I bought some drain opener as a source of sodium hydroxide and it has little silvery balls in it which I believe are aluminium. How can I separate the two substances with minimal loss of the sodium hydroxide? I don't care about the aluminium.
Trust me. Its not worth salvaging the hydroxide. Aluminum hydroxide is unbelievably stable and that means you probably won't be able to salvage the hydroxide without doing electrolysis or something difficult like that. That's like trying to obtain hydroxide from methanol CH3OH. Oh yea you can make methanol quite easily from a halomethane by reacting it with a hydroxide of some kind. But you will not be able to remove that hydroxide at all without neutralizing it with an acid. Hydroxides are bloody awful leaving groups. That oxygen is really glued on to that carbon well. You have to really destabilize that methanol to remove that hydroxide. Same with the aluminum hydroxide. Very stable and strong bond.
