I know nothing about chemistry, never had the occasion to take it in high school and never had the brains to learn it on my own. Even tried one of those Chemistry for Dummy’s books and failed that course.
But I have used Hydrochloric acid, to fill batteries many years ago when they used to come dry, and Muriatic to clean the new hanger concrete before sealing it with epoxy.
If you cut Hydrochloric acid with water to make a weak solution or keep cutting it till is so weak as to make it none harmful, like to pour it out behind the barn or wash it out into the gravel, what happens to the solution when the water evaporates out of it? Does it turn back into a strong Hydrochloric acid again????
As far as that goes, I've been using a strong Phosphoric acid bath (about five gallon) to de-rust smaller steel parts. Since a dilute solution of Phosphoric is what is used to give the bite to some soft drinks and as a metal prep for bodywork, and Phosphoric and Muriatic for pools and concrete cleaning and it seems to be acceptable to wash it down the drain or out in the drive, what happens to the PH of the solution when it looses the water that it was diluted with????
Come on now, there has to be some chemists out there who feel comfortable with this and have pondered the same thing.
Denny Graham
Sandwich, IL
