Make your own Potassium Hydroxide - POTASH

Chemical/Chemistry
1

Was doing some reading this morning and came across some articles about the history of Potash and manufacture of chemical. Really simple process quite actually. It starts with wood.

  1. Make a fire pit or use your grill. Be sure you clean out any old ash or material.
  2. Line with several layer thick aluminum foil (this just makes handling the ash easier)
  3. Burn wood
  4. Let ash cool but not get wet (don’t leave over night for dew)
  5. Place ash into water - I was thinking a 5 gal bucket with 3 gal water. Add 2 gal ash and stir gently.
  6. Let sit over night.
  7. Filter solution - insoluble chemicals will settle to bottom and float on top.
  8. You know have a Potash solution of unknown strength. Boil down to create potash flake. It was not be 100% pure. If you repeat the mix with water, boil process then you will end up with highly pure (say 90%+) potash flake.

Between all the BBQ Smoking I do and land clearing, I figure I should have a ton of wood to bun. Gonna try this when I get home and see how much produces from a certain amount of wood. If it only produces a few pounds, still, free potash, just takes some time.

Anyone try this or do it already?

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2

Doesn’t seem realistic from a business perspective. Hobby, yes…

At $12 for 2 lbs shipped for free I’ll stick to that lol

3

I would guess that the energy expended in this step would more than off-set any cost savings associated with brewing your own potash.

4

@Infinity probably true.

Going to try it just to see for shits and grins. Could always use natural evaporation. Who knows, I smoke a lot of BBQ and have wood ash I am just throwing away. Take 10 minutes and dump into water and leave overnight. Next day, pour through filter into kiddie pool and let evaporate for a couple of days. Just depends on what the yield is. If I get 5 lbs for example at $6 a lb retail that is $30 product for 15 minutes work, actually less as I still have to clean out the smoker and dump ashes somewhere so really maybe 10 minutes to filter? If I only get 1 lb, well then, not worth the effort but still might be good to know if I ever needed some the next day and did not have time to order and wait for shipping.

You can use potash to clean your clothes as well. If you are ever lost in the forest for days and want to clean up might be good to know how to do this. You can also fertilize plants especially fruit bushes/trees to make the fruit sweeter and increase yield.

Knowledge is power folks. The more you know.

3 Likes
5

Now you have to have it tested, examined, and have a company create a SDS sheet for you since you will be using it in your business.

Knowledge is power

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6

Touche

7

So you can burn wood and with that fire boil your previous ash batch

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