Steve_hi
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Chemical inventory
This week I found a realy great supply of some chemicals which many people have trouble locating.
I was able to get 25kg bags of NH4NO3 KNO3 And MgNO3 as well as 5L of 42baume "67%" HNO3 and hes going to get me a full container about 20l which
cost only 40$ So I;m taking advantage of it's availability while I can. I only started to learn chemistry last winter and realy have no purpose for it
except I've always wanted to learn chemistry so now I am but I dont know what chems and how much to stock. I'm always looking in the harware stores
for better prices and interesting things. I was wondering if there exists some kind of "List of things to have in stock" and what quantities just the
house keeping part of chemistry I guess yu could say.
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Chemistry Alchemist
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what country you from?
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ScienceSquirrel
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I am not sure why you would want to buy those chemicals on that scale unless you want to make serious amounts of explosives.
A few hundred grams each of a lot of things is more what you want in a laboratory. Half a kilogram of potassium carbonate lasts for ages when you are
experimenting on a gram scale at weekends.
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Steve_hi
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I bought them because they were available and I keep reading on this forum how hard they are to get so I bought them while I can. as far as explosives
I have no interest at all in that or drugs. But the stuff is sold in that size bag. and when I bought some from the chem company I paid 20$ for 500g
so why not pay 20$ for 25kg. Also I have spent quite a bit of money trying to set up my lab and when i started buying the chemicals it was difficult
finding a place that would sell to individuals until I found a place across the border that accepted parcels for canadians so I had stuff sent there
from elemental. So now I'm thinking too about selling chemicals to canadians who want small quantities but cant get them, I dont really know what i
will do. but in the meantime when I have a chance to get stuff cheap I am going to take advantage of it.
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woelen
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What you need to keep in stock strongly depends on what kind of chemistry you want to do. In general, the following are items which you should keep in
stock:
- sulphuric acid, 1 liter or more
- hydrochloric acid, 1 liter or more
- nitric acid, 1 liter or more
- ammonia
- sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide, 1 kilo or more
- a few very common solvents like denatured alcohol, acetone, ligroin
- a common oxidizer like hydrogen peroxide, sodium persulfate.
More than 2 or 3 liters/kilo of the above chemicals is not useful. Especially if you experiment on testtube scale, then a liter will last a long time.
So, try to find liter bottles or 2.5 liter bottles. These are good quantities.
The above chemicals are so general and common that I cannot imagine a lab without them. What other chemicals you need depends on what you do. For
organic chemistry you will need completely different stuff than for inorganic chemistry. Pyrotechnics again requires other chemicals than aqueous
chemistry.
I have written a webpage on starting a home lab and purchasing chemicals. This, however, is geared towards inorganic chemistry with mostly chemistry
in water or other very common solvents.
http://woelen.homescience.net/science/chem/misc/chemicals.ht...
http://woelen.homescience.net/science/chem/elem/index.html
If you are more into organics or pyrotechnics, then things are totally different.
[Edited on 13-10-11 by woelen]
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ScienceSquirrel
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I run a small brewery as a weekend business / hobby and I have the licences to manufacture and sell beer and I have clearance from customs and the
police for my activities.
The only thing that I buy in 25kg sacks is malt as I do use a lot of it. Everything else is in gram or at most a few kilogram quantities.
The police are completely OK with the glass and the chemicals because they expect to find them at a brewery.
They might start to look at me a bit funny if I had 25kg sacks of ammonium nitrate lying around though unless it was in the fertiliser shed.
You also have to consider the fire risk. In the event of a fire large amounts of strong oxidising agents like this will act as a powerful accelerant.
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MrHomeScientist
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The way I've run my home lab is to just buy things as needed. I find an interesting experiment I want to do, and purchase a small amount (<500g) of
the required chems from online vendors or OTC if it's available. In this way, my stock of chemicals has steadily grown as I do more and more
experimentation. Now, I'm up to the point where I have enough variety that if I need a chemical that I don't have in stock, I can just synthesize it
myself. That's even more fun than just buying it, if you only need a small amount.
As a general starting point if you have nothing really in mind, woelen's list is a good one. Aqueous copper chemistry is also really interesting and
fun, so I might add a copper salt or two to that list. Copper sulfate is particularly easy to find as root killer, and is very easily purified through
recrystallization.
Oh and I'm into inorganic chemistry mostly, so that's what my lab is geared towards.
[Edited on 10-13-2011 by MrHomeScientist]
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Bot0nist
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That's how my supplies have grown too. I am amazed when I look over the wide variety of reagents and glassware I have acquired over the years.
Quote: Originally posted by MrHomeScientist  |
Copper sulfate is particularly easy to find as root killer, and is very easily purified through recrystallization.
[Edited on 10-13-2011 by MrHomeScientist] |
CuSO<sub>4</sub>*5H<sub>2</sub>O is one the most enjoyable to synthesize though, IMO. It is really rewarding to work through
the copper salt experiments starting from just a bit of conductor grade copper wire
[Edited on 13-10-2011 by Bot0nist]
U.T.F.S.E. and learn the joys of autodidacticism!
Don't judge each day only by the harvest you reap, but also by the seeds you sow.
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White Yeti
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I'm surprised that no one mentioned baking soda. I always drag around a 1Kg tub of baking soda to neutralise acid spills and put out fires, if
anything were to go wrong. It's also a good idea to have a tub of a saturated baking soda solution, in case you spill acid on yourself. It's not
really useful in syntheses, but from a safety perspective it's indispensable. Buying in bulk is the best way to go.
"Ja, Kalzium, das ist alles!" -Otto Loewi
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Steve_hi
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Dont know if I should post in this thread or not but excuse me if not
I have some NaOH which i bought last jan as drain opener 1kg
I havent used much but today i went to make some sodium nitrate as seen or nurd rage with NH4NO3 and NaOH but my NaOH was wet and starting to clump
together the stuff they sell now at the same place is now mixed with salt and NaCO3. I tried to dry my old stuff in my little oven and it melted, will
it dry or is it no longer any good. also the new stuff do you think their is too much junk in it that it cant be used for synthesis of other things i
think it would be hard to remove the salt and the carbonate.
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Luftwaffe
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Your NaOH melted probably because there was enough water in the crystals to dissolve it at a higher temp. The crystals would eventually become dry but
unfortunately as sheet of powdery rock on whatever your drying it on. I encountered that problem with potassium nitrate, a giant slab of KNO3 I had to
break up.
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Steve_hi
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Well I ended up breaking the glass baking pan when I tried chopping the NAOH out with a screwe driver so I'm going to plan "B" and make NaNO3 using
baking soda but Im wondering If I could use NACO3 instead if not why what is the reason.
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White Yeti
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You can use NaCO3, but you'll have to boil the mixture so that the ion exchange reaction carries to completion. You'll have to decompose the (NH4)2CO3
that is formed, otherwise you'll end up with a mixture of the two reactants you started with.
"Ja, Kalzium, das ist alles!" -Otto Loewi
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