What is prussiate of potash?
When you picture Prussian blue—the first modern synthetic pigment, the hue of Hokusai's "Great Wave" & Napoleon's uniforms—you're really picturing the ghost of CAS 14459-95-1: Potassium Ferrocyanide Trihydrate, K₄[Fe(CN)₆]·3H₂O, also known as "yellow prussiate of potash".
It arrives as innocent lemon-yellow crystals, soluble in water, sweetly clumping-free in your breakfast salt. Yet each 422g cube hides a 3-billion-year-old story: iron that once spun in the core of a dying star, carbon & nitrogen forged in super-nova flames, now parked on your lab bench.
In 1706 a Berlin color-maker heated blood & potash with iron—accidentally oxidized some iron, then reduced it again. The deep-blue precipitate was Prussian blue, Fe₄[Fe(CN)₆]₃, the first coordinated-metal pigment, cheaper&more stable than ultramarine ground from lapis lazuli.
But the real wizard is the potassium salt left in solution. Chemists realized it could:
1.Scavenge cesium & thallium in poisoned patients (modern ER kits still carry it).
2.Template magnetic Prussian-blue nanoparticles for next-gen batteries & hydrogen storage.
3.Sense copper, zinc, iron at ppb levels—drop a grain on chromatography paper & watch rainbow rings bloom.
Food-grade E536, "anti-caking agent" keeps your salt snowy even in monsoon humidity.
Toxicity? Surprisingly low—rats munch grams per kilo.
BUT add hot acid (or even acidic gastric juice in megadoses) and the tightly bound cyanide unclips as deadly HCN gas.
Moral: respect the complex, never flirt with strong acids outside a fume hood.
Storage tips:
1.Keep in a tight, amber bottle (light slowly oxidizes Fe²⁺ → Fe³⁺, tinting your stock green).
2.Label both chemical name & CAS 14459-95-1—regulators love traceability.
3.Segregate from acids, oxidizers, aluminum & copper powders to avoid cyanide release or exotherm.
From star-forged atoms to Japanese woodblocks, from battlefield coats to MRI contrast agents, this humble yellow salt proves that chemistry's smallest footnotes often write history's biggest chapters.
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