You can mitigate it somewhat by adding very small amounts of the metal to the water but not small enough to make a powder , but you'll still get some heat development. And it is happening right under a possibly explosive hydrogen-air mixture - not a good idea. So my recommendation is to just buy food grade lye and use that. It will save you from lots of headaches.
You clarified that you had planned to use electrolysis. This is possible, and sodium chloride is certainly a more benign ingredient than pure sodium.
The resulting sodium hydroxide should be safe for consumption. Still, I think it's more trouble than it's worth, and purchasing commercial lye is the better option.
First, you still have to manage your byproducts. You'll get elemental hydrogen and elemental chlorine bubbling up. You don't want either of these gases floating in your living space, hydrogen being explosive and chlorine plain poisonous. Also, if you want a decent lye concentration, you usually do the reaction in a container where the electrodes are separated by a semipermeable barrier, else it reacts right back to salt.
The problem is that your product will corrode most barriers quickly. I have done it as a kid in a u-shaped part of a drinking straw, with a piece of sponge in the middle.
The lye ate the sponge away, and before that the chlorine turned the water in its part sickly green yes, you have to dispose of that byproduct too somehow, it doesn't get out so quickly.
If you use this method, it will be very hard to either find a barrier which is not corroded by the lye, or accept some corrosion but make sure that the product which will contaminate your lye is not harmful when eaten.
Then there is the part about electrodes Wayfaring Stranger mentions in a comment: you want to choose a cathode material which is not dangerous when ingested, especially no heavy metals. To complete the equipment safety part, use a glass container for the whole bath, not a plastic or metal one. And of course, don't use phenolphtalein drops to check for the proper concentration, get dry strips for dipping.
I know this question is old, but I am in the process of making lye right now. My homemade lye is potassium hydroxide, while purchased lye is sodium hydroxide. I believe that our ancestors used the same method I am using to make the lye that they used for cooking. I am using hardwood ash, from burning oak and apple wood. I collected rainwater during recent storms, and have had the ash and rainwater soaking for the past two weeks.
I let it sit until it reached a ph of Right now we are reducing it by heating it up for evaporation. I will know that it is sufficiently concentrated when a potato or egg floats in the lye solution with an area the size of an quarter floats above the surface.
I am doing this to make soap, the way our ancestors did. They had to make lye using the same process. But then my mind turned to the foods that use lye.
Is my lye food grade? Yes, I think it must be. We grill food using oak and apple wood. It adds a wonderful flavor. The only other ingredient is rainwater, which has been leaching the lye out of the ashes, and then simmered to concentrate it. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top.
Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. What makes lye food grade? Ask Question. Log in. Get the print magazine, 25 years of back issues online, over 7, recipes, and more.
Start your FREE trial. Fine Cooking. Sign Up Login. Ingredient Food-grade Lye. Buy Now. Save to Recipe Box. Add Private Note. Saved Add to List Add to List. Add Recipe Note. Most Popular. Classic Tomato Soup Recipe. Potato Gnocchi Recipe. Osso Buco Recipe. Classic Bread Stuffing Recipe. How to use it Lye is very caustic; if can sting your skin and stain or pit some work surfaces, so use caution when working with it. Click here to purchase Private Notes Edit Delete. The modern soap making process has been revolutionized by artisans, using only the best and most nourishing fatty acids olive oil for example to create healthy, moisturizing, skin loving bars.
Sodium hydroxide NaOH is made using the chloralkali process. Today lye is made by passing an electrical current through a sodium chloride NaCl solution. Through the use of a special membrane, the resulting NaOH lye solution is allowed to exit the cell and be collected while the other products remain behind. The lye is further reduced and sold in flakes, beads or pellet form. Industrial lye is used where the primary interest is caustic power.
It is used in the manufacture of textiles, paper and detergents. Some common household products that use lye are oven and drain cleaners. Red Devil Lye was the most famous version, found in hardware stores for many years. Red Devil was removed from the market due to health risks from heavy metal impurities. Food grade lye is used to cure many types of food such as olives, Lutefisk, hominy, canned mandarin oranges and pretzels.
It is also used in the manufacturing of Japanese ramen noodles. Food grade lye is highly processed with very, very few impurities.
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