Talk:Calcium chloride

dissolving temperature

"The dissolving process is highly exothermic and rapidly produces temperatures of around 60 °C (140 °F)"

temperature depends on the volume of solution being heated, solution type, chloride mass added and any phase changes in the solution right, not just the energy released per mole

things to discuss:

properties -- melt,boil,weight,etc

hydrides

uses -- de-ice (eutectic), food, phase change material, etc

japanese wiki

Can somebody check the fix I did to the link to the Japanese wikipedia? I can't read the linked page, so I can't tell if this is a correct link. RickK 07:32, Nov 7, 2004 (UTC)

Colour

Anybody knows the colour of calcium chloride when damp? Piss —Preceding unsigned comment added by Khurs (talk • contribs) 11:29, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

When totally pure it should be colourless, but the technical grade product (used as a drying agent) often has a yellowish or brownish tinge to it when it gets damp.

Walkerma 17:47, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Use in concrete mixes

"It is used in concrete mixes to help speed up the initial setting and to strengthen the concrete.". Adding calcium chloride to the concrete mix will make (in about a 10-year timeframe) the rebar rust, and make way for "concreterot" (dutch: "nl:betonrot"). Rust has 6 times the volume of iron; this process will eventually crack the surface off the concrete, laying bare the rebar, further weakening the structure. Therefore, the use of calcium chloride in concrete mixes is banned in the Netherlands (at least, might be in all of Europe).

Might be worth a note. 83.160.162.119 01:20, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, chloride ion does corrode steel so this makes sense. I don't know about a ban, but I have added a warning and an external link to a recent academic report on this. If you find out "concrete" information about a ban please post this. Thanks for pointing it out. Walkerma 03:55, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

The link to the article regarding chlorides and steel corrosion isn't working. I am looking for the conditions necessary for calcium chloride to corrode stainless steels and how this process maybe changed by partial vacuum? Any help or info is appreciated. --Alexlord8 16:57, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

OK, I added a link to this article which describes both the use as an accelerant and the corrosion problem, with citations. I hope this meets your needs. I also found a recent academic paper on effects of CaCl2 on Portland cement, but I only added that into the concrete article, it seemed to fit better there. Walkerma 18:38, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Help!

What is the function of anhydrous calcium chloride?

by:Izzuddin

Hydroscopic?

It says that Calcium Chloride is hydroscopic. I don't know a lot about chemistry but wouldn't that mean that it remains dry when confronted with water? Why then is it labelled with a water crystal form afterwards? --AndreRD 13:18, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

I think you're confusing hydroscopic (hygroscopic) with hydrophobic. Hydrophobic materials (for example, Teflon/Gore-Tex) remain dry when confronted with water.

Atlant 13:36, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

HELP

What is ONE fact about calcium carbonate NOT in the article???!!! doing report and jotted down all notes i could but need 1 more!!!!!!!!!!

This is calcium chloride, not calcium carbonate. Argyriou (talk) 03:13, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Is calcium chloride edible or not?

So I got a can of sliced carrots at Whole Foods, and the ingredients listed are carrots, water, salt, and calcium chloride. I was curious as to the calcium chloride and looked it up on wikipedia. It says calcium chloride is used as a salt substitute in some foods because while it tastes very salty, it does not up the sodium content of the food. It also says it helps to keep canned foods firm (because it's so good at absorbing water, I assume). It's also used in two other food products. But then it says: "Calcium chloride is an irritant; wear gloves and goggles to protect hands and eyes; avoid inhalation. Although calcium chloride is relatively safe to handle, care should be taken that it is not ingested. Calcium chloride reacts exothermically with water and can burn the mouth and esophagus." ?! Should I be alarmed that I just ate a can of sliced carrots that had calcium chloride as an ingredient? Should I be alarmed that Whole Foods is selling it? If it's as dangerous as the wiki page says, why is it being put into food? Just curious...

(sorry, my laptop doesn't have tildes) Sofia Soledad

In small quantities, absolutely yes. Because it contains calcium rather than sodium, you can sometimes found it sold in supermarkets as a salt substitute and that's probably why it was in your carrots. In large quantities, of course, any salt is poisonous if only because it screws up your electrolyte balance.

Atlant 14:00, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

The hygroscopic waterfree calcium chloride will react in your mouth with water and will heat up, this reaction will be irritant. The hexahydrated form easyly dissolves in water and is by far less harmfull.--Stone 15:33, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Ionic?

Is calcium chloride ionic or covalent/molecular? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Difficult (talk • contribs) 23:26, 10 February 2007 (UTC).

Ionic - no question. Chlorine is strongly electronegative, calcium is moderately electropositive - hence the complete transfer of valance electrons from Ca to Cl, forming Ca2+ and Cl- ions. Coatesg (talk) 11:04, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

GA Review

Re-reviewing this article almost two years after it's[sic] original nomination to see if it still meets the GA criteria. Article hasn't changed too much in that time, although more details have been added. The article continues to meet the GA criteria, although there are some minor issues that should be fixed.

First, it looks like most of the information in the article is being 'cited' by the two listings under 'general references', and not directly with inline citations. While this is still acceptable, the use of inline citations is preferred, and the article should be converted. See WP:CITE.

Second, I removed the mention of the approximate 1990 price of $182/ton from the article. It had no source, and a 1990 price is not particularly relevant to an article today. If people want to know the price, they can go to a website selling it and find out what the exact price is today.

Third, the 'uses' section seems to have grown the most. It seems to be developing as a bulleted list, and this should ideally be converted more to prose form. These items added should probably be checked against the general reference citations, and additional references added as needed.

Dr. Cash 18:13, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

I broke the Uses section into (food) and (industrial), added cites for FDA approval (food) and tire hydroinflation. I also converted the bulleted list to prose form and removed some redundancies.

Hopefully, I didn't mangle anything too badly. CaCl2 is such a commonly used salt, it's impossible to stop listing the uses. We should find cites for the paragraph I created that starts with "Other industrial applications include", where I dumped the unexplained uses from the bullet-point list.

The medical uses could probably use review from someone more familiar with that field.

Luno 17:08, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Automatic addition of "class=GA"

A bot has added class=GA to the WikiProject banners on this page, as it's listed as a good article. If you see a mistake, please revert, and leave a note on the bot's talk page. Thanks, _BOT Giggabot (talk) 05:04, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Okay, what is the purpose of calcium chloride in transformation?

I'm writing a lab report on the uptake of plasmids into bacteria. Apparently, calcium chloride is essential to this process, as one of the steps of the lab involves adding 250 microliters of it into a solution containing E. coli. 10 microliters of plasmids are later added to two out of four beakers of E. coli, before the bacteria are heat shocked. One question I have to answer is the role of CaCl₂ in transfomation. The problem is, I've forgotten precisely what it does. Can anyone here help me out before Wednesday? --Luigifan (talk) 16:57, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

The aqueous form of calcium chloride is used in genetic transformation of cells by increasing the cell membrane permeability, inducing competence for DNA uptake (allowing DNA fragments to enter the cell more readily). --Slashme (talk) 05:02, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

gel or brine

There needs to be more info about the gel or brine that results when Calcium Chloride has adsorbed a maximum of water. It is transparent. It looks like water. But it seems to have the amazing feature of never evaporating, never drying out! -69.87.199.223 (talk) 00:13, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Solvent Welding of Nylon

Nylon can be welded with a solution of ca.cl and ethanol mixture.

Source - http://books.google.com/books?id=CF_-xp9iKHcC&pg=PT269&lpg=PT269&dq=what+solvent+welds+glues++nylon&source=bl&ots=R-b63yJeP9&sig=IUe6TVtjztIyUfAXzpBoIlurrc8&hl=en&ei=-gkFStTHJJSuMtj-pKMD&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7#PPT269,M1

why do they put this junk in all of the packaged bottled water?

Is there even a good reason to put this in bottled water, I doubt it! Does anyone know if the chlorine atoms are realeased when metabolised by the body? Im guessing they are. I think they want to make sure we get chlorine into our system one way or another, whether its from chlorinated tap water or from bottled water. Why dont any of the companys that make bottled water off just pure DISTILLED water in 16 oz bottles? I think something is going on here. Maybe they dont really filter out the water that well and the chemicals that they SAY they ADD to the water for TASTE, are really chemicals that they just fail to filter out from the water supply because that way its cheaper for them! I dont like this stuff in my water I want it out, meantime I reccomend people stop voting with your dollars and buying water with this stuff. Instead get a water cooler and fill your 5 gallon bottles at a local water outlet, or better yet get a really expensive high quality reverse osmosis or similar water filtering device and fill your own bottles. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.209.81.2 (talk) 04:50, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

First, there is a huge difference between traces of chloride ions (which is what you see in the mineral analysis of your bottled water), versus traces of free chlorine. I have never heard of water bottlers deliberately adding free chlorine; it is piped municipal supplies that have chlorine added. Free chlorine is a highly reactive chemical that is added to municipal water supplies to kill disease-causing bacteria and viruses. In a piped system they add enough to ensure that a little bit remains all the way to the tap, to guard against flaws in the pipes that might allow bugs to be reintroduced to the water. Obviously this is not necessary for bottled water. Free chlorine is not entirely harmless, but it is vastly less dangerous than the microbes that it kills. After it finds something to react with, it is mainly converted into chloride, which is low in reactivity and basically harmless (unless the concentration is very much higher than that found in drinking water.)

Some water bottlers do distribute distilled water for human consumption, and even if you can't find one who does, if you wanted to you could always buy the distilled water that is sold for topping up batteries. But there are two good reasons most bottled water is not distilled. Firstly, the process is quite expensive -- much more expensive than ordinary bottled water. Secondly, there is no health benefit whatsoever to consuming distilled water. At the very best, it is a complete waste of money. But it might be even worse than that. In fact, while it has not been conclusively proven that regular consumption of distilled water is bad for your health, the preponderance of evidence indicates that it is moderately bad for you (see distilled water#Health concern.) This should not really be surprising, since our ancestors drank water that was positively muddy. Whether or not distilled water is actively harmful to your health, it very definitely is not better than regular drinking water.

I do have to agree that people should "stop voting with their dollars": 95% of the time there is no need to buy bottled water because the municipal supply is perfectly good. Ironically, one concern that sometimes arises with municipal supplies is that under certain conditions, some of that free chlorine reacts to produce not harmless chloride ions, but chloroform, and in some cases this can reach levels that may potentially be (slightly) harmful. The irony is that the reverse osmosis system that you recommend has no effect on chloroform levels: it passes straight through a RO membrane. It is also difficult to distill out; you need fractional distillation because it is more volatile than water itself. The best way to lower chloroform levels in water is just to air it for several hours. Boiling in an open-topped vessel also reduces chloroform concentrations. -- 203.20.101.203 (talk) 07:57, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

about calcium chloride & copper (II) chloride...

I'm just a form 3 student...i'm here to ask about below two crystals,can they absorb water,and which one absorb the water faster.

1.calcium chloride 2.copper (II) chloride

i'm here to wish anyone can solve this problem for me... thank you... from:Michelle Yewen — Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.50.8.34 (talk) 17:51, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Piscines?

In this quote: "Calcium chloride is used to increase the hardness in swimming pools and piscines." I am confused by the word "piscines". As far as I know, this is just the French word for "swimming pool". I looked it up in several dictionaries and cannot find anywhere that it is considered to be a noun in English. Is this just the work of a confused francophone contributor? 70.116.13.152 (talk) 15:35, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Solubility in water

It seems that the reported water solubility is different from the CRC chemical handbook (rubber bible) by as much as a factor of two. wiki 74.5 g/100mL and CRC handbook 42.13 % (w/w). Granted the units are not the same, but assuming that the solubilisation causes only minor volume changes to the water, the units are certainly comparable.

I would assume that the solubility refers to the anhydrate (as far as I can tell this is not explicitly stated any where). If the solubilities refer to one of the hydrates they could very well be correct.

Troelsbach (talk) 07:50, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

74.5g of CaCl2 in 100g of Water is: 74.5 / (74.5 + 100) = 0.4269 ---> 42.69% (w/w). Pretty similar to the rubber bible! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.171.195.235 (talk) 12:01, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Removal of how-to section on aquaria

Today I removed a section from this article describing how to create a solution of calcium chloride for use in a marine aquarium and without any citations for same. While the information was interesting, such how-to instructions do not belong in a Wikipedia article (see WP:NOTHOWTO). They could certainly be re-written describing how other people use calcium chloride in marine aquaria, along with at least one citation for same, no? But the section as it stood was a how-to guide, and that's not the goal of the project. Also, uses in marine aquaria already are mentioned in the article several paragraphs earlier, so the section was redundant as well. KDS4444^Talk 16:51, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Is that a poem?

It's presented as one would be:

   "A chalky taste in the mouth
   Hot flushes
   Lowered blood pressure
   Loss of appetite
   Feeling sick (nausea)
   Being sick (vomiting)
   Constipation
   Stomach pain
   Feeling weak
   Mental disturbances
   Extreme thirst
   Passing a large amount of urine
   Bone pain
   Calcium deposits in the kidney
   Kidney stones
   Irregular heart beat
   Coma" 

But oh, the depressing final line. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.76.96.144 (talk) 19:46, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Fixed to be a bulleted list. You could have too. vlad§inger ^tlk 04:51, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Article

In my opinion, the article looks good excepting the shape of the article. On my iMac, 1920x1080 display, I see the right chembox is longer than the article itself, which does not look aesthetically pleasing.

Qwertyxp2000 (talk) 07:18, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Effect On Plants and Soil

"Calcium chloride dissolution is exothermic, and the compound is relatively harmless to plants and soil; however, recent observations in Washington state suggest it may be particularly harsh on roadside evergreen trees.[13]"

I'm not sure where the information that it is relatively harmless to plants and soil came from, but I accidentally spilled some on a 10' by 20' area and it killed everything in that area. Absolutely nothing has grown there for 3 years - not even weeds.

74.98.138.194 (talk) 12:23, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Contains metals?

Resolved

- Clarifying edits to the page were made since this discussion began. This question is no longer a concern.

Spadfield (talk) 15:50, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

"Calcium chloride salts also tend to contain a small amount of metals, especially aluminium."

This is a pretty serious claim. Is there any citation to support this? If not, can we remove it?

Spadfield (talk) 22:01, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

• Commercial products will be contaminated to various extents with different metals depending on the method of manufacture. Sorry I am not coming out with a citation. For many uses, such as road defrosting it does not matter. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 07:52, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

Crystal structure

Structure of calcium chloride, (chlorine is green, calcium is gray) - wrong?

Hello, I a m suspicious about the image chosen for the crystal structure of CaCl2. The same one is used in the french wikipedia (and probably many others); there is not the correct amount of Ca and Cl ions in this elementary cell, and it does not correspond to the description of the right panel Orthorhombic (anhydrous), Tetragonal (anhydrous > 217 °C). The wikipage [Rutile] shows an example of the crystal structure that could correspond to the tetragonal phase, P42mnm, it owuld also be nice to have a diagram of the Pnnm lattice, and to show both in the article. Can anyone confirm that there is a mistake here ? Lgostiaux (talk) 18:20, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

• Indeed, by my count that structure has the formula M
  ₂Cl
  ₆ or MCl
  ₃, i.e. a chloride of a trivalent metal. I am removing the image until the issue is clarified. --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 04:57, 5 March 2017 (UTC)
• Its ok. Scared me though. Two Cl (green) are completely inside the cell and four are half in. 2 + (4)(1/2) = 4. --Smokefoot (talk) 11:17, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

cardiac toxicity?

I'm not sure what is meant by "Calcium chloride injection may decrease cardiac toxicity as measured by electrocardiogram." User:Doc James, any comment? --Slashme (talk) 20:23, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

Changed to "improve appearance of ECG". Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:34, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

provide inhibition of swelling clays?

I have no idea what "It is also used to provide inhibition of swelling clays" means. Any ideas? --Slashme (talk) 20:46, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

Solubility data seems off

Here's what it says about soluability in water:

• Anhydrous: MW=110.98
• 74.5 g/100 mL (20 °C)

• Hexahydrate: MW=219.07
• 49.4 g/100 mL (−25 °C)
• 59.5 g/100 mL (0 °C)
• 65 g/100 mL (10 °C)
• 81.1 g/100 mL (25 °C)
• 102.2 g/100 mL (30.2 °C)

• α-Tetrahydrate: MW=183.04
• 90.8 g/100 mL (20 °C)
• 114.4 g/100 mL (40 °C)

• Dihydrate: MW=147.01
• 134.5 g/100 mL (60 °C)
• 152.4 g/100 mL (100 °C)

I added the molecular weights

90.8g of Dihydrate = 68.55 g CaCl2 + 22.25g H20

Seems very strange that less CaCl2 dissolves when we're actually adding more solvent contained in the dihydrate crystals.