The new mag stir-plate stirbars came today, plus my 95% non-denatured ethanol and another much awaited chemical, which will remain un-named. As did some calcium silicide (for some experiments towards producing some chloro- or bromosilanes or silicon tetrahalides for use in synthesis of phenylsilane, as well as a tris-(divinyl)tetramethyldisiloxane based organoplatinum complex that if I do it myself starting from platinum metal, producing the chloroplatinic acid I need myself will work out an awful lot cheaper per gram than if I were to buy the same stuff (for some reason even the phenylsilane is horribly expensive. The catalyst...its about half a grand for 25g, and there are minimum orders. So hopefully I can undercut commercial suppliers on the hydrosilylation catalyst by making it myself. Precious metal compounds usually are more expensive than the metals themselves. I can start from platinum metal by using aqua regia (a mixture of concentrated nitric acid and hydrochloric acid that generates nitrosyl chloride, enabling it to dissolve, when hot, platinum in fine dust form where neither nitric acid or hydrochloric acid attack platinum in the least. IIRC I've still got some Pt dust around somewhere that I can use too for a test quantity. Not sure how much I've got, a gram or maybe two at most, but still, most of the weight of the catalyst is in the organosilane part. So I should be able to get at least a gram to test it with, and it is re-usable for multiple reactions. And even if it loses catalytic activity after many uses, I can still burn it to ashes in a crucible, remove the organic residues with something like piranha acid (concentrated sulfuric acid and hydrogen peroxide, so named for being bloody vicious, nasty ass shit, and a very powerful oxidizer capable of oxidizing inorganic carbon to carbon dioxide gas, and reprocess the residues to recover the platinum content.
(with precious metal catalysts like platinum or palladium on charcoal, lindlar catalyst, wilkinson's, adams, karstedt's etc. they retain catalytic effects for mamy uses as long as certain elements like sulfur or lead are not there which can poison Pt, Pd, iridium and other precious metals of the Pt group, but the element is still in there and they can still be reprocessed for the precious metal content for use in re-making the catalysts after purification, or at the very worst, if something were to make it unsaveable as a catalyst then at least saved up and sold on for scrap with which to buy more, fresh Pt.
Been contemplating something as well, to make a few extra £, namely buying up silver at scrap prices, and dissolving it in concentrated nitric acid, to make silver nitrate, which per gram can be sold for more than silver itself. And nitrates aren't expensive, already got a few pounds of sodium nitrate, and all thats needed is to distill a mixture of sodium or potassium nitrate with concentrated sulfuric acid, which is much less volatile, to produce concentrated nitric acid of either grade (there are two products, white and red fuming nitric acid, with conc. HNO3. The white is just highly concentrated nitric, the red is fuming nitric acid which has had additional NO2 added to it, similar to how fuming sulfuric acid has a stronger variant, with some different properties, oleum, which is a solution of sulfuric anhydride (sulfur trioxide) in 100% sulfuric acid (damn nasty stuff but it does have its uses)
My 2-pyrrollidone came as well. Plus that other, unnamed reagent, that I was down to my last 100ml or less. Got me a fresh liter of that (and the person that sold it me included a note from them offering me a few pounds off per liter from my next purchase if we take it via bank transfer and private email)
Of course I'll have to test the product first, for boiling point, specific gravity, run at least paper chromatography to test for impurities and use it in a reaction successfully too before I do anything of the kind. Guy does have 99-100% public reviews positive though. So as long as a good working relationship is established, getting money off for what amounts to me as a gain, in privacy terms is a pretty good twofer.
Got some proper sleep today after barely getting a couple of hours of restless, crappy sleep last night.
But all that is tempered harshly by the loss of someone I really cared for:(
