Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Crystals formed in my acetone. What could they be?

nannah - 4-1-2015 at 13:57

Hi guys. Today when i took a look at my OTC acetone i found that small white crystals had formed. I have it standing in the fridge, in a erlenmeyer flask thats wrapped in aluminum foil to keep it from evaporating.

Before i put it in the fridge a couple of days ago i tried to dry it with some CaCl² to see if there were any water in it.

On the bottle and its msds it said that its just acetone in there.

/n

DraconicAcid - 4-1-2015 at 14:08

Weird. Maybe a very small amount of calcium chloride dissolved in the acetone, and crystallized out when you put it in the fridge.

Bert - 4-1-2015 at 14:13

Get a crystal out, dry it and place in a methanol or natural gas burner flame on a clean loop of Pt wire. Does it give the characteristic Calcium pink-orange spectrum to a flame?

[Edited on 4-1-2015 by Bert]

use of CaCl2 with ketones and aldehydes

chemrox - 4-1-2015 at 15:38

Due to the possible presence and/or formation of Ca(OH)2 and CaCl(OH) using CaCl2 is not recommended so even if the test for CaCl2 fails you may have one of the impurities listed ppt or a reaction product from the reaction of hydroxyl with acetone (http://bit.ly/1AcxPSh). I haven't worked through this but I would imagine a small degree of nucleophillic attack (Bert?)possibly forming a ppt. You might try a melting point.