Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Benzaldehyde on Amazon Prime?

Melgar - 23-10-2016 at 17:16

Great price too:

https://www.amazon.com/HiMedia-GRM7863-500ML-Benzaldehyde-50...

I noticed that a lot of people on eBay were selling benzaldehyde with the same image, and messaged one of them what they knew about the legal restrictions on it, since it's a DEA List I chemical. He said he didn't know, and that he'd take it down; apparently he'd post it on eBay, and if someone ordered it, he'd have it shipped as a gift through Amazon. I think he thought I was a cop or something. Sure enough, it's listed on Amazon, with the exact same icon. Theoretically, it's totally legal to buy it, and the seller wouldn't even have to report it to the DEA, since it's below the threshhold, which is either 1L or 4L, I can't remember which. Might be a good time to pick up a bottle while you can.

Cryolite. - 23-10-2016 at 21:09

Yep, HiMedia is an actual lab supplier, and they do sell a lot of things through Amazon. If you're willing to put up with the insane wait times (a couple months), you can get some pretty obscure chemicals for very cheap. Just the other day, I bought a half liter of acetophenone from them for 20 bucks.

Melgar - 24-10-2016 at 05:13

Huh, I just put in an order from them, and their prices on stuff seemed almost arbitrary. Like, I got 250g of TBAB for $24, and then see something like DMSO at over $100 for 100 mL. Their search kind of sucks too, so I had to scroll through everything manually. Ended up getting some silicone grease, because why not? Also lactic acid, because nobody ever seems to sell it for a reasonable price, and it was $22 for 500 mL. No word on the concentration though, and I'm pretty sure it polymerizes when you try to remove too much water from it.

They seem to have changed their shipping protocols though, possibly opening a warehouse in the US. When I checked out, I was given a whole bunch of options that are only available domestically, all quite cheap too.

Cryolite. - 24-10-2016 at 09:03

I'm guessing they are using Amazon as a way to clear up stock: things that they want sold quickly get offloaded on schmucks like us. :D

Regardless, everything I've ordered from them seems to be of good quality.

Also, what exactly do you mean by only domestic shipping options? Everything they sell is shipped by Amazon, but Amazon very rarely has their items in stock and has to order them from HiMedia directly. This takes AGES.

gdflp - 25-10-2016 at 07:41

What are everyone's opinions on this? I personally would love to have 500mL of benzaldehyde, and I would purchase this in a second, but I am concerned about it coming up as a suspicious purchase.

While it is technically completely legal(below the exemption quantity), I'm worried that it might be misconstrued as being used for illegal purposes and, considering that eBay has be known to give away transaction information freely, I have no interest in getting a visit. Thoughts?

Melgar - 25-10-2016 at 11:40

Quote: Originally posted by gdflp  
What are everyone's opinions on this? I personally would love to have 500mL of benzaldehyde, and I would purchase this in a second, but I am concerned about it coming up as a suspicious purchase.

While it is technically completely legal(below the exemption quantity), I'm worried that it might be misconstrued as being used for illegal purposes and, considering that eBay has be known to give away transaction information freely, I have no interest in getting a visit. Thoughts?


I was pulled out of work and questioned once, by the FBI and the ATF, for a Sigma Aldrich product that I ordered to my lab address in grad school, and had been storing in my brother's garage. Turns out, my brother's idiot roommate found it, saw the warning labels on the side, and called the fire department rather than me. It escalated a few times, because I guess it's one of those chemicals that could be used to make a bomb if someone was desperate. They closed down the whole street, pulled me out of work and searched my car. Eventually, the ATF questioned me, but by that point, they realized I had no bomb-making intentions, and were actually rather nice to me. I wasn't charged with anything, and the ATF was even nice enough to tell my employers that I wasn't up to anything illegal, but they still viewed me suspiciously, and even revoked a pay increase that I was supposed to be getting. So I quit and got a job where instead of being micromanaged, I make a lot of company decisions.

But as far as benzaldehyde, it's definitely not viewed the same as say, safrole by the DEA, especially if you don't have it right next to a bottle of nitroethane. I think the reason you don't see it more, is because the SELLER would need to fill out all the requisite DEA paperwork in order to buy it in bulk, and they'd rather not.

[Edited on 10/25/16 by Melgar]

Khemi - 2-11-2016 at 12:20

Is there a threshold amount for piperidine? I love the smell of the stuff and wouldn't mind 100g! :D

DraconicAcid - 2-11-2016 at 12:24

Quote: Originally posted by Melgar  
No word on the concentration though, and I'm pretty sure it polymerizes when you try to remove too much water from it.

I think it just dimerizes. It's sold as an 85% solution from Aldrich et. al., but we used some of it for a titration lab, and found that the diluted solutions were much more dilute than I had calculated. After the flasks sat for a few months, the dimer hydrolyzed, and it was the right concentration.

careysub - 2-11-2016 at 12:53

Note that "bitter almond essential oil" is basically just benzaldehyde. And it is widely sold.

Check this out:
https://www.spectrumchemical.com/OA_HTML/chemical-products_A...

Do not confuse this with "sweet almond oil" which is quite different.

Maroboduus - 2-11-2016 at 13:06

Quote: Originally posted by Khemi  
Is there a threshold amount for piperidine? I love the smell of the stuff and wouldn't mind 100g! :D


Did you know it can be extracted from black pepper?
Extract the piperine, and hydrolize it.
The amine part of that amide is piperidine.

Probably need 5 or 10 kilos of pepper to get 100 grams though.

careysub - 2-11-2016 at 15:24

Quote: Originally posted by Maroboduus  
Quote: Originally posted by Khemi  
Is there a threshold amount for piperidine? I love the smell of the stuff and wouldn't mind 100g! :D


Did you know it can be extracted from black pepper?
Extract the piperine, and hydrolize it.
The amine part of that amide is piperidine.

Probably need 5 or 10 kilos of pepper to get 100 grams though.


Here is a nice lab experiment for undergraduates precisely describing how to get piperidine. Piperidine yield might be as much as ~3% of the weight of the black pepper (30% of 10%), though piperine content varies and might be half that.

The best place to buy spices from (IMHO) is Penzey's, they have the best quality spices anywhere (they go around the world to buy direct from growers) so their premium peppercorn should have the highest piperine content that is available:

https://www.penzeys.com/online-catalog/whole-special-extra-b...

Their prices a good too. Their regular grade matches prices from bulk Indian suppliers on eBay.

Attachment: Expt 4 Piperine from Black Pepper09.pdf (148kB)
This file has been downloaded 4473 times

Seeing Dr. Bob's post below, I wanted to clarify that the paper I posted describes both the extraction of piperine from pepper, and its hydrolysis to piperidine. That is what my (30% of 10%) means - the molecular weight of piperine is 285.34, that of piperidine is 85.15, after hydrolytic cleavage you get a piperidine yield of 85.15/285.34 = 29.8%.

[Edited on 3-11-2016 by careysub]

Dr.Bob - 2-11-2016 at 17:09

Piperidine is not the same as piperine, they are two different chemicals. Just want to clarify that, as people mix them up often.

Piperidine is a widely used base, often used for deprotecting Fmoc groups on amino acids. Piperine is the piperdine amide of a methylenedioxyphenyl unstaurated acid, thus it contains piperidine as a piece of it. While piperine has a slightly hot, pungent smell, piperidine smells like dead fish. But piperidine was first isolated from hydrolyzed piperine, thus the related names.

Piperine = 5-(3,4-Methylenedioxyphenyl)-2,4-pentadienoyl-2-piperidine

Maroboduus - 2-11-2016 at 18:13

Quote: Originally posted by Dr.Bob  
Piperidine is not the same as piperine, they are two different chemicals. Just want to clarify that, as people mix them up often.

Piperidine is a widely used base, often used for deprotecting Fmoc groups on amino acids. Piperine is the piperdine amide of a methylenedioxyphenyl unstaurated acid, thus it contains piperidine as a piece of it. While piperine has a slightly hot, pungent smell, piperidine smells like dead fish. But piperidine was first isolated from hydrolyzed piperine, thus the related names.

Piperine = 5-(3,4-Methylenedioxyphenyl)-2,4-pentadienoyl-2-piperidine


Actually, I WAS kind of wondering how he could like the smell of piperidine, but I try not to make value judgments about esthetics. Didn't occur to me that it might be name confusion.

Camroc37 - 2-11-2016 at 19:05

Quote: Originally posted by Melgar  
Great price too:

https://www.amazon.com/HiMedia-GRM7863-500ML-Benzaldehyde-50...

I noticed that a lot of people on eBay were selling benzaldehyde...

Can someone explain some of the uses for benzaldehyde? I've seen a few videos about it, but why is this a chemical to get excited over? Thanks for any reply.

Maroboduus - 2-11-2016 at 19:29

A lot of the excitement elsewhere about benzaldehyde is that it can be condensed with ethyl nitrate[EDIT: Yes, it's nitroethane as mentioned below, not ethyl nitrate.] and either reduced to amphetamine, or used to make phenyl 2 propanone which can be reductively aminated to meth.

This is probably why it's a watched chemical.

I'm sure posts about Sciencemadness type uses for it will follow, but I just thought that should be gotten out of the way.

[Edited on 4-11-2016 by Maroboduus]

careysub - 2-11-2016 at 19:32

Quote: Originally posted by Camroc37  


I noticed that a lot of people on eBay were selling benzaldehyde...[/rquote]
Can someone explain some of the uses for benzaldehyde? I've seen a few videos about it, but why is this a chemical to get excited over? Thanks for any reply.


It is the essence of almond scent and flavor, and is thus used in food and perfume.

It is a very useful intermediate that leads to dye aniline and acridine dyes, and other intermediates (mandelic acid, etc.).

It is very widely used.

It also undergoes a condensation reaction with nitroethane (not ethyl nitrate) to phenyl-2-nitropropene which can then be reduced to amphetamine or to phenylacetone and then to methamphetamine. This is why the DEA gets "excited".

[Edited on 3-11-2016 by careysub]

Maroboduus - 2-11-2016 at 19:57

I always confuse those two.
Ethyl nitrate's the one you DON'T distill, right?

[Edited on 3-11-2016 by Maroboduus]

NitreRat - 2-11-2016 at 20:17

Quote: Originally posted by Maroboduus  
I always confuse those two. Ethyl nitrate's the one you DON'T distill, right?


Are you sure you're not thinking of the other ester: Ethyl nitrite, the molecular isomer of the non-ester: Nitroethane, which is different from Ethyl nitrate and not to be confused with Nitrosoethane :D

Maroboduus - 2-11-2016 at 20:31

Ethyl nitrate is an unpopular high explosive because it blows up if you make faces at it.

Ethyl nitrite I know has a fruity odor and is made along with nitroethane when you treat ethanyl halide with nitrous acid.
Those you're supposed to be able to separate by distillation. I've never done that though.

You appear to be a real asshole, Nitrerat.

[Edited on 3-11-2016 by Maroboduus]

edited to replace ethanol with ethyl halide

[Edited on 4-11-2016 by Maroboduus]

zed - 3-11-2016 at 14:43

Ummmm. A Control Agent may, or may not, get excited about Benzaldehyde.

I can buy it, with no problems, cheaply as Almond Flavoring, pretty much anywhere (though it may be diluted). While on the other-hand, buying it though a Chemical supplier could set off an investigation.

Just depends.

A Big Chemical distributor, may have a Control Agent, in shop. Depending upon the area of the country, the political climate, and the agent's personal motivation....This agent might be very aggressive. Even clearly legitimate purchases, by major academic institutions, can be fastidiously investigated.

Unhappily, often, the stink of inquiry comes months or even years, after the suspect purchase in question. And reckless, unfounded accusations may be made.

Comes with the territory.

Melgar - 7-11-2016 at 17:43

If you had benzaldehyde, the police would have to prove that you intended to use it to make controlled substances. Probably the best way to do that is not having any nitroethane. However, to answer the question about what's so interesting about benzaldehyde, it's the simplest aryl aldehyde, and many introductory organic reactions use it as a starting reagent. When getting into reactions of aryl groups in organic chemistry, it's one of the absolute essentials for studying, since then you can analyze how other ring-substituted benzaldehydes react in similar conditions, and thus, how those substituents affect the reactivity of the molecule. It's also probably the easiest building block to use for forming carbon-carbon bonds to a benzyl group, and its presence or absence is easily detected by its strong smell, which is a lot more pleasant than say, benzyl chloride.