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Praxichys
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The Problem with SynthSource
Hi everyone,
In lieu of dredging up an old thread where we breathed life into SynthSource over a year ago, I have some announcements of changes/revitalization.
Many of you have noticed that the domain has been broken for quite a while; this is because proboards decided that being forwarded to from a custom
domain should be a paid service. Not willing to fork over $14 per month (in addition to the domain registration), and considering the relatively small
amount of traffic, the website has sat defunct for some time.
I've recently come into a massive bulk buy (no joke, over 3 metric tons of something secret, exciting, and inexpensive) and I will be making all the
transactions through SynthSource, which will go to support full functionality of the site for the foreseeable future.
Of course, all discussions regarding the chemical uses of such things is reserved for ScienceMadness; SynthSource is only designed to act as a
firewall to protect SM in the event legal action is taken against a site engaging in this potentially risky endeavor.
In the interim, http://synthsource.proboards.com/ can be used to get to SS, and I will be updating my signature to reflect that.
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Texium
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3 metric tons! How are you going to sell all of that to SM members? Either way, I await with anticipation.
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Dr.Bob
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3 tons, I have more books than that already. I hope you found something more exciting than that. Good luck.
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Praxichys
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Haha, thanks. It's not books!
I'll give some hints: There are 7 varieties, it's packed in 31 fiber drums, and I'm getting it shipped to MI as surplus from a nuclear power plant in
Tennessee. It's not classified as hazardous or radioactive, however some of the varieties have nonradioactive singular isotopes involved. Some of
these varieties are very expensive to purchase directly from a supplier, however I managed to pick all of it up for rather cheaper, and I can
certainly repack it in such a way that everyone can afford a few pounds.
Many labs can benefit from having this around, and certainly a good number of labs already use this in some form or another to do a very important
job. Of course, in the nuclear industry, the job this stuff performs is rather more critical, so the varieties I have are either of extreme purity,
high effectiveness, or are monoisotopic.
Can anyone guess what it is?
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Magpie
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Boron, lead, cadmium
The single most important condition for a successful synthesis is good mixing - Nicodem
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TheNerdyFarmer
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Is it potassium permanganate? Or possibly a dichromate salt?
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Melgar
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Sodium metal? From one of those old breeder reactors that ended up not being designed so well?
[Edited on 4/27/17 by Melgar]
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PirateDocBrown
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Lithium 6 or 7? Or just heavy water?
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Amos
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Quote: Originally posted by Melgar  | Sodium metal? From one of those old breeder reactors that ended up not being designed so well?
[Edited on 4/27/17 by Melgar] |
Somehow I feel as though an individual can't just purchase 3 metric tons of elemental sodium from a nuclear company, but here's to hoping! But then
again, it would definitely be qualified as hazardous, and there aren't multiple stable isotopes.
[Edited on 4-27-2017 by Amos]
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Praxichys
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Some more clues:
It's not a singular element, nor does it contain any transition metals. A halogen is involved in one of the versions, and Lithium-7 in another. Some
are air-sensitive and all of them are shipped wet.
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Cryolite.
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FLiBe?
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Melgar
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| Quote: Originally posted by Amos | | Somehow I feel as though an individual can't just purchase 3 metric tons of elemental sodium from a nuclear company, but here's to hoping! But then
again, it would definitely be qualified as hazardous, and there aren't multiple stable isotopes. |
At first I guessed "heavy water", but that's not really useful in a lab. And as far as what he was talking about, I was guessing that the category
might be "alkali metals" and the single variety he had was sodium.
Maybe something a little broader like "deuterated solvents" or "solvents without any light hydrogen in them, that are suitable for proton NMR" though?
Although the lithium clue kind of makes that untenable.
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TheNerdyFarmer
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Is it something like lithium fluoride for liquid fluoride nuclear reactors? As well as lithium hydroxide to basify the coolant in a pressurized water
reactor.
[Edited on 27-4-2017 by TheNerdyFarmer]
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XeonTheMGPony
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I'll say flourienart from 3M or how ever it is spelt
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Praxichys
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All right, since nobody is getting it, I'll spill the beans.
It's ion exchange resin!
Kiss water distillation goodbye because you can make your own water deionizing system for super cheap. Forget eBay resin prices... I got this stuff at
a steal.
I also have specialized strong acid and base resins. The strong acid resin is so good that you can run a salt solution through it and get 28% HCl out
the other end. You can probably make 20% nitric straight from KNO3, distillation not required! (videos pending) Want HCN or HN3 but don't want to put
your life on the line distilling it? Use resin!
Need aqueous ammonia? No problem, just shake some ammonium sulfate fertilizer solution with some of the strong base resin and BOOM. Done. Freebasing
methylamine? No problem. And the best part about all of this is that the resin is totally regenerable. (I will supply the information
from the manufacturer about exactly how to do this, although the stuff is so cheap that you might as well just toss it)
I also have some awesome specialty resins. I have chloride-loaded strong anion exchange resin which actually has applications in organic synthesis. I
have lithium-7 loaded resin specifically designed to strip radioisotopes from the cooling loops of pressurized water reactors, which could help purify
your drinking water in a nuclear emergency. Or, you could wash the lithium right out of it and make yourself a sample of Li-7, which goes for
$10,000/kg. Your call. I have antimony and bismuth-chelating resin which has high selectivity for certain metals and may have applications in the
purification metals and salts.
Anyway, I'm getting info packets put together about the care and feeding of such resins. I expect that for SM members I will be able to get this out
the door as low as $5 per kg depending on the type. Stay tuned!
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elementcollector1
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Quick question about the acid-generating resins: How long of a life do they have? As in, can they do that indefinitely?
Elements Collected:52/87
Latest Acquired: Cl
Next in Line: Nd
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Amos
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And how picky are they about the source of H+ during regeneration?
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Magpie
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| Quote: Originally posted by Praxichys |
It's ion exchange resin!
Anyway, I'm getting info packets put together about the care and feeding of such resins. I expect that for SM members I will be able to get this out
the door as low as $5 per kg depending on the type. Stay tuned! |
This is awesome!
The single most important condition for a successful synthesis is good mixing - Nicodem
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Praxichys
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@elementcollector1
Pretty much. They need to be regenerated with a stronger acid though. So, you'd use the resin to make HNO3, and then regenerate it with concentrated
HCl or something like that. Usually you can't make HNO3 from a nitrate salt and HCl, but with the resin it is possible. It's nice because HCl is
usually super cheap, and you don't have to do any distillation as long as you don't mind a bit of residual KNO3 in your acid. Although, you could
essentially eliminate all the KNO3 if you used enough of an excess of resin.
The number of cycles varies by application, and production of acids is probably one of the harshest things you can do to the resin. I'm just guessing
here but considering standard resins can be regenerated a few thousand times, I'd estimate you'd get at least 50 or 100 cycles. At $5/kg-ish, you're
not going to find a way to get that much HNO3 any cheaper.
Here is some tech data for Amberlite IRN77: http://www.lenntech.com/Data-sheets/Amberlite-IRN-77-L.pdf
At 1.9eq/L, you'd need a liter of wet resin to make 1.9 mol of HNO3, or 119g. To make a liter of 68% nitric, you would mix KNO3 and 5.7 liters of
resin into a bucket, slosh it around, and let it sit overnight. After that, strain the resin and rinse with a minimum of distilled water. The resin
has about 35-40% recoverable water around it, so once drained you'd now have 2.3 liters of 29.5% acid plus whatever wash water you used, so probably
15-20%. (It would be easier to do this with a column for obvious reasons, if you have one) You can just boil this until the vapor reaches the
azeotrope temp, at which point you have a liter of 68% nitric minus some vapor losses, with maybe a percent or two KNO3 mixed in. (Using excess resin
will help with this)
The regeneration process is about the same, but you'd just be washing the resin in strong HCl and then washing the KCl solution out of it with water.
Also, the stronger the acid, the less conversion you will have. I doubt, for instance, that you could reliably make HBr this way, but HF is probably
not a problem. Check out this PKa chart: http://www.ochemonline.com/PKa_data If it needs HCl to regenerate, it probably has a similar effective PKa, which means excellent conversion
percentages to most other common acids.
@Amos - It will depend on the resin. Once the drums get to MI, I will be able to pull the manufacturer specs and recommendations for use and
regeneration. I know classifications and brands, but I will not know actual part numbers until I have them on-hand. There are lots of factors to be
considered like resin swelling and osmotic shock. I will be developing methods for amateur use.
[Edited on 28-4-2017 by Praxichys]
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JJay
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Definitely very cool. I've read a lot of posts over the years suggesting ion exchange resins, and I've always been a little baffled as to where to
obtain them, what kind to get, and how to use them.
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Sulaiman
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Definitely interesting.
Do you think that you may be able to ship internationally ? (UK specifically)
If so, I would like some sort of sample kit, a usable ammount of each type, and greater quantity for DI water generation.
Over my three years of this hobby, I have purchased an equivalent 600 ml/day,
so I'd like something like 1 to 2 litres per day continuously,
could someone advise how much resin I would need ?
The idea of strong acid and base resins able to geberate such useful reagents on demand is exciting !
CAUTION : Hobby Chemist, not Professional or even Amateur
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CharlieA
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The amount of resins needed depends in great part upon the quality of the water you start with. You could probably make an estimate by knowing the TDS
(total dissolved solids) and their nature of your source water.
[Edited on 4-29-2017 by CharlieA] If I could type I would be dangerous.
[Edited on 4-29-2017 by CharlieA]
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CharlieA
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Praxichys: I am probably in the market for some of each (cation and anion exchange resins).
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Loptr
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I will definitely be getting in on this one.
Very nice!
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Melgar
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I seem to recall a thread on one of those sites that's archived on Erowid, where someone ground up some pills, dissolved them in a large amount of
distilled water, let the insoluble stuff settle out, then filtered the rest and ran it through an acidified ion exchange resin. Yields of the amine
salt were nearly quantitative. This might be useful for anyone attempting to isolate a useful monoamine reagent from some OTC dietary supplement.
You can run as much solution as you want to through it, to rinse it off, and as long as it doesn't form ions, it won't rinse off any of the ions
already there.
Of course, this dashes my hopes to sell my five pounds of strong-acid ion exchange resin to users here. 
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