Borax (which grade)

gr8white

gr8white

New member
I have been buying borax from a local store because its been convienent and I havent needed to buy that much of it, now I want to buy a larger quantity and have found a place to get it but they have different grades of borax. What grade do I need?
 
Tsp???

Where does everybody get TSP ??? online?? local?

How much do you pay?

:confused:
 
RickM said:
I spoke to a chemical supplier today and he posed the same question.
I asked him to spell the word that we are discussing here and he spelled out "Mol". I asked the difference and he said it was a bit hard to explain, so he went on to quote prices for both 5 and 10 Mol Borax (The 5 Mol is 50 cents more per 50 pounds). I decided to investigate on my own.

To start Mol is short for Mole, which is a unit of measure of Molar Mass. (Please go to bottom of post to get more detail)

Being inquisitive I managed to track down a scientist at Rio Tinto Borax and asked what the difference is between the two products. He explained that chemically the two are identical. The difference is that the 5 Mol product has 5 less Moles of water in it's elemental makeup.

What does this mean? It means that with less water content the 5 Mol is more concentrated...but at the cost of solubility. I asked for a real world conversion of one product to the other and he stated that 4 pounds of 5 Mol is equal to 5 pounds of 10 Mol. Interesting.

I asked what variation was sold at the supermarket under the Twenty Mule Team name and he said 10 Mol, powder......you see it can be purchased in powder or crystalline form. The powder being more soluble that crystal.

So, it seems to me that the 5 Mol powder may be the best bang for the buck. A distinction may have to be made for the Apple Sauce recipe :)

Hope this helps.

From ABOUT.com:

"The Mole

A mole is defined as the quantity of a substance that has the same number of particles as are found in 12.000 grams of carbon-12. This number, Avogadro's number, is 6.022x1023. The mass in grams of one mole of a compound is equal to the molecular weight of the compound in atomic mass units. One mole of a compound contains 6.022x1023 molecules of the compound. The mass of 1 mole of a compound is called its molar weight or molar mass. The units for molar weight or molar mass are grams per mole. Here is the formula to determing the number of moles of a sample:

mol = weight of sample (g) / molar weight (g/mol)"
Click to expand...

From Another poster on this board (different forum) last year.
 
borax at Walmart

My Walmart carries it in the 76 oz box "20 mule team" from the "Dial" family company. I called them and they said it is a mined substance and it is about as pure as you can get. (and cheap too...)

dan
:D
 
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