Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Domestic (USA) sodium borohydride or lithium aluminum hydride?

thors.lab - 21-12-2020 at 04:30

Hi,

They sell NaBH4 on Amazon but it's fairly pricey. Not sure if this is the "standard" price -- but buying 50g on Amazon works out to about $70 after shipping and tax. If anybody can offer a better deal I'd love to take you up on that. I don't think I need 50g though (most of my experiments are small scale).

It would be nice to have some LAH too. Really hard to get ahold of and I've had to come up with alternate routes many times because of this...

Thanks,

monolithic - 21-12-2020 at 10:30

Try www.chemsavers.com but you will probably pay a lot of money for HAZMAT shipping. Otherwise I recommend Onyxmet, even though they are international (Poland.)

thors.lab - 21-12-2020 at 12:35

Quote: Originally posted by monolithic  
Try www.chemsavers.com but you will probably pay a lot of money for HAZMAT shipping. Otherwise I recommend Onyxmet, even though they are international (Poland.)


Thanks! Pretty much the same price as Amazon after HAZMAT fee, but Amazon's probably quicker :)

I'm worried about customs seizures and wait times to be honest. My latest international package took nearly 4 weeks to get here. And if I spend four weeks planning a synth only for it to get ruined by customs seizure... lol

JJay - 21-12-2020 at 14:42

Sodium borohydride is sometimes freely available in bulk and sometimes expensive and hard to find. Lithium aluminum hydride is always expensive and hard to find. It can be made by combining lithium hydride with aluminum chloride or aluminum bromide in an ether solution. Aluminum halides can be made fairly easily in the amateur lab. Lithium hydride, on the other hand, is a bit harder to make. Len1 did it....

I've never had customs actually seize anything, but they are rather nosy and sloppy at times, and you definitely don't want them to leave your sodium borohydride open to the air and leaking out of the package. Onyxmet will at least put factual information on the label, which should deter customs from opening the package.

thors.lab - 21-12-2020 at 16:16

Quote: Originally posted by JJay  
Sodium borohydride is sometimes freely available in bulk and sometimes expensive and hard to find. Lithium aluminum hydride is always expensive and hard to find. It can be made by combining lithium hydride with aluminum chloride or aluminum bromide in an ether solution. Aluminum halides can be made fairly easily in the amateur lab. Lithium hydride, on the other hand, is a bit harder to make. Len1 did it....

I've never had customs actually seize anything, but they are rather nosy and sloppy at times, and you definitely don't want them to leave your sodium borohydride open to the air and leaking out of the package. Onyxmet will at least put factual information on the label, which should deter customs from opening the package.


Thanks for the info. I guess the question is; do I want factual information on the label to deter them from opening it up, but also risk having me put on some sort of "list" which could cause problems with future shipments, or do want to risk putting less than factual info on the label but have them perhaps be more nosy? :P

On an unrelated note, Onyxmet says an F2 "gas sphere". What the hell is that? How do you even use that? Like, once you crack it open, how do you prevent it from all just spilling out?

Cou - 21-12-2020 at 21:07

Quote: Originally posted by monolithic  
Try www.chemsavers.com but you will probably pay a lot of money for HAZMAT shipping. Otherwise I recommend Onyxmet, even though they are international (Poland.)

Chemsavers is essentially a chemical RETAILER, and probably the only one in the entire nation, due to the low demand for such a business.

Companies such as Sigma Aldrich, Fischer Scientific, TCI America, etc, will blanket refuse any sales to amateurs, because they don't have time to check every order, and your order history, to see what you're buying. Even if you're just buying sodium chloride, it might as well be lysergic acid diethylamide, because it's inefficient for them to check every customer.

However, smaller businesses can check what you're buying and know that you're not buying drug precursors, and ask what you're using the chemicals for.

in essence, Sigma Aldrich and Fischer are like the busy wholesalers who mindlessly ship thousands of orders every day, while Chemsavers is the Dollar General (the ones who have the resources and time to call the cops if you come in buying a shovel, condoms, ammonia and bleach all at the same time)

[Edited on 12-22-2020 by Cou]

JJay - 22-12-2020 at 10:34

Quote: Originally posted by thors.lab  
Quote: Originally posted by JJay  
Sodium borohydride is sometimes freely available in bulk and sometimes expensive and hard to find. Lithium aluminum hydride is always expensive and hard to find. It can be made by combining lithium hydride with aluminum chloride or aluminum bromide in an ether solution. Aluminum halides can be made fairly easily in the amateur lab. Lithium hydride, on the other hand, is a bit harder to make. Len1 did it....

I've never had customs actually seize anything, but they are rather nosy and sloppy at times, and you definitely don't want them to leave your sodium borohydride open to the air and leaking out of the package. Onyxmet will at least put factual information on the label, which should deter customs from opening the package.


Thanks for the info. I guess the question is; do I want factual information on the label to deter them from opening it up, but also risk having me put on some sort of "list" which could cause problems with future shipments, or do want to risk putting less than factual info on the label but have them perhaps be more nosy? :P



LoL, well, it's just sodium borohydride.

njl - 22-12-2020 at 10:55

Quote: Originally posted by thors.lab  
On an unrelated note, Onyxmet says an F2 "gas sphere". What the hell is that? How do you even use that? Like, once you crack it open, how do you prevent it from all just spilling out?


It's a collectors item.