lab shopping.
Got myself quite a few things I've needed and wanted for a while now.
Restocked on
sodium bromide (convenient source of bromine for syntheses and analytical testing for multiple bonds, Br2 is a pretty talented escape artist and likes to slowly seep out of, or rather THROUGH container walls. In fact its a complete and utter shit to store it long term or permanently on the shelf, so rather than bugger about ampouling multiple different single-serving portions and need to predict ahead of time how much I'm likely to want, drops, grams/ml, 5/10/20/50/100/250ml etc. without knowing when it is exactly I'm going to need it, and exactly how much storage as sodium or potassium bromide is much more convenient, and can be either acidified and treated with an oxidizing agent, such as HCl and hydrogen peroxide to oxidize the formed bromide anion to elemental Br2 [hydrogen peroxide is particularly useful for this because it decomposes to nothing but water and oxygen gas so the bromine is cleaner, and requires less by way of drying and distillation, which is something one has to be really quite careful in doing, to make sure the fumes are led through a suitable trap to scrub the Br2 and reform a bromide from the off-run vapors and any fuming or spitting, since it is quite toxic, more so than chlorine and considerably more dangerous than iodine. And its also more dangerous because unlike either Cl2 at atmospheric pressure and room temperature, Cl2 is gaseous and iodine is a solid [fluorine, is the worst of the non-synthetic heavy element radioactive halogens, of which there are astatine, below iodine and tennesine, both of which are the children of humans tinkering with particle accelerators and astatine, whilst at any one time as a daughter product in radioactive decay chains of other natural radioisotopes of other elements, has as its longest lived isotope a half life of just over 8 hours, as 210,At, decaying primarily through alpha radiation for most lighter isotopes, with some beta emission, increasingly so as the isotopes get heavier only ever been created in microgram quantities, although even that longest lived of its isotopes is intensely radioactive, some isotopes also decay via electron capture IIRC. )
But as for bromine, much more convenient to store it not as elemental Br2, but to generate it as and when needed, and for that, bought 1.5kg of sodium bromide, NaBr for not too much. Which is infinitely tamer to handle and store, not being particularly toxic (potassium bromide was for a long time, before we had much else, one of the first anticonvulsant drugs in reasonably modern era english/european medicine and it still is used for dogs, although at least in people it has a very very very long half life, and a tendency to bioaccumulate in the short-intermediate term producing a condition called bromism when body load of the element as bromide ion gets too high. But handling wise, just don't use it instead of table salt to salt your food, don't melt it and pour it over yourself and all its going to do if left alone is sit there, looking like table salt, and doing about as much in the way of spontaneous activity. Went for sodium over potassium bromide because the potassium cation is heavier than sodium, on a per atom basis and thus for every gram of NaBr there is proportionally more Br2 to be had from it than there is from potassium bromide. Did look for LiBr too when I bought the NaBr, but only small quantities were available and it was quite expensive, much more so, due to the value of the Li in things like electronics so no saving could be made that way though. I think I'll use replacement by elemental chlorination of the bromide in water using Cl2 gas (Cl2 being more reactive, will compete for the sodium or other metal cations in elemental bromide salts and displace bromine in the elemental state directly to give sodium chloride, I.e table salt. Which I'll just save and build a cell to recycle as much of the sodium from it as possible via electrolysis. I fancy trying to make some interhalogen compounds using Br2, with Cl and I (the fluorine-containing interhalogens are really, really damn dangerous and there is no way in hell that I'd ever attempt it in a residential area. I've read of chlorine trifluoride chewing through (I forget which way round this was) 3 meters of concrete and several feet of gravel and stones underneath, or the other way round, literally making the concrete and stone burst into flames and slagging its way down, stopping only when it had all finished reacting with what was underneath the path of the spill, after an accident with it somewhere. And a gas mask or hasmat suit wouldn't be any protection, they would just serve as fuel, and again, burst into flames on contact with even dilute concentrations in the vapor phase. Screw that for a lark. And I owe it to my neighbors too not to off any of them. I imagine the neighbors would be pretty pissed if I went and burnt a literal sink-hole all the way down to the gates of hell through the ground with an ultra-corrosive crazy powerful oxidizing agent borrowed on loan from the devil himself. I've seen what iodine monochloride can do to things like plastics and it is MUCH less reactive than ClF3 or ClF5 but even traces of vapor coming from between glassware joints without being heated or pressurized, proved enough to slag all the grease and lubricant types I had available at the time into something resembling cement, only PTFE and glass would stand up to it. And if it isn't PTFE, the sample bottles the filth use, and that they left a bunch of when they harrassed me once. I had the sense to think 'they will want the capacity to sample anything more or less without having to worry about what something in someone's lab they've broken into and fucked with might do to the container itself en route to a pig shop. So I had to rely on lots of teflon wrapped round the joints of the still I used to distill the iodine monochloride I made, I did use keck clips, but the stuff was so ferociously aggressive towards the plastic ones I had at the time they disintegrated within less than a half hour or else split and broke apart, it was as if the plastic were artificially undergoing the weathering of centuries within maybe 15-20 minutes, going from the starting green color to a pale, whitish-pallid dusty consistency. Have made a little of the corresponding trichloride of iodine as well, although as of yet, I haven't had the time or the dry, cold weather desirable for experimenting with it. ICl3 is a solid, yellow to orange in color (I noticed two colors, curious as to whether one was ICl3 with ICl soaked into it or something intermediate, didn't think iodine formed a pentachloride I'll have to check that out. Once the NaBr arrives, will have some experimenting to do preparing the chlorine and iodine containing bromine-based interhalogens such as iodine mono/tribromide and bromine pentachloride. Carefully, mind you. And using stainless steel keck clips to hold the glassware, that I've first electroplated with something that will resist the interhalogen componds produced and distilled during purification, give them a plating of nickel, might do it.
Reminds me-I need to get some perfluorocarbon based greases that will stand up to elevated temperatures as well as nasty chemicals. And more teflon tape. Went through most of a roll of the stuff making the ICl and ICl3, as well as some of a second roll to wrap the neck of the bottle where the screw thread is, that its kept in in the fridge. (its a dedicated fridge, not the regular one we use to store our victuals. It gets used to store my old man's maggots for his fishing and some of the chemicals for my hobby. They seem to survive in there though, without disintegration or self-immolating in little maggot-shaped puffs of greasy smoke and the fridge itself is in one piece without being corroded to hell, so those bottles did come in handy at least.
Bought some CH3CN (acetonitrile, the simplest of the organic cyanides, methyl cyanide, a useful aprotic polar solvent like DMSO, DMF, or HMPA, NMP etc. but unlike those, acetonitrile can be removed easily without recourse to both strong vacuum and heat boiling somewhere between 30-40 degrees 'C IIRC), got a liter of that, not a solvent I have masses of frequent use of, its not one of my workhorses so to speak, but it is still very handy for certain specific purposes. Toxic, somewhat, but it is much less toxic than ionic cyanides like potassium or sodium cyanide, or hydrogen cyanide gas/hydrocyanic acid. So to be used with care, and recovered carefully and repurified after use. Still need a few other solvents, some carbon disulfide, and in particular I want some propylene carbonate or ethylene carbonate, perhaps dimethyl carbonate, depending on which of these will dissolve the most caustic potash and caustic soda, since these unusual organic solvents can dissolve alkali metal hydroxides and conduct electrically, making it possible, since the metals won't react, to avoid high-temperature routes to preparing sodium, potassium metal etc. via electrolysis of the hydroxides in anhydrous propylene carbonate or equivalent carbonate esters. They are used as electrolytes in certain battery types, but there isn't enough in there to be worth extracting, although the lithium content is definitely worth the effort taken to fillet the batteries.
