Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Hard To find Chemicals & Elements

HomeAlchemy - 28-10-2005 at 10:52

Hi
I am beginning to realize that getting chemicals in the US is even harder than in Canada! :(

If you are interested I have for sale some ACS grade elements & inorganic salts.:P:o

DOn't really have any organics, but ask I can probably find it for you cheap.

Examples are: Selenium, Sulfur,Phoshorus, Iodine,Bromine:D,Gallium,Arsenic, and more! :o

I supply in small quantities, or larger (like 25g -1 Kg)

I will Significantly BEAT the prices found at
chem store

I am not a store but someone who like to play around with neat stuff!! :D

I'm always looking for chemicals myself!!

If interested please email me at darien88@hotmail.com

12AX7 - 28-10-2005 at 14:19

Silicon by any chance? It'd be nice to have about 10 pounds (5 kilos) for cheap (should be around $1/lb), 'brown' (powder) or bulk. (99.9999% not required. :P)

I haven't been looking very hard but metallurgical grade silicon isn't very common on eBay at least.

Tim

quicksilver - 3-11-2005 at 06:00

Quote:
Originally posted by 12AX7
Silicon by any chance? It'd be nice to have about 10 pounds (5 kilos) for cheap (should be around $1/lb), 'brown' (powder) or bulk. (99.9999% not required. :P)

I haven't been looking very hard but metallurgical grade silicon isn't very common on eBay at least.

Tim



You can get Silicon (technical grade) at FireFox for 4-5 dollars a lbs. They have a lot of it. Common pyrotechnic stuff. I think you have to pay hazmat if you do UPS if you buy flamable solids. But it's cheap.

Selenium

chloric1 - 3-11-2005 at 10:18

A ceramic supplier used to carry this element for $35 per pound. Says he cannot find it anymore? What do you know? Any goog sources for close to this price?

[Edited on 11/3/2005 by chloric1]

Fleaker - 3-11-2005 at 14:50

I'd be interested in buying some gallium and indium if you have any available. Also, I've not been able to find tantalum for a reasonable price, do you have any of that metal?

hey fleaker

chloric1 - 4-11-2005 at 03:39

I do know tantalum cannot be had for cheap. First thing platinum metal has exploded in popularity in jewelry lately increasing price. Secondly, I believe that tantalum demand has increased en leu of the competitve platinum market. Ebay is about the best option I think unless you find a scrap dealer that does not know his metals(Extremely Unlikely). I had an ounce of tantlaum scraps from ebay that I think my wife mistook for garbage since I have not be able to find it since she moved in. She does not remember seeing it. :( Cost me $100 but would easily sell for $200 today. :(:( That could buy me some much needed pyrex:(

[Edited on 11/4/2005 by chloric1]

quicksilver - 4-11-2005 at 06:07

My source for metals is Alpha Aesar, they are not cheap but not too expensive. The problem is that they sell high grade metals. But things like Hg are still about 50USD a lb1 (800) 343-0660 HTTP://www.alfa.com

They have everything you could imagine. In any form you could want. Ask to receive a Metals catlogue. If you are not choosy about the form (powder, wire, etc) you COULD get some prices that are reasonable....BUT, they do use purified stuff.

quicksilver - 4-11-2005 at 06:23

One other....
There is a small outfit in Arizona that may ship stuff. The guy doesn't like to do a BIG mail-order business but he does sell used equipment and is very cheap. - Hg about $35 lb....LOTS of glassware, and lots of reagents. He is a legit & streight guy so don't even think about asking for List 1 stuff (drug making chems like acidic anhidryde or phosphorus). But general, chems he has at very cheap prices. If he can't get it he will level with you and tell you why. He doesn't play games or lie. He has been very fair with prices on used magnetic stirrers, ($60) hot plates, etc. - He likes to use UPS, not the USPO. He has a lot of standard glass and chems at good prices.

ADCHEMCO SCIENTIFIC 520.790.8485

Fleaker - 5-11-2005 at 08:51

I already have an account set up with Alfa Aesar (a scion of Johnson Matthey) amongst others like Fisher, Ace, Acros, etc. This brings me to my point: I asked about a more reasonable source. I have a friend who's a metallurgical chemist and he has some 100 grams of 5N powdered tantalum he got as a sample (along with a 28kg titanium sputtering target) I think I'll ask him to help me out.

Quicksilver
I can get triple distilled mercury for $25 per 500 grams from Frey Scientific.

Shame what happened to your tantalum Chloric1, I'm grieving too (I had hoped someone here might have some they'd part with).

Silicone from sand

prole - 5-11-2005 at 15:48

I found this at http://www.popsci.com/popsci/index.html




Making Silicon from Sand

Theodore Gray

The industrial economy may someday run out of one of its essential natural resources, oil, but at least the high-tech economy is safe in its supply of silicon, the element that is the key ingredient in every computer processor. Its oxide form, known as silica or quartz, is dirt-common. In fact, it is dirt: Almost all kinds of sand, clay and rock contain silica in one form or another, and overall more than half the Earth's crust is made of silica.
Industrially, silica is converted to pure silicon by heating it with coke (the form of coal, not the drink) in a furnace. But there's an even easier, if less cost-effective, method that I learned from Jason Stainer, a science teacher in England. All you have to do is heat a mixture of common silica sand and magnesium powder in a test tube. The magnesium steals the oxygen atoms from the silica, leaving elemental silicon.


No reaction is perfect, and in this case you're left with a mixture of magnesium, magnesium oxide, magnesium silicide and silicon in the bottom of the test tube. Fortunately, the best way to purify it is also the most entertaining. I told my eight-year-old Harry Potter fan that I had prepared a fire potion.

First pour one cup of what is sold in any hardware store as muriatic acid (37% HCl) into five cups of water. (Not the other way around. The old chemist's saying "Do as you oughta, add acid to watta" is there to protect you from steam explosions that can occur if water is poured into acid instead of acid into water.) Then dump in the contents of the test tube, and you'll get a wonderful frothing mass of flaming bubbles and a lovely mushroom cloud of smoke. This is one of the best can't-fail fire potions. (I can also do levitation potions [Gray Matter, February 2004], although I've had to explain to my daughter that since we live in a Muggle zone, I'm allowed to levitate only very small objects.) Chemically speaking, several things happen when the powder hits the acid. Any leftover magnesium powder reacts with the acid to produce hydrogen gas. The magnesium silicide reacts with the acid to produce silane gas, which spontaneously combusts on contact with air, giving off little pops that ignite the nearby swirls of hydrogen gas.

If there is still some magnesium powder floating in the air, it catches fire too, creating a bright flash and a puff of white smoke. You get three forms of fire in one, and the powder falling to the bottom of the bowl is purified elemental silicon. Spells are fantasy, but potions are real, and this is a great one.

Click to see a reactive moment. Magnesium, hydrogen and silane burn off while the purified silicon falls to the bottom.

ACHTUNG!
Theodore Gray is trained in lab-safety procedures. If you try this at home, you do so at your own risk. Find more info on Gray's scientific pursuits at periodictabletable.com.
----------------------------------------------------
I would've just posted a link to the article, but I think they change from time to time. I don't need silicone, but I'm gonna try it for shits 'n giggles.

-prole

12AX7 - 5-11-2005 at 16:51

Making silicone (to be exact, carbosiloxane monomers) is considerably more difficult than Gray's article, which is about silicon anyway.

(Why is it people can never get these straight?)

I've got about a pound of brown Si by the Goldshmidt process, but it doesn't want to dissolve in aluminum, and it's hard to produce since I have to grind all that metal first, and I don't have much magnesium left (I alloy magnalium for its easy grindability and higher reactivity).

Tim

ChemGrl5 - 7-11-2005 at 01:11

Hi All,

Silicone/Silicon

I'm gonna make me a "fire potion". It looks like a neat experiment anyway, think I'll try it for fun.

ChemistrySet - 20-6-2006 at 02:05

Realgar: (93% As4S4, 7% As2S3), P.R.P. Pharmaceutical Quality, AF powder, USA via Parcel Post ORM-D III. (Please enquire for foreign.)

Realgar is one of the classical iconographic pigments, stable and insoluble in water.
US$100/KG + s/h.
Please Enquire or eBay, Search: Realgar

ChemistrySet