Hydrogen chloride is a dangerous gas and hydrochloric acid is corrosive.
This experiment should be performed outside or in a fume hood.
Greetings fellow nerds.
In this video, we're going to make hydrochloric acid.
First we need to set up our apparatus.
This vacuum flask will serve as our hydrogen chloride gas generator.
In the middle I have a round bottom flask that will catch any liquid that back flows.
It can do this because of this attachment. 
Gas can flow around the outer tube, into the round bottom flask, 
then back out the inner tube.
If any back flow occurs the liquid will go into the round bottom flask,
but be unable to go into the generator.
Ok let me attach that together. 
Here we have about one hundred milliliters of crushed ice
that we'll dissolve the hydrogen chloride gas in to make hydrochloric acid.
 You can use less ice to get higher concentrations of hydrochloric acid. 
Let me connect up the gas feed tube.
Now to generate the gas we first put about twenty milliliters of water into the generator.
The water is optional actually and can be omitted if your hot plate is hot enough,
mine isn't so I need the water.
Now you add in 140g of sodium bisulfate,
which is sold as a pH lowering chemical for swimming pools.
Be sure to check the label to make sure you have the right stuff.
You can also use 30mL of concentrated sulfuric acid.
Although if you had access to that you probably wouldn't need hydrochloric acid.
Anyway,
 now you add in 60g of sodium chloride table salt.
I should have mixed the two chemicals first but you get the idea, 
be sure to mix them yourself if you try this.
Anyway, stopper the generator and then turn on the heating.
What’s happening is the sodium bisulfate and sodium chloride react to form hydrogen chloride gas.
 This gas travels through the tubing and dissolves in the water to form hydrochloric acid. 
Eventually the generator will stop making gas.
But due to the high solubility of hydrogen chloride,
the water might pull back up into the tube,
and quickly and dramatically back-flow through the system as it tries to absorb more gas.
 This can come as a surprise and you should have a method to deal with that like i have here.
The back-flow is happening and its going to go out of control right about... now.
And there you go,
 luckily it's all contained in the round bottom flask so i can still collect it.
As you can see with my pH meter the pH is very low indicating high acidity.
It also turns blue pH paper red.
The exact concentration can be determined by titration or set using azeotropic distillation.
Anyway, that’s how you make hydrochloric acid. Please subscribe, like and comment.
