Found as stated, whilst dumpster-diving hoping for copper pipe, lead sheeting or piping, copper wire, any valuable scrap metal (IMO if its been thrown in a skip, for the trash, then its completely fair game to dumpster-dive and take whatever is in there. I'd expect and be fine with people taking things I threw in a skip if I'd ever hired a skip and thrown things away in it.
I was hoping for enough money in scrap metal for maybe a meal, or a pack of decent cigars, maybe even one proper cigar, or for thrown out technology that may have thought to be broken but in fact just in need of a replacement part. Got a computer that way once, and a microwave. The MW works fine, just needed the timer resetting. I use it as a lab MW now, so I can do syntheses and experiments that involve toxic reagents, rather than limit myself to totally nontoxic, nonhazardous reagents and solvents in the household MW. Or if something is toxic, then it had to be TOTALLY nonvolatile at any reasonable temperature (and with MW synths of any kind one must continuously monitor the temperature since MW heating is totally different in its physics from regular heating by application of a flame. Perhaps most similar to induction heating. But unlike say, applying heat via heating a container full of whatever is to be heated either with or without solvent over a burner, or on a hotplate, microwaves induce heating on the molecular level by excitation of the magnetic dipole moments of atoms as I understand it, and the heating rate is very nonlinear. That is to say, a length of irradiation at a given output wattage of MW energy that would raise a sample of a given size starting at room temperature (lets take RT to = 20 degrees 'C) to for example 50 degrees over X number of seconds, may if starting rather than from RT, but from 40 'C raise the temperature over an irradiation time of X seconds to not the expected 70 'C but to 80, or if the temperature started from be 50 'C then after X seconds the temperature might spike up to 120-130 even with the same output wattage and irradiation time.
So you've GOT TO watch the temperature like a hawk, unless using specially made laboratory microwaves (they exist, MW chem is developing all the time and getting to be used quite often, and its often MASSIVELY, drastically more effective and faster than conventional heating. For example, for a specific synthesis that requires a temperature of 60-70 'C as effective temp. range for conducting the reaction and is done over 6 to sometimes 8 hours on a steam bath, keeping it at that temperature all the time, you get a lot of time taken up out of your precious work time, and also a lot more byproducts in the specific rxn I think of here, although will not name for certain reasons. Somebody clued me into it, and I went and started to pioneer the use of it and have developed it into something of an art taking proper full form amongst a certain brotherhood of chemists of certain inclinations and have developed enough skill at it to teach others now:)
It in the microwave form, takes not 6 hours AT 60-70 'C, but a PEAK temperature of this range, done in pulses, cooling it down in a cold water bath until it again reaches room temperature, and irradiation time of at first burst, just under one minute, thereafter done in bursts of maybe 20 seconds, 30s, examining the thermometer by taking the vessel out of the microwave every ten-fifteen seconds or so and rather than heating at the peak temp for all the time, using it as a maximum value and using total irradiation time as the important guiding factor. And rather than 6-7 hours, lots of byproducts as dirty reddish mother liquors, a solid block of not far from quantitative yield, in 20 minutes of irradiation time (900 watts output power) using pulsed irradiation and intermittent cooling, allowing the peak temperature to be reached once, and then kept lower throughout, before finally rather than a cooling bath, putting the borosilicate glass flask into the freezer after taking the thermometer out temporarily, scratching with a glass rod (NOT the thermometer, thats bad lab practice and they are too delicate which is why its bad practice, a solid or hollow glass rod works just fine, followed by one final burst of irradiation from freezer cold temperatures to 60-70 degrees 'C.)
I've been meaning to experiment further with starting from sub-zero temperatures, to see if it can be irradiated longer and the last traces of precursor reacted. But put this way, 6-7 hours down to 20 minutes, near quantitative yield in the microwave, compares with, on the steam bath or hotplate to lots of byproducts, and an entire cup full of dirty looking red mother liquor from which multiple crops of crystals have to be freeze precipitated out and recrystallized in addition to the conventional cleaning workup, catalyst removal etc. The cleaning out of catalyst must be done with the microwave reaction too, but rather than a cup full (at the scale the rxn was done at in this particular case) of mother liquor, unreacted chemicals and byproducts, there, in the flask, upon freezing, was one solid block of product, with less than a teaspoonful of solid adduct formed from one of the precursors, and maybe 10ml to 15-20ml if that, after sucking dry over the vacuum line in the buchner funnel.
And most of that could be recycled too.
And rather than dirty, dark red product, it was the pure, sparkly yellow crystals expected from a high-quality product. Even before recrystallization. And no vacuum distillation of the intermediate required!
In short, microwave chemistry can seriously kick the fuck out of a megaton of arses:autism:
In fact, that reaction has NEVER ONCE been re-done using conventional heating methods. Never. And it won't, not when a microwave is available.
