Author Topic: Questions for Lestat: Lestat's Lab  (Read 17166 times)

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Offline Lestat

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Re: Questions for Lestat: Lestat's Lab
« Reply #75 on: February 21, 2017, 12:11:25 PM »
The oxygen bleach is generally percarbonate or perborate based, these are simply hydrated carbonates or boric acid salts (borates) such as sodium percarbonate, being commmon, and the 'per' comes from peroxide, in those cases  hydrogen peroxide, H2O2, esentially instead of being hydrated with water, they are made to contain hydrogen peroxide of crystallization

It may well be the bacteria, some, but not all bacteria contain the enzyme catalase, also found in mammalian livers. Catalase serves to break down H2O2, the release of which (hydrogen peroxide) to create free radicals locally and damage/destroy the cell walls of bacteria. Those species and strains that have evolved to express the genes for catalase are able to break down H2O2 released                                                                           
by such cells as macrophages and other immunocytes which target hostile pathogenic invaders.

Another way to demonstrate catalase in action is to immerse a slice of liver (I would suggest obtaining some from a butcher or supermarket, rather than using any of your own) into some dilute (10% or so is just fine, won't be too vigorous but you can see it in action, in a flask or narrow container of H2O2, so as to be able to collect the gas by means of leading it out through a length of tubing through the stopper of the flask, a cork that fits will work fine for this and into a test tube inverted in a container of water, the released gas will displace the water and when ready, reach in, stopper the test tube whilst still inverted in the water with your thumb, turn it right way up and then insert a piece of wood splint which has been ignited and put out but which is whilst not flaming, glowing still. The glowing ember will cause the wooden splint to immediately burst into flame, because the gas in the test tube is pure oxygen gas, as its most common allotrope, O2, the same as we breathe (O3 being ozone, there is an O4 metastable state, and red oxygen, O8) the O2 in the test tube came from the decomposition of the hydrogen peroxide under the influence of the enzyme catalase  to breaking down into H2O and oxygen                                                                                                                                      , the pure oxygen displaces the water-filled test tube, keep at it until you displace all the water, and you've prepared  a test tube filled with pure oxygen. Normally air is about 21% oxygen at sea level, almost 78.1% nitrogen, N2, a hair less than one percent of the unreactive noble gas argon, Ar, often use in welding to provide a more inert atmosphere than nitrogen (which can break down from diatomic nitrogen to highly reactive atomic nitrogen under intense enough heat, such as an electric arc or the focused plasma jet of a plasma cutter, and also, N2 itself, especially at elevated temperatures forms nitrides with certain metals, the first notable one being lithium, which alone of the alkali metals (group 1 metals, lithium, Li, sodium, Na, potassium, K, rubidium, Rb, caesium and francium, Cs and Fr respectively, with caesium being the last of the alkali metals that can actually be handled and worked with in a bulk state, francium is naturally occurring but only as a daughter decay product of other radioactive elements, with there being less than 1oz of Fr within the earths  crust at any  one time, for Fr is extremely radioactive in the case of all of its natural and synthetic isotopes. And with a very short half life, meaning the most that has ever been in one space at one time is around 300,000 atoms.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             
Beyond the pale. Way, way beyond the pale.

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Offline WolFish

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Re: Questions for Lestat: Lestat's Lab
« Reply #76 on: February 22, 2017, 09:15:18 AM »
this makes me want to go on amazon and order chemistry equipment.

it also makes me wonder about the claims made by people who administer and receive ozone treatment. does the ozone stay in the blood until it reaches the liver? and what would it make there? the people who promote this stuff claim that it turns into pure oxygen in your system. dunno how that's supposed to help anything.
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Offline Lestat

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Re: Questions for Lestat: Lestat's Lab
« Reply #77 on: February 22, 2017, 10:33:50 AM »
That is quackery wolfy, absolute quackery. Ozone is quite toxic, and very reactive. A far stronger oxidizing agent than O2, and dangerous to breathe in.

We are equipped to take O2 in through the lungs, not elsewhere (modern blood oxygenation ex vivo technological advances like extra-corporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) aside), not via enemas, not from injecting hydrogen peroxide or other oxidizing agents, just O2, through the lungs. All these modern fartarsed quack suggestions such as oxygenated water enemas, H2O2 injections, ozone inhalation or worse...they are at the best, useless and at worst dangerous and in some cases potentially lethal.

Won't discourage you from taking up chemistry as a hobby though. Be happy to advise or help where I can, help you source reagents etc. from those who don't regard hobby chemistry as some kind of seedy activity only criminals and terrorists would possibly want to engage in outside a high school or uni lab. Got a hookup that can order from sigma-aldrich even, for the real hard to get stuff (the neat thing about being able to buy via an intermediary (also in the hobby) from places like sigma, who wouldn't even reply to the likes of hobbyists let alone sell them so much as a drop of piss from their staff toilets, is they don't take into consideration the scarcity of many hard to get reagents for hobbyists, since they don't do business with us in the first place, so that makes buying certain otherwise difficult things, such as for example, phosphorus, or alkali metals, hydride reducing agents, acyl halides, acetic anhydride that kind of stuff, makes it pretty cheap when they don't even put availability and how much the person wants it into the equation.

And then theres eastern europe, who will sell anything to anyone. Its a fun hobby, though. And lol, things like waiting for your latest acquisitions to arrive, its like being a kid waiting for xmas morning, only santa is dressed in a postman outfit:autism:
Beyond the pale. Way, way beyond the pale.

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Offline Fun With Matches

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Re: Questions for Lestat: Lestat's Lab
« Reply #78 on: February 22, 2017, 04:20:06 PM »
Can you explode my neighbours for me?
:dog:

Offline 'andersom'

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Re: Questions for Lestat: Lestat's Lab
« Reply #79 on: February 22, 2017, 04:36:58 PM »
Can you explode my neighbours for me?

You've not met Lit, have you? He used to be the explosion expert around here. He blew up trees and traffic signs.
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Offline Fun With Matches

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Re: Questions for Lestat: Lestat's Lab
« Reply #80 on: February 22, 2017, 05:04:43 PM »
Can you explode my neighbours for me?

You've not met Lit, have you? He used to be the explosion expert around here. He blew up trees and traffic signs.

Damn, I've missed out.
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Offline Jack

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Re: Questions for Lestat: Lestat's Lab
« Reply #81 on: February 22, 2017, 05:42:59 PM »
Missing out on Lit is indeed missing out.

Offline Pyraxis

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Re: Questions for Lestat: Lestat's Lab
« Reply #82 on: February 22, 2017, 10:49:26 PM »
We've had a broad variety of special interests here.  :M
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Offline "couldbecousin"

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Re: Questions for Lestat: Lestat's Lab
« Reply #83 on: February 23, 2017, 04:42:43 AM »
  Lit is brave! :pow:  :arrr:  :pow:  He loves to blow shit up!
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Offline Lestat

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Re: Questions for Lestat: Lestat's Lab
« Reply #84 on: March 15, 2017, 07:06:11 AM »
Plenty popping and crackling and spitting and hissing last night. I had a wonderful night, busily hovering around my new electrically heated molten metal bath, housing, a bunch of lead, with some tin in it, to lower the melting point, and some solder thrown in to do so further for convenience, and that, bathing a steel 'tin' containing a mixture of caustic soda, a small amount of salt, which I initially tried but wouldn't form a melt of its own, on its own (I'm hoping an induction heater and carbon crucibles will serve for electrolysis of molten salt. Give me time whilst it arrives (my old man is buying it, but will let me use it, he kind of more or less just wants to experiment and play about with it, IMO I'll end up using it more than he does :autism:) to think about what to do with the chlorine gas liberated by such electrolysis. I'll be a scheming and a plotting for experiments or procedures that involve elemental Cl2. Making bromine, by passing it into an aqueous, strong solution of an alkali metal bromide, IMO preferably, for me, potassium bromide, because that way the byproduct would be potassium chloride, and whilst I can of course get all the salt I want as long as I have enough money to buy a given quantity and shops to stock it, if for example I wanted to spend a thousand pounds on table salt (and I really, really don't. A grand to me means lots and lots of plenty much more interesting and useful chemicals and the labware to react them in) I do not have pure potassium chloride, although a mix is available as 'lo-salt' for low sodium diets and salting food. The more reactive Cl2 displaces iodine from iodides and bromine from bromides, so it IS a convenient way to store Br2 and I2 (both are volatile, despite iodine being a solid, almost metallic looking element, it sublimes, and if left out in the open air, will fairly quickly (in storage terms) just evaporate (if actually heated, in a closed container it goes directly from solid to liquid under atmospheric pressure, bypassing a liquid, molten stage, this is called sublimation) and Br2 is a bugger to store, needing ideally sealing in glass ampoules until desired for use. So generally the best thing to do is either if the reaction suits the conditions, generate it in-situ for immediate reaction in the same vessel as something one might wish to brominate, or generate it, purify and distill, dry it etc. as and when your going to need it. It creeps through many plastics, and creeps through seals with ground glass so storing it in stoppered flasks is a no-no too. Also it viciously attacks the likes of rubber tubing and stoppers (and god help you if you spill it on you, I never have, but I know of someone who has, and they have been in and out of hospital. Its not especially toxic as such, but whilst Cl2 is a gas, and although more reactive than bromine and iodine, contact with Cl2 is unlikely to burn, liquid condensed chlorine would be another matter, and you can actually pick up a nugget of solid I2 in your fingers as long as you keep moving it about like you would say, a steel ball bearing at just such a temperature as to be uncomfortable but not to outright burn flesh, or a hot buttery crumpet (although needless to say, biting into a hot, buttery lump of iodine isn't the best idea:P) bromine is in between chlorine and iodine in terms of reactivity but unlike the gaseous chlorine and the solid iodine its a liquid and can soak into and penetrate the skin easily causing severe and reportedly very painful burns, causing a third degree burn in a matter of moments if enough be present.

So its a shitter of an element to store, one of the worst of the lot, ignoring radioactivity from gamma ray sources, to have to store. So perhaps if I think more along the lines of say, bromobenzene or alpha-bromotoluene which would be more useful, or N-bromosaccharin, N-bromosuccinimide, useful non-volatile brominating agents, and I can then experiment also with iodine mono- and tribromide as well as bromine monochloride, iodine mono- and tribromides and tne other nonfluorinated interhalogens (semicovalent compounds composed of only halogen atoms, such as for example the ones I have thus far prepared being iodine monochloride (a dark, volatile liquid which hydrolyzes on exposure to H2O or moisture in the air, fumes and with an unpleasan odour, similar in appearance to Br2 although easily distinguished from elemental bromine by means of its weight, being a liquid, a given volume is easily precisely measured, and due to differing density the weight will differ between Br2 and iodine monochloride and of course boiling point, plus although I haven't characterized the compound sufficiently to determine how to produce either, apparently a solid alpha- and beta form are also extant. And it is formed, as a distillable liquid by passing chlorine gas not in excess through a tube packed with solid iodine and condensing the result, if the Cl2 be not in excess then the monochloride of iodine is formed, if this be treated with further chlorine gas, or if excess Cl2 is used then a green crystalline solid, iodine trichloride is formed. That was a fun experiment I did a while back, although ruined by the fucking dirty pig filth when they opened the stoppered boro glass flask I had it contained in 'to take samples' (which they then left without, so obviously just came to trash the lab). I think, having more iodine than I know what to do with, aside from making some methyl and isopropyl iodides which are useful electrophilic alkylating agents, and in one particular reaction, the Appel, can be substituted for carbon tetrachloride to prepare the intermediate triphenylphosphonium halide with triphenylphosphine (which I have quite a lot of, a kg should last me a long time, especially since the usual byproduct of reactions involving PPh3 is triphenylphosphine oxide, and it can be recycled or used for other purposes) in this case alkyl halides, at least methyl iodide, can serve as a source of nucleophilic iodine, and used for preparing alkyl iodides, carbon tetrachloride is the more well known halogen source although unusually, acting as a reactant rather than solvent, although if the alcohol will dissolve in C-tet then of course it would play both roles) seems quite unfussy about its halogen source, even elemental Br2 apparently works for preparation of alkyl bromides from alcohols. This reaction is for halogenating alcohols. Quite a useful one from the looks of it too since triphenylphosphine is not highly watched (not that I'd let THAT stop me, I don't deal in unobtanium much :) being, somewhat privileged in what I can and cannot obtain if I choose to pay for a reagent rather than make it, dig it out of the ground and smelt it, extract it et cetera or draw it from the air in the literal sense. I'm lucky, in that I have good sources and don't have to rely solely on OTCs, but many, if not most hobby chemists have to, with a lesser or greater degree of access to things you can't buy from a hardware store or make from what you can, but for them the Appel would be extremely useful, since the usual halogenating agents, such as thionyl chloride, PCl3, PCl5, POCl3, SO2Cl2 (sulfuryl chloride, not to be confused with SOCl2 which is thionyl chloride) are exceedingly difficult to make in the case of the sulfur oxychlorides although its doable with much effort, and the phosphorus halides involve, of course, phosphorus, and elemental phosphorus itself either red (especially watched due to its use in methamphetamine synthesisis, although its doubtful with the pills drying up as a source for pseudoephedrine/ephedrine in the US that US cooks are even using that red phosphorus/iodine reaction much, its just reputation mostly thats making it hard for the rest of us, at least, especially in the US, its right up there on the watched list) And winning it from readily available phosphate salts is difficult, and if one were to carefully (extremely carefully for it is lethally toxic) decompose the phosphine and diphosphine released from mole smokes containing metal phosphides (plus whilst afaik PH3, the phosphorus analog of ammonia, where P stands in place of nitrogen, is just plain toxic, P2H4 is both toxic AND pyrophoric, spontaneously igniting on contact with air) But that would be a relatively low yielding, and exceedingly dangerous route IMO, and not worth it as a source of phosphorus for all but the most desperately hard-up cook or chemist) it would however, if thermally decomposed, and the exit gases also burnt after passage through ice cold water to destroy any residual escaping phosphine, provide elemental phosphorus, probably in its white allotrope.

But bugger that for a lark, wouldn't even attempt it. One bubble of the stuff could be enough to kill you. Phosphine gas is in the 'deadly toxic' category. DeadliEST? certainly not but its the sort of thing you'd class along with cyanide gas or hydrogen azide gas (hydrazoic acid gas), hydrogen sulfide, hydrogen selenide (which is actually more toxic than cyanide gas and stinks like all hell condensed onto the head of a pin, each and every rotting stinking maggot, yanked wriggling from the pus-filled buboes of its pestilent carcasses from each and every sinner ever to rot in hell. Including the paedophiles and those maggots that are waiting for george bush and tony bliar as well as theresa may, when they kick the bucket. Satan probably having a big bucket of plague fleas ready and even ordering extra maggots from hell's local lava-lake fishing tackle store, he'd have to, to get just a few, desperate and starving maggots who have extremely low standards for maggots infesting pus-slobbering abscesses bursting forth in the noxious cadaver-waste of hell's vilest. The ones that would even eat paedophile-corpses and jeremy kyle. By choice.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
Beyond the pale. Way, way beyond the pale.

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Offline Lestat

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Re: Questions for Lestat: Lestat's Lab
« Reply #85 on: March 24, 2017, 12:08:37 PM »
Some of my latest work-iodine monochloride, both in its liquid and vapor phase, and within the same container, in its solidified, crystalline state.

About 3 1/2-3 3/4 oz, its remarkably dense no matter what phase its in.. Normally it can't be stored near plastics, but these are resistant bottles left behind after an incompetent and malicious raid and search by the pigs. And they have proven themselves to have handled the same chemical for many, many months without being in the least attacked. Evidently the sample bottles they use here are made out of something very resistant, they'd have to be, to be usable for taking samples not knowing what they might be.



http://oi68.tinypic.com/o9n4vn.jpg
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Offline Lestat

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Re: Questions for Lestat: Lestat's Lab
« Reply #86 on: March 25, 2017, 07:28:31 AM »
Pic of solid state didn't turn out uploaded quite right, so here it is.

Beyond the pale. Way, way beyond the pale.

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Offline Lestat

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Re: Questions for Lestat: Lestat's Lab
« Reply #87 on: March 26, 2017, 02:41:56 PM »
Video should be ready within a day or two I hope. I've got the separate parts, there are just quite a few of them and I need to find some tool to splice them into one long clip, now the metadata has been removed.
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Offline Lestat

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Re: Questions for Lestat: Lestat's Lab
« Reply #88 on: April 05, 2017, 07:24:26 AM »
Done the video, need somewhere to host it. Youtube want my phone number for 'verification' and damned if I'm handing my identity over to google. Hell no.


Current project-electrode design for separation of sodium (and potassium, possibly also NaK alloy, the latter of the three I made a little of last night but was unable to capture it due to its extreme reactivity [its a liquid at relatively low temperatures and significantly more reactive than elemental potassium, possibly more so than both potassium and sodium 'out together' in terms of reactivity. It is, of course, sodium and potassium put together, physically speaking. Although I am not totally sure whether or not I captured any, since I did the electrolysis under petroleum spirits/vac pump oil mixture. I'll have to cut the cell open and see whats down there at the bottom of the melt, keeping it under dried naphtha whilst I open it up because I sure as shit don't want it close to me and exposed to the air. That could get nasty. And it would definitely get nasty if close to petrol. The stuff smoked and spat and sparked even under a layer of high-boiling mineral spirits and vac pump oil mixed together to the extent that it was bubbling like boiling water and giving off smoke like one of those dry ice-based smoke machines or water atomizer mist generators that sometimes get used for decorative ponds as the cell was running (electrolyte a mixture of molten potassium hydroxide and sodium hydroxide, this makes a eutectic mixture which melts as low as 200 degrees 'C, although the product, NaK alloy is reactive as hell. Its main use is in coolant systems for nuclear reactors, especially fast breeder reactor designs due to its excellent thermal conductivity. Although it would be.....rather messy....should it actually ever get loose out of the closed systems employed in that context)
Beyond the pale. Way, way beyond the pale.

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Re: Questions for Lestat: Lestat's Lab
« Reply #89 on: April 05, 2017, 03:00:57 PM »
Just waiting for pain meds to kick in so my back doesn't get sore and achy whilst I'm busy with  the drill press, and have had something to eat, then am about to finish butchering a dessert-spoon.

Given an ordinary steel dessert spoon a going over with one of the little miniature drum sander attachments for a dremel tool, now after I've had my food, about to drill it with a network of lots and lots of fine holes with a set of micro-drills so I can test out an idea for use in producing lithium sodium, potassium etc. metals, for an electrode configuration, the idea behind it is to make use of the fact that the surface tension of the molten sodium (and of course the other alkali metals, although how big the holes will need to be, if I can get away without having to make a dedicated set of spoons for each metal, I'm not sure yet) is going to be greater than the surface tension of the molten electrolyte. So, the idea, is to use a spoon, drilled full of small holes, of sufficient size to be large enough to permit the passage of molten salts (trying first with molten caustic soda however) but too small to permit the molten metal (sodium metal floats on top of molten caustic soda, albeit there is a fairly fine temperature window within which yield goes from about 75% based on current passed through the electrolyte, and outside that window, yield drops to jack and shit, with the sodium dissolving back into the melt, to form a greyish-blue colored rocky material, that seems to be a solid phase solution of metallic sodium in resolidified sodium hydroxide, its got characteristics of both, in that it sparks and pops in water, oxidizes in air, but upon dissolution fully in water, produces a highly alkaline, caustic solution, the dissolution being strongly exothermic. Part way between the two in properties, an interstitial phase, although not nearly as close in properties to sodium metal as would be desirable. 25 'C above the melting point of NaOH the yield disappears completely. So, I'll be testing out my new large capacity graphite crucible tonight and whacking a good many amps through a bath of molten caustic, carefully controlled with respects to heat, and using eutectic salt mixtures to lower the melting point further. Probably caustic potash, calcium chloride, although I've been hankering after trying a tertiary mixture of these, do a few experiments with respects of melting point. and see what I can get. I'd sooner keep the KOH concentration down though as much as I can get away with at first, whilst experimenting more with the electrodes, because its really vicious stuff when molten and at a couple of hundred degrees. I've used nickel based guitar fretwire a lot for disposable electrodes, out of convenience and utility both, since its available for nothing to me in electrode-sized pieces by the bucketful, literally, and nickel is quite resistant to molten caustic soda. Caustic potash is another matter though, even diluted in molten NaOH. With NaOH, I've used the same set of electrodes all night before without much attack, after experimenting last night with a KOH/NaOH-based binary eutectic mixture, the end of the nickel alloy anode, which had started off nipped off with a pair of wire cutters had turned into a razor-sharp point, the corrosion had really done a number on it, in the space of half an hour to an hour or so, maybe an hour and a half, at most (wasn't timing it, thats autie hyperfocus for you though, getting good and stuck in)

So, if this idea works, and I think it should do, just a matter of getting the holes the right size, it should make the job of recovering the sodium or potassium metals from very hot, highly corrosive melts a lot easier, and allow for better shielding to be built in, having the hacked electro-spoon built into the physical shielding.

And when I've nailed the right dimensions for the idea, then I can invest in bigger crucibles (or see if a metal foundry I know of might even donate some really big (as far as portable ones go) ones, if they  don't re-use them, bag a few old ones etc. that would be headed for the trash (another source of plenty useful stuff in their dumpsters too, like big blocks of aluminium in rounded slug form, which come in rather handy for generating hydrogen when its wanted)

These crucibles are refractory, intended for extreme heat tolerance, although may or may not require some work on my part for corrosion resistance, and from the floor, come up to my lower thigh or so, height-wise, and I would imagine you could get 20kg of caustic soda in one even before its melted and much volume is taken up by the prills/pellets of the stuff. And unlike graphite, should resist chlorine gas, for if I wanted to have a try at hacking together a pair of them connected by salt-bridges and use table salt for the electrolyte, capturing the chlorine gas in hot, concentrated caustic soda or caustic potash in aqueous solution to produce sodium or potassium chlorates respectively, useful oxidizing agents, in order to make optimum use of the chlorine, which of course on that scale, couldn't responsibly or safely be simply vented to the atmosphere. And if the solution of hydroxide be cold rather than hot, instead of producing chlorates (mOCl3, where m=alkali or alkaline earth metal or the ammonium radical) one instead, can have it produce hypochlorites, the oxidizing agents that, in the form of sodium hypochlorite, goes into household bleach.

That way, everything gets recycled as much as humanly possible, with the main byproduct being chlorine gas, and either chlorate or hypochlorites depending on what I require the most at any given time. The main impurity in either, being salt, which would be separated from the hypochlorites/chlorates by means of fractional crystallization, making the main consumables electricity, inert gas for shielding, suitable containers plus mineral oil/petroleum spirit type stuff, dessicant for the oil the metals are stored under (which is reusable, the drying agent that is since I'd use calcium chloride, CaCl2 in its anhydrous form, which can be regenerated with heat. Preferably tapping off some excess heat from the crucibles themselves during electrolysis so resistive heating is wasted even less, some of it being used to keep electrolyte batches molten), and water.

The more efficient I can make it, the better, the more economical, the more money I could stand to make from the metals themselves and/or useful (and for many if not most hobbyist chemists, hard to obtain, not obtainable, and/or watched on the supply end)
Beyond the pale. Way, way beyond the pale.

Requiescat in pacem, Wolfish, beloved of Pyraxis.