To start off our diaphragm electrolysis series, we cover the most common use of the process, making sodium hydroxide with the chloralkali cell.

Building a moderate scale cell (which can produce reasonable quantities of NaOH) is a project for the next video in the series, but in this episode we're focused on optimising the process in terms of starting material, concentration and current.

With the diaphragm cell we built in a previous video, we run a chloralkali cell 5 times, each with different sodium salts, concentrations, and reaction speeds, graph the results, and draw important conclusions about how to build an efficient and effective amateur chloralkali cell.

The results in this video are specifically relevant for diaphragm cells, rather than selective ion exchange membrane cells (which will be covered in a future episode), as clay pot diaphragms are much more accessible to the amateur than membranes like nafion.

Watch the rest of the series here:
   • Diaphragm Electrolysis  

Watch my other videos on electrolytic sodium hydroxide here:
   • Making Sodium Hydroxide  
   • The Chloralkali Process (How To Make ...