HydroCarbon - 27-9-2010 at 16:26
While doing chemical inventory today a co-worker and I unexpectedly found a 250mL bottle of unstabilized diethyl ether that had evaporated to dryness.
Judging from the size of the bottle and the fact that there wasn't any visible residues on the inside we decided that there wasn't likely any
significant amount of hydroperoxides present. Tomorrow we're going to do a hydroperoxide test via KI and glacial acetic acid. The plan is to
reconstitute the peroxides (if they're there) into chloroform, then add the KI/acetic acid solution and see if color change occurs due to iodine
formation.
Anyone have any insight into this situation?
Also this has brought up some questions in my mind that I haven't been able to find the answers for. Those being: Is diethyl ether hydroperoxide a
solid or liquid? and is it possible that all of the hydroperoxide evaporated away too? This bottle was sitting out for only god knows how long.
entropy51 - 27-9-2010 at 16:55
For what it's worth, I've had ether evaporate to dryness (but in copper coated cans, not bottles) and leave no residue.
If the ether evaporated, the bottle may have been under a positive pressure of ether vapor, not allowing enough oxygen in to form peroxides. Just
speculating here.
I think the peroxides are said to be soluble in water, so that might work for doing a peroxide test on your empty bottle.