polnud-ga,
The short answer to your Question is, “Sodium ascorbate has a
hardness/abrasiveness that is less than that for salt, and about equal
to or slightly less than that of sugar.” Allow me to explain below.
Chemical or mineral hardness is the ability of a surface to resist
abrasion. The term is also used in water chemistry to indicate the
total amount of divalent salts present in solution, usually either
calcium or magnesium, but this latter application of “hardness,” as
with “hard water,” does not appear to be the one which applies to you
here. (Please correct me in a Clarification if I am mistaken).
The hardness of the mineral halite (which is composed entirely of
sodium chloride—ordinary table salt) is known to have a value of 2.5
on Moh's scale of hardness (1-10). (Note: On this scale, talc = 1 and
diamond = 10). This means that if you clumped your table salt together
into a big rock (or found a chunk of naturally occurring halite) you’d
be able to scratch its surface with a fingernail. See the following
mineralogical website from webmineral.com, which also includes a table
defining the Moh's scale of hardness:
[http://webmineral.com/data/Halite.shtml ].
By “sugar,” if you are referring to sucrose (ordinary table sugar),
the mineralogical term ‘hardness” is not applicable, since sugar
(sucrose) is technically not a mineral. It’s not classified as a
mineral because it’s an organic compound. From the following
University of Tennessee at Martin (UTM) mineralogy website
[http://216.239.57.104/search?q=cache:JGE-CPuhU1kJ:www.utm.edu/departments/artsci/ggp/faculty/ElShazly/111CourseNotes/MINERALS.DOC+mineralogy+hardness+sucrose+sugar&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
]:
“(b) Inorganic nature: According to this definition, sucrose (sugar)
is not a mineral, even though it has a definite internal structure,
and a specific chemical composition, simply because it is an organic
compound.”
As someone with a B.S. degree in biology from a major U.S. University,
who took inorganic, organic and bio-chemistry, as well as some
geology, I have never heard of sucrose being given a hardness value on
Moh's scale of hardness).
At any rate, sodium ascorbate, which is the chemical name for “Vitamin
C,” is a sodium salt of moderate to strong organic acids. (For
reference, see:
[http://monographs.iarc.fr/htdocs/iarcpubs/pub147/pub147consensus.html
], from IARC Scientific Publications No. 147).
A good measure of its hardness may be obtained by examining a typical
“Vitamin C” pill or tablet. Such a pill is more easily scratched than
table salt—indeed, it readily crumbles when scratched with a
fingernail. If it were a mineral (which it is not), it would be rated
near the bottom (1-1.5, comparable to talc or perhaps gypsum) on the
Moh's scale of hardness (1-10).
So, although sugar and abscorbic acid are not true minerals and thus
have no formally recognized “hardness” value as true minerals do, we
can still make a sound qualitative assessment as to their relative
hardnessess, or abrasiveness.
Consider three rocks lying before you on a table, all of approximately
equal physical dimensions (size). The first rock is halite (“rock
salt”), which is your sodium chloride. If you pick this rock up and
scratch it with moderate force using a fingernail, it will leave a
clearly discernable mark. Other than that, however, the rock will be
the same as it was before you scratched it. Now we look at rock # 2,
which is a piece of “rock candy.” This represents your sugar (sucrose,
as opposed to fructose or glucose). If you pick this rock up and
scratch it, it will likely fragment along at least one of its facets,
possibly even shatter. Now, “rock” # 3 is a large “Vitamin C” pill,
which represents your ascorbic acid. If you scratch your fingernail
across the pill with the same force used on the salt rock and rock
candy, you will see that not only does it leave a scratch, but that
some powder residue is released from the pill, which means you have
physically altered its structure. Also, about one third of the time if
you try this, the pill will fracture.
This is a way of visualizing the fact that the sodium chloride is the
hardest and most abrasive of the three. The absorbic acid is of
approximately the same hardness and abrasiveness as the sugar, and
most likely slightly less so.
Keep in mind that I’m only treating physical properties here (hardness
and abrasiveness). How abscorbic acid (or sucrose or sodium chloride)
reacts (or doesn’t react) chemically in your particular application is
a different story entirely. If your packager meant “abrasive” in a
chemical sense, meaning that sugar has a tooth-decay-like effect on
whatever it is that your shipping, then s/he may be right that it's a
poor packaging choice. Make sure you and the packager are talking
about the same thing—mineralogical properties of harness and
abrasiveness that if ignored could cause product damage due to
friction and abrasion from the abscorbic acid (or sugar or sodium
chloride) during shipping.
I’m going to post this as an Answer and allow you to request
Clarification if you have any further details you need to provide
about your operation in order to have me research it in a more focused
context. Please don’t hesitate to ask for Clarification if this is the
case, if you don’t understand anything I’ve written here, or if you
feel I’ve left anything out that is important to you.
Google search strategy:
Keywords,
“sodium ascorbate “:
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=sodium+ascorbate++&btnG=Google+Search
,
“hardness sodium ascorbate”:
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=off&q=hardness+sodium+ascorbate
,
“abrasiveness sodium ascorbate”:
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=off&q=abrasiveness+sodium+ascorbate&btnG=Google+Search
,
“hardness sucrose”:
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=off&q=hardness+sucrose
,
“://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=off&q=abrasiveness+sucrose
,
“hardness sodium chloride”:
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=off&q=hardness+sodium+chloride
,
“abrasiveness sodium chloride”:
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=off&q=abrasiveness+sodium+chloride
,
“sodium ascorbate packaging applications”:
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=off&q=sodium+ascorbate++packaging+applications&spell=1
“mineralogical hardness”:
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=off&q=mineralogical+hardness&btnG=Google+Search
,
“mineralogical abrasiveness”:
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=off&q=mineralogical+abrasiveness
I hope this Answer helps you with your need for information on this
topic. Good luck in continuing your inquiries!
Sincerely,
omniscientbeing-ga
Google Answers Researcher |
Clarification of Answer by
omniscientbeing-ga
on
01 Oct 2003 17:45 PDT
polnud-ga,
After studying your Clarification request, I think there may be some
confusion going on as to the context of our definition of "hardness."
The chemically oriented definition of hardness is defined as "the
concentration of multivalent metallic cations in solution
including:<calcium (Ca+2), magnesium (Mg+2), potassium (K+), sodium
(Na+),aluminum (Al3+), iron (Fe2+), manganese (Mn2+) and strontium
(Sr2+)."
See [ http://216.239.57.104/search?q=cache:9mhjnWYbkkEJ:www.soe.uoguelph.ca/webfiles/rzytner/WQ/hardness.pdf+hardness+is+associated+with+ash&hl=en&start=4&ie=UTF-8
]for more details.
This is the definition that would seem to apply in the context of
"“hardness is associated with ash
content (level)," from your Clarification, because ash, used commonly
as a filler, reduces the relative amount of cations.
When considering "hardness" to mean the traditional sense of the word,
as in solid and abrasive, more ash content would make the substance
less hard.
From your Clarification:
Sugar is published
at around 12.5% ash level. Meanwhile, sodium ascorbate is 82%.” What
does this mean?"
I am fairly sure, although not 100% positive, that these statistics
refer to the commercial packaging of sugar and sodium ascorbate,
respectively, where that percentage of ash is used as filler. In other
words, there is a certain allowable percentage of ash in those
products, which is left over from the refining process, and typically,
a commercial bag of sugar may contain as much as 12.5% ash; likewise,
in commercially available pills, a certain amount of ash is used as a
filler and perhaps thickening agent. The percentage of ash in a
substance would be inversely related to its burn duration, in other
words, the more ash it has, the less time it takes to burn (because
ash is already burnt).
I don't think that "abrasiveness" of chemicals is a scientifically
measured metric for specific compounds. Searching Google for
"'chemical abrasiveness' measurements" yields zero results:
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=off&q=%22chemical+abrasiveness%22+measurements
Another approach to investigate would be that of measuring viscosity
and flow rates of your substance (the ascorbic acid, sodium chloride
or sucrose), if they are in some sort of solution, or in a high air or
other gas-flow type of environment. You could measure the degree of
viscosity and particle flow with each different substance. Then, you'd
figure that the one with higher flow and viscosity would have a
greater abrasive affect on whatever surfaces it comes into contact
with, in general. The following link outlines such a study, done at
the Honeywell Corporation:
[http://216.239.57.104/search?q=cache:PcLkpcLjJesJ:content.honeywell.com/imc/pdf/fi/Wedge.pdf+chemical+abrasiveness+measurements&hl=en&ie=UTF-8].
Searching Google for keywords "chemical abrasion measurements" is a
little warmer, but still produces nothing that's 100% on target to
what we seek:
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=chemical+abrasion+measurements
I am going to have to conclude at this time that there is no
universally accepted quantitative measure for abrasiveness that
includes both organic and inorganic compounds. However, I'm willing to
work with you further on this through additional Clarifications if you
can somehow provide me with more specific background information or
request examples of some type.
Good luck in your endeavor.
Sincerely,
omniscientbeing-ga
Google Answers Researcher
|
