Saturating ability of the borax melt

Abstract

The work is devoted to the research of influence of the electrolysis on the saturating ability of the electrolyte, which is a borax melt. To establish regularity when the saturating medium activity changes, which influences the intensification of saturation process, the structure and properties of borax during electrolysis were investigated. The change in the saturating medium activity was estimated by a relative value equal to the ratio of the boride layer depth obtained by non-electrolysis borating to the layer depth obtained by electrolysis borating. When comparing the real and theoretical saturating abilities, their convergence was observed. It was found that the saturation ability of the borax melt increases with increasing electrolyte runtime, which is due to a change in the structural components of the borax melt. A quantum-chemical calculation of the borax molecule structure was carried out using the non-empirical method of molecular orbitals in the theory of the density functional (DFT) with the three-parameter exchange-correlation functional B3LYP. Calculations show that two main structures are characteristic of a borax molecule: non-coplanar, with two mutually perpendicular 4-membered boron-oxygen cycles and flat linear. An increase in the saturation ability of the borax melt during electrolysis allows the development of new low-energy borating processes.