🚀 go-pugleaf

One of the things I try to do in these posts is to expose the scientific 
thought process.  Not the computational analysis that the text books are full 
of, but the decision making process of how a research path is selected.  

You may recall that when I was faced with building a calorimeter I 
purposefully did not look to see how others did it.  Now I am asking everyone 
how they clean things.  What gives?

With the calorimeter I wanted to try to extend the art.  I felt I had a chance 
of beating it.  With cleaning, I have no such ambition.  I will be content if 
I can figure out how to do a workman like job.  

The advice I have received is wonderfully diverse.  Some of it you have seen 
here, some has been sent privately.  Us commercial glass cleaner some say 
(contain chromic acid), others say DON'T USE CHROMIC ACID!  So I have to look 
at everything that has been sent and what I can read, weigh my assessment of 
each advisors qualifications, and make a decision.  There is no one to tell me 
if I have made the right decision.

The apparatus tells me that much later.  As Dieter Britz has pointed out, not 
all electrochemists (who it is assumed do the cleaning right) get a positive 
result.  Possibly I have to do something wrong.  

My brother is pushing me to build a vapor degreaser.  The plan at the moment 
is to buy a 24 cup coffee maker and to put a copper cooling coil in the top of 
it and to load it with perchlorethylene.  I guess this will then be a 
perchlorethylene percolator.  (The basket is of course removed.)  This should 
work great to clean the Lithium.  The problem is then to get it into an inert 
atmosphere before it oxidizes. 

My present scheme is to flow argon gas into the needle end of a large syringe.  
The plunger will be removed an the Lithium quickly brought from the degreaser 
to the syringe.  Then I put in the plunger, turn off the gas with a three way 
valve and push in the plunger, switching the valve to the sealed position as 
the argone is pushed out.  With luck, I end up with very little gas and even 
less oxygen in the syringe.  Then the syringe can be moved into the argon 
atmosphere of the glove bag which will be kept free of solvents.  

One universal piece of advice that I have received is "No Soap".  OK, No Soap.
I bought a box of vinyl gloves a while back with the idea of making my own 
glove box.  Now I am worried that they are not safe to use as they are likely 
full of plasticizer(sp?).  Would rubber gloves be better?

Once I build the degreaser, I will use it to clean all the cell parts that 
will stand it.  I see that the Polypropylene cell I plan to use does not stand 
it, but everything else looks OK (A in the Cole-Parmer table).  Then rinses 
with acids and finally deionized water.  Looking for suggestions on the 
sequence here.  

Please keep all the good advice coming.  

Tom Droege