Australia's Science Forum

Hi everyone,
Just wondering what will dissolve Sulphur from test tubes
Thanks
Susie

A hammer?

Cheers, K

Try soaking in napisan for a couple of days, it seems to dissolve most things

Toluene is a solvent for sulfur. Fume cupboard job, though.

Cheers

I agree with you Smiley!
The price of toluene against the cost of test tube, They are disposable
We do a prac. each year heating copper carbonate and reducing it to copper oxide, I put out my cheapest TT's and if they don't immediatly wash clean they go in bin.
But I love your sense of humour!

Sodium Hydroxide about 1M. Fill up test tubes (stand in groups in a beaker) with NaOH and leave a couple of days. Sulphur will come out in sheets. Might have to help along a bit with a shove from a strong piece of wire (old deflagrating spoons good for this). I might have used stronger NaOH but 1M pretty good from memory. Sodium hydroxide good for cleaning burnt sugar and other stuff too. Just leave to soak for a day or two.

We have a waste bottle of Sodium Hydroxide, it is only used for cleaning glassware, we just add our waste Sodium Hydroxide to it each time, and soak the hard to clean glassware with it over a weekend, come Monday its pretty clean, if not I throw it out. If its a really good piece out comes the Nappy San.