Borax and Baking Soda
In today’s podcast, we’re going to look at the differences and similarities between borax and baking soda.
Baking soda
First of all, let’s look at baking soda. Baking soda is a common household ingredient that can be used for many purposes, including cleaning, cooking, preserving, and baking. It’s also known as sodium bicarbonate or simply bicarb. While most people are familiar with its usage around the home, it has many health benefits.
It can be used as a natural antiacid to relieve digestion or heartburn and is effective in treating acne and other skin conditions. Baking soda is also used to absorb moisture, neutralize, odors, and scour surfaces. It can make cakes and muffins rise and keep the refrigerator smelling fresh.
When used correctly, this compound is a safe and effective way to clean, cook and bake. However, it’s important to exercise caution when using this substance as it can be an irritant if not used properly.
Besides its cleaning properties, it’s used for pest control. it increases the alkalinity of water sources, it’s a mild disinfectant. a neutralizer for acids and bases, it can be used as a fire extinguisher as well as an inhibitor for fungi growth in agriculture. It can be used as cattle feed supplement, as an antiseptic for preventing infections, and as an ingredient in mouthwashes and deodorants.
The natural mineral of sodium bicarbonate is nahcolite whose deposits can be found in Colorado in the green river formation. During times of high evaporation within the basin, nahcolite was accumulated as beds.
It is industrially mined just like coal mining using common underground mining strategies like bore, drum, and longwall mining. It is also mined by pumping bored water through nahcolite beds and crystallizing the dissolved nahcolite using a cooling crystallization process.
In contrast, how does borax compare? Borax, also known as sodium tetraborate, is a common name for anhydrous or hydrated sodium borate. It’s commonly used for decahydrate sodium borate. And so its chemical formula reflects this.
Borax, unlike baking soda, is mined rather than manufactured and the vast majority of this compound is obtained from dried-up lakes in California, in Turkey. Borax is an effective cleaning product for the same reasons that baking soda is effective. It’s alkaline and abrasive. It can be used to clean drains, clean dishwashers, deodorize carpets and eliminate rust stains.
Besides its cleaning capabilities, borax can be used as a buffering agent in swimming pools to control the pH of the water, as a water softening agent, for gold extraction in small-scale gold mining, as a food additive, as an ingredient in enamel glazes. a component of glass and ceramics, as a fire retardant and as a flux in metal and alloys melting to remove impurities and inhibit oxidation.
It’s also useful for killing weeds and getting rid of pesky bugs, such as cockroaches. Unrelated to cleaning it’s a key ingredient in making slime, a hugely popular toy used by kids.
Natural sources of borax include evaporite deposits formed by the frequent evaporation of seasonal lakes. Turkey, Boron, California, and Searles Lake, California have the most commercially significant deposits. Furthermore, borax has been discovered in many other locations throughout the Southwest United States, the Atacama desert in Chile, and newly discovered deposits in Bolivia, Tibet, and Romania. Borax can also be synthesized from other boron compounds.
Can Borax and Baking Soda be Mixed?
To remove tough set-in stains, borax and baking soda mixture can be a helpful cleaning solution to try out. This method combines one teaspoon of borax and one teaspoon of baking soda in a bowl. Pour half glass of hot water and stir until the ingredients dissolve. Then use a sponge or cloth to scrub the paste onto the stain.
They’re also useful to clean laundry. In this method, fill the bathtub with warm water and add a mixture of baking soda, borax, and laundry detergent. Allow 30 minutes for your laundry to soak before washing as usual. This method is ideal for towels, bedsheets, and other linens, but it can also be used cautiously on clothes.
So, which one is better? Since both compounds are alkaline and abrasive, they’re both effective as cleaning agents. However, borax has a relatively high Ph. So it’s slightly tougher. But potentially more effective as a cleaning agent. It’s also antifungal, anti-microbial, and anti-bacterial.
And that’s all from Borates Today. For more information on borax as a cleaning agent, please refer to Borates Today, website. Meanwhile, thanks for listening.
