Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Where to buy carbonate esters (UK/EU)

DavidJR - 19-10-2018 at 02:51

Does anyone have any good sources for carbonate esters in the UK/EU? None of my usual suppliers have any (with the exception of Limac, which has dimethyl carbonate, but at a fairly high price).

In particular I'm interested in dimethyl carbonate, but other esters like ethylene carbonate or propylene carbonate could be useful too.

clearly_not_atara - 19-10-2018 at 12:58

Dimethyl carbonate is supposedly a VOC compliant solvent for e.g. paint removal and other cleaning purposes in non-industrial contexts, including home use. I found this pretty shocking when I heard it, but I guess the toxicity must be pretty low if the powers that be consider it safe -- I would think that being metabolized to methanol is an instant fail, but someone disagrees.

Propylene and ethylene carbonate have extremely low vapor pressures which would make them unsuitable for general cleaning purposes as the "residue" will remain for a long time. As such I doubt you'll find them from the same general purpose suppliers as DMC. Methyl ethyl carbonate and diethyl carbonate are both simply worse than DMC from the standpoint of both flammability and vapor pressure, but they are common battery electrolyte solvents.

Anyway, dimethyl carbonate is on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/MG-Chemicals-Dimethyl-Carbonate-Exemp...

It's not clear if it can be shipped to the UK.

DavidJR - 19-10-2018 at 15:18

Quote: Originally posted by clearly_not_atara  
Dimethyl carbonate is supposedly a VOC compliant solvent for e.g. paint removal and other cleaning purposes in non-industrial contexts, including home use. I found this pretty shocking when I heard it, but I guess the toxicity must be pretty low if the powers that be consider it safe -- I would think that being metabolized to methanol is an instant fail, but someone disagrees.

Propylene and ethylene carbonate have extremely low vapor pressures which would make them unsuitable for general cleaning purposes as the "residue" will remain for a long time. As such I doubt you'll find them from the same general purpose suppliers as DMC. Methyl ethyl carbonate and diethyl carbonate are both simply worse than DMC from the standpoint of both flammability and vapor pressure, but they are common battery electrolyte solvents.

Anyway, dimethyl carbonate is on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/MG-Chemicals-Dimethyl-Carbonate-Exemp...

It's not clear if it can be shipped to the UK.


Amazon won't ship chemicals internationally it seems - I can order lots of random stuff from the US catalogue, but not chemicals (even relatively nonhazardous ones) unfortunately. It's a shame because that is not a bad price.

I haven't noticed any consumer products on sale in the UK containing DMC, but I haven't done an extensive search yet. I guess if it's only being used because of the regulatory situation in the US, then there may be no motivation for companies here to use it instead of cheaper alternatives.