alone won't give you the chlorate, but if you stop boiling at the right time, you can just crystallise the chlorate by taking advantage of the temperature solubility curves.

@@ScrapScience ingenious! Thanks for explaining, this is completely clear to me now!

In the case of having an equal stoichiometric amount of sodium chloride and sodium chlorate in solution, you're completely correct that chloride would crystallise first if you boiled down the solution or cooled down a saturated mixture. However, we didn't have equal amounts of each in solution. We had a little bit of the chloride and a LOT of the chlorate. In this case here, we could rely on the difference in solubility curves between the two salts (which you can find here: shorturl.at/rOR48 ) to get our crystallisation to work. When crystallising, we aimed to boil down the solution (reducing its volume) to the point just before the chloride crystallised. At this point, we stopped heating the solution and allowed it to cool. The solubility of chloride is almost independent of temperature, as you will see from the linked graph, so none crystallised on cooling. However, the chlorate solubility sharply decreased with cooling, so since we had so much in solution, we forced the chlorate to drop out even though it's more soluble. Boiling alone won't give you the chlorate, but if you stop boiling at the right time, you can just crystallise the chlorate by taking advantage of the temperature solubility curves.

Leaving the electrodes in a chlorate/hypochlorite solution without current flowing through them is generally a very bad idea, since it damages the anode severely.

For anodes mmo or platinum work great lead oxide can work but it's toxic and carbon works but then you need to remove all the carbon particles.. Don't use ebay "platinum" anodes because their fake and don't work.. for cathodes titanium or carbon are normally used

The anodes you can use for this cell are exactly the same as the ones you can use for a potassium chlorate cell. If you don't want to use MMO, platinum, or MnO2 electrodes, your only other options are lead dioxide (which MUST be plated onto graphite or titanium, NOT just anodised lead metal), or bare graphite. There aren't any other viable anodes which will work here. I'd recommend just using graphite if that's all you can get. As Mark has said above, they'll fill your solution with graphite particles which will need filtering, but then you won't have to deal with the difficult and toxic process of making lead dioxide anodes. You can use whatever you want for a cathode (excluding reactive metals like aluminium or zinc). Iron and titanium are generally best.

@@ScrapScience thanks mark and you too.If graphite is mixed with kclo3 or naclo3 ,will crystallization work to remove them from their crystals ??

After filtering the graphite particles and crystallising your product, it might still have a slight grey colour from the graphite you weren't able to remove. This won't cause any problems for most uses though.

@@ScrapScience if I want to trap fine graphite ,what should I use then ,for example fine silica

Yep! Just be aware that if you have a graphite anode, it will fill your solution with carbon particles as it falls apart, so you’ll likely need to filter and maybe recrystallise your final product.

Hello again, thanks for reply before, but how about if I use galvalume or zinc in both anode and cathode? Still I can run this process?

As it turns out, any electrodes based on zinc, steel, or stainless steel will not work as an anode, since they won’t survive the oxidising conditions. As such, the electrodes you’ve suggested definitely won’t make chlorate when used as an anode, and I’d say they would be pretty poor choices as cathodes too. The only viable choices for an anode material (which are also cheaply available to individuals) are carbon, mixed metal oxide, and platinum. As a cathode, I’d just recommend ungalvanised iron or stainless steel (or titanium if you can get it).

@@ScrapScience hello, thanks for reply, is it possible to create with this reaction : naclo2 -> nacl(l) + o2 (g) And then boiling naclo2 till turned into naclo3? Tbh in country where I'm living it's so expensive the cost of chemical tools.

@@ion_purple I'm afraid the reaction you've described heavily favours the decomposition of sodium chlorite, rather than its formation, especially at high temperatures. There's no feasible way of directly reacting sodium chloride with oxygen to make it. Technically, you could just boil bleach to make sodium chlorate, but the yields are low and separation from the sodium chloride byproduct is somewhat difficult. Regardless, if you want moderate/large quantities of chlorate, electrolysis is the cheapest and most effective way to go. If you can't get hold of the necessary materials, you may be out of luck, sorry.

No worries! Answers are as follows: 1) If it's the type of jar I'm thinking of, the white coating is not enough to stop the lid from being attacked by the chlorine and oxidising solution. You need a jar with a plastic lid if you want to avoid corrosion. The jars I use in my own chlorate cell videos have a thick (~5mm) plastic disc underneath the metal that is capable of protecting it. I found them in a garage sale and I've actually been unable to find anything else like them... 2) Most ATX power supplies will provide appropriate current for any moderately sized chlorate cell. I've never seen one that would be inadequate for the task. For my own cells, I used the 12 volt output hooked up to a buck converter to give me controllable voltage and current. The exact current you need will depend on the surface area of your electrodes, the size of your cell, and your personal preference. 3) That will depend on the size of your cell and how much chlorate you want. This isn't really something that can be explained in a KZfaq comment alone, so you'll need an understanding of stoichiometry to do these calculations. As a starting point, this website gives an overview of runtime for a certain quantity of starting chloride material: www.chlorates.exrockets.com/runtime.html 4) Is the fibreglass sheet fibrous or solid? As long as liquid can flow through it, it should work. You just want to use it as a filtering medium. 5) I talk about the crystallising and drying stages from 14:03 to 17:50. In particular, I show my method of drying the crystals at 17:01. Hope that helps!

Thank you so much , i will not bother you again about this matter and i will mention you in the description & video 😊​@@ScrapScience

The inert anode in this case is a mixed metal oxide (MMO) anode - also known as a dimensionally stable anode (DSA). It is a titanium substrate coated with a mixture of ruthenium dioxide and iridium dioxide. Platinium also works. So does graphite.

Yes, carbon electrodes will work. However, you'll end up with significant amounts of carbon dust in your final solution, which you'll need to filter off before crystallising the chlorate. Additionally, microscopic particles of graphite will discolour your final solid product, but this won't affect the chemical properties at all.

The disproportionation of sodium chlorate is actually a fair bit more difficult than that. To get any significant decomposition, you need to get the chlorate hot enough to melt it, and even then the decomposition is slow and low-yielding. The reaction you might be thinking of is the disproportionation of sodium hypochlorite, which does occur in solution at around 70 Celsius (at the right pH). This disproportionation reaction converts hypochlorite ions into chloride and chlorate ions, and I think I mention the reaction taking place in this video at around 14:17. Either way, if we do end up with a little bit of perchlorate in the product, I'm not too concerned because this stuff is eventually going to be used for a perchlorate cell anyway haha. Glad you enjoy the videos!

@Scrap Science, yes, you are totally right. Thanks for clarifying this part.

Only with very pure chlorate, the correct electrodes (MMO anodes will not work), and an additive to prevent back-reduction. I'll eventually make a video about this.

@@ScrapScience Thank you, I hope you make that video