Do we have anyone here with a Formal Education in Chemistry? BA/MA/PhD etc? Someone with a formal education in chemistry, I have a process I need an Actual Chemist to weigh in on, let me know if it will work, if its sound chemistry and any dangers I may not see from the procedure and how to avoid them. I want to make stabilized mono-silicic acid and I have only been able to find ONE process online for it, I know just enough about chemistry to follow the process to the letter, but NOT enough about chemistry to know if it will work and if its safe for plants following this process.
Here is the Procedure.
Potassium silicate (at least 32% K as K2O)
Carnitine hydrochloride
Phosphoric acid (85%)
Propylene glycol
Distilled water
Scale to weight the materials (precision of at least +/- 0.1g, max at least 500g)
To prepare around 425g of stabilized mono-silicic acid, you could follow this process.
Before continuing please make sure you understand what you’re doing. Wear adequate eye and body protection, carry this out in a place with enough ventilation and make sure you read the material safety data sheet (MSDS) of all the materials used. These instructions are provided for educational purposes only, follow them at your own risk.
Add 10g of carnitine hydrochloride to a clean 1000mL beaker
Add 65g of distilled water to the mix.
Stir until all the carnitine hydrochloride dissolves
Add 10g of propylene glycol.
Add 240g of 85% phosphoric acid.
Put the mixture on an ice bath with ample ice.
Wait for 15 minutes, so that the mixture cools down.
During the course of an hour, slowly add 125g of potassium silicate to the mixture with constant stirring. Add more ice to the ice bath if needed to keep the solution cool. Note that predissolving the silicate in 150mL of distilled water and adding it as a liquid makes this process easier, although KOH additions might be required to complete its dissolution.
After this, you should be left with an acidic, completely translucid, carnitine and propylene glycol stabilized mono-silicic acid solution that should be around 7-8% w/w of Si as elemental Si. If there’s any precipitate in the solution then the stabilization process did not go well and the silicic acid formed polymerized into silica. This solution should then be used at around 1g/gal, which will provide ~18-20ppm of Si as elemental Si in your hydroponic solution. When using this solution,. the silicon present at the pH used in hydroponics should be much more stable than when derived from direct addition of potassium silicate.
Basically try to grow the nicest stuff possible for as cheap as possible. Has led me to have a shit ton of raw salts and to DIY anything I possibly can and save from insane markups.