With the recent pandemic of COVID-19, my place of work has taken on the great task of increasing the sanitation of our work environment. Aside from placards encouraging better hands washing hygiene, alcohol wipes, and more, a nifty item called Toucan was added too.
I had not been in for several days and one of my co-workers said, “Have you seen the Little Toucan?” I was confused at first because they know of my love of birds (of which I own two) and have jokingly encouraged me to buy a toucan. But, in fact, the Toucan is a sanitation mister.
It was presented to me that all you do is fill it with water and add salt. To which I replied, “that does nothing.” Everyone jumped on me essentially telling me I didn’t know what I was talking about. One co-worker said, “leave it to the scientist.”
Let’s be clear, I spent a lot of time in chemistry—in another life I would have gone into biochemistry but, alas, I am a scientist and explorer in a non-traditional sense. However, I do know what this device was doing but they didn’t not know and only could read a card telling them that it makes sodium hypochlorite. One person said it was, “space age technology!” Really just basic chemistry.
Oh! So this salt water has an electric current sent through it. Yes, now this makes sense. That is a process called electrochlorination whereby salt, water, and energy create sodium hypochlorite (bleach) and hydrogen gas.
Here is the equation:
NaCl + H₂0 + Energy ⟶ NaOCl + H₂
When everyone said in chemistry, “I’ll never need to know this,” some of us paid attention and understand the universe a little differently. This is also an experiment one can do in their own home with little danger.
Bonus: NaCl (sodium chloride a.k.a. table salt) is not the only kind of salt. Any compound with a cation (from an acid) and and anion (from a base) is a salt.