I picked up a good looking tank car lately for a decent price of about 10 bucks (a pretty good sale), and on the side in yellow lettering were the words potassium hydroxide. That kinda peeked my curiosity, and got me thinking, what do they use that stuff for? What kind of industry would use it?
In case your wondering, i’m still laying track, so my industries are still somewhat undecided.
Potassium hydroxide (aka Caustic Potash) is used in the manufacture of soft soap, rechargeable alkaline batteries and biodiesel. It is classified as a strong base, is an excellent electrolyte and is highly corrosive.
While I haven’t checked, I suspect that it’s classified as hazardous material, since its effect on skin and underlying flesh is just about as bad as the strong acids. Nasty stuff!
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Not to be a pest, but why not just Google or Bing the chemical name? You got one general response, in Bing I got 5 screens of links. Plus it only took me 30 seconds to find out more than it has taken you a day to discover.
I did try that, but got overwhelmed. i knew if i asked here, i would get a straight answer.
Dow has a website devoted to caustic sodas with some interesting information about tank cars
http://www.dow.com/causticsoda/about/index.htm
Dave Nelson
This is not a slam, but is advice. You need to figure out how to sort through searches for straight factual information (practice helps).
Its quicker.
You can get better information (some answers you get on forums are (gasp) wrong).
You can control what you are looking for (some threads on forums get (gasp) hijacked).
You can get more information. I have learned more serendipitously searching for stuff than I would ever have learned asking questions, because…
If you ask a question you ONLY get an answer to your question. If you look for your own info you can often find diverging paths that give yyou much, much, more info than just the original question.
Some times it takes rephrasing the search. Sometimes searching for images helps. If you have searched, often saying that in your question will get more responses. I am 10 times more likely to help somebody who has tried and hit a wall than somebody who just expects us google something for them and feed them the results.
This should be a sticky on EVERY section of the forum.
In this specific case, the very first hit when typing merely “potassium hydroxide” in Google is the Wikipedia entry for it. Yes the middle part of the entry is a lot of chemistry mumbo-jumbo that isn’t pertinant to the question but Wiki entries have quick jumps at the top left for various sections of the articles - and the one labeld #4 is Uses which jumps you past the gobbledygook chemistry and right to a section which detaisl the things than Chuck summed up in his reply.
Curiosity can be a good or bad thing sometimes - but people need to have more of it. I can look something up and end up spending an hour reading through other related items. That’s part curiosity and wanting to learn more and part ADD, but I’ll take it.
I don’t know how you’d exactly go about it, but using search engines is a useful skill that maybe they ought to teach. I find it much more reqarding to find an answer on my own that have someone just tell me the answer, but at the same time I get emails from family members all the time asking if I can find them information on ‘x’ - usually it only takes a minute or two,a nd they always wonder how I did it - to which I say simple, I just typed ‘x’ in Google. I guess I just can’t see where the disconnect is that some people have trouble with that. I can understand when someone wants to know about something that has a specific name and they don’t know what that name is (like a specific part of a locomotive or something), but even then it’s not like you will blow up your computer if you type an improper term in Google or some other search engine - worst case there will be no hits, but sometimes you can get lucky - maybe someone else ALSO calls that object by the same incorrect name and you’ll get a hit where that other person asked about it and was corrected as to the true name - bingo, you just learned something.
The one chemical you really have to watch out for is Di-Hydrogen-Oxide. [:O]
Lets see how many of you know what that is. [swg]
I do know that it is found in every major watershed. I even know someone who circulated a petition for stricter controls on it. [;)]
Have some my self, good looking cars
One thing I can say is that , if you wanted to, you could model a Florida strip-mining operation. I have seen plenty of Potash mines on rural highways and backroads in towns near my home in North Florida (all served by rail and all still in use) One thing I can tell you for advice: if you model a Potash mine on your layout, you’ll need a huge mound of dirt, as it seems that the local strip-mining operations often have their operation out of sight, hidden from the eyes of passing people, as well as keeping the railroad tracks by the highway.
I’m not too sure if they bring the cars into the mine area though, as I couldn’t get a good look at the sidings (it would, however, make a Potash mine perfict as a back-drop industry). I’m not too sure about the tankcar though, as all of the cars I’ve seen at those sidings are normally covered-hoppers (Rail-fan’s dream as all of the cars I saw that day were from fallen-flag railroads) Then again, I’m not too sure as to how Potash is transported (or if the transport methoods have changed).
Randy, I’m completely with you on this - maybe even the ADD part, although in my case I’ve been told it’s associated with Aspberger’s Syndrome . . . [sigh]
I too get asked to do a lot of Internet research for others - as well as my own insatiable curiousity - and I’m now beginning to think that it’s a self-fulfilling or circular kind of thing - I do lots of searches, so I get good at discerning what people really want to know, and get better at constructing search queries to eliminate the extraneous and find the essential - often in many different fields, so I’m not confined to a particular subject. It’s kind of like a
I believe the ‘‘caustic potash’’ - chemical symbol KOH - is different from the potash that you’re referring to, which is ‘fertilizer’ potash or potassium carbonate - chemical symbol K2CO3 - and which also comes from western portion of Canada among others. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potash for more info on it. What I’m not sure is, if phosphate is also found with potash, or not.
There have been at least 2 lengthy articles in Trains over the years on the Florida phosphate mining operations, as follows:
Wet rock, dry rock, and th