Sciencemadness Discussion Board - Chemical Storage Containers

Chemical Storage Containers

lacrima97 - 18-12-2005 at 09:33

What do you guys store your chemicals in? I have stored the more unreactive powders and such in simple ziplock bags, but I really don't like doing that...It seems a bit to "un-professional".

Erlenmeyer flasks seem like they would be best for liquid storage, but then the rubber stopper problem comes up. If your chemical reacts with the stopper, you end up having pieces of rubber in your liquid.

I am seriously getting tired of storing things in ziplock bags, and I have advanced to the point where I can't even use them anymore for a lot of things.

What do you guys use to store your chemicals in?

Darkblade48 - 18-12-2005 at 11:16

Most dry chemicals can be stored in HDPE jars of some sorts. Even the more reactive dry chemicals (i.e. potassium permanganate) can be safely stored in HDPE jars as long as they are kept away from their incompatibles.

As for liquids such as acids and bases, again, HDPE bottles are usually good for most acids. If you have nitric acid, or concentrated sulfuric, you may want to buy a glass bottle with a teflon coated plastic cap, and that should be enough.

lacrima97 - 18-12-2005 at 13:45

Ah, I appreciate the help. I found some very nice HDPE bottles on ebay. Cheap too.

Thanks.

EDIT: Fuck Ebay.

http://www.specialtybottle.com/

[Edited on 12/18/2005 by lacrima97]

Lotek_ - 20-12-2005 at 07:59

^hey lacrim!

i found the following jars off ebay. i use them for solid storage(and if i absolutly need to, liquid reaction containers). http://www.rctparadox.net/gallery/albums/userpics/10001/CNXT...

they have a teflon seal inside the lid.

good link.

Lotek_ - 28-12-2005 at 22:41

yea. im the lab ive got h2o2, NaOH, and acetone in 3% h2o2 bottles. the real reason i use them is because of their nice size but they do provie light shielding.

they make for very nice fridge bottles. i keep a bottle of most of my reagents in the fridge aswell as one on the bench because for many synths its really nice to start out with cooled reagents.

chemoleo - 28-12-2005 at 22:50

Cyroxos, your post screwed up html formatting of this thread. Why? Because you attempted to put a picture into the signature. Please DO NOT use pictures in signature.

This was the last message by Cyroxus.

Quote:

^ Yea, those are quite nice. Also, Lotek had a good idea of recycling used H2O2 bottles and such. I belive those are HDPE as well.

Chris The Great - 28-12-2005 at 23:04

I use empty H2O2 bottles as well. I transferred some of my 35% H2O2 to a really dark one because I find its hard to pour it out of the 4L jug, and I store it in the back of my chems to protect it from light to it is hard to get at.

They work great for storing liquids.

Now, I just need to get containers for solids, all mine are stored in ziplock bags and it really bigs me.

Lotek_ - 28-12-2005 at 23:11

Quote:

Originally posted by Chris The Great
I use empty H2O2 bottles as well. I transferred some of my 35% H2O2 to a really dark one because I find its hard to pour it out of the 4L jug, and I store it in the back of my chems to protect it from light to it is hard to get at.

They work great for storing liquids.

Now, I just need to get containers for solids, all mine are stored in ziplock bags and it really bigs me.

:\ yea that thought was getting to me when i was settign my lab up. luckily i found an auction for these cool little jars. have a teflon lid seal. they are great for solids.

look on ebay. i got 12 of em for like 10 bux.

Nick F - 29-12-2005 at 04:34

The only good bottles I've found for nitric are glass with ground glass stoppers. The container I bought it in (black HDPE) started to kinda leak (minute holes developed, and the acid very slowly oozed out and formed drops on the outside of the bottle), and even glass bottles with screw-on HDPE caps seem to leak a bit of vapour. If they stay unattended for any length of time, a slight condensation of acid builds up around the neck, near the cap.
Similarly with iodine, ground glass seems to be the only thing that it won't diffuse through!
But for most things, HDPE is cool.
One important rule (which unfortunately I am not adhering to at the moment

) is never store mercury in glass or other fragile containers. Mercury is so dense that even a small drop will cause the container to break, and it'll spill everywhere, which is very very bad. I have some fairly thick-walled polypropylene bottles which I think I will put it into, it shouldn't diffuse out too quickly. Then preferably put the container with the mercury in it inside a larger container with powdered sulphur at the bottom, to help mop up any vapour which does escape. I learnt that here

neutrino - 29-12-2005 at 10:12

I store my more corrosive chemicals (Br2, I2, conc. HNO3, etc.) in large vials or dark glass bottles whose caps have Teflon disc inserts. I have posted on making these a number of times, just look around.

These stoppers are completely leak-proof if made correctly. Nothing can diffuse through Teflon and almost nothing will react with it (except strong reducing agents and styrene monomer). I have stored a small sample (~.5mL) of a liquid with a vapor pressure of 2.5 atm at room temperature in a small vial with one of my Teflon-lined stoppers for several months now and all the liquid is still there, absolutely no leakage.

Lotek_ - 29-12-2005 at 10:30

OT: whats the deposit that forms on out outside of leaky NaOH bottles? its white and kinda hard on the outside btu still wet inside.

The_Davster - 29-12-2005 at 11:02

Sodium carbonate from the NaOH reacting with the air.

I use glass vials for storage of anything I prepare as I do not usually work on a scale which requires much larger. I also have some of those antique reagent bottles with the pennyhead ground glass stoppers for storage of concentrated or dilute acids.
I am going to be needing some HDPE bottles though, becuase I got some chems in bags from the pottery store recently.

woelen - 29-12-2005 at 13:35

Most of my solid chems I store in HDPE bottles. Liquids I store in special lab bottles (a friend of mine works in a lab and he frequently brings empty bottles). These bottles have acid and chlorine resistant caps. Very nice.

For some chemicals I take special measures. Some chemicals are extremely hygroscopic or air sensitive (oxidation). These, I store in a HDPE bottle, which I in turn wrap in a closed small plastic bag, which in turn is put in a larger HDPE bottle. The plastic bag helps a lot against thermal cycling. When it gets colder, then the air shrinks and the bag also shrinks, when it gets warmer, the volume of the air in the bag increases and the bag expands. This helps a lot against cycling fresh air all over again into the bottle when temperature fluctuates. In this way I have kept my Na2S, Mg(ClO4)2, and a few other very sensitive chemicals very good for a long time. I have separate small bottles for my working amounts, the bottles with bags and so on contain larger stock amounts.

Iodine and p-benzoquinone I store in triple bottles. They make everything brown in the neightbourhood. I tried glass bottles, plastic bottles. It is horrible. With the triple bottles Only the first and second bottle become brown, the third outer one still is OK.

lacrima97 - 29-12-2005 at 14:42

I got some #5 polypropylene containers today for storing the more unreactive/stable chemicals in. I also got some paper sticky labels that I am going to print info about the chem on, and stick those labels to the container.

For the liquids that don't eat at rubber, I am collecting 8oz dr.pepper bottles. They accept a #2 stopper perfectly, and I will store most liquids in there. A few will be wrapped in something to keep out light if the material is light sensative.

The last thing I will get will probably be a few HDPE jars for the more troublesome chems, and a few reagent bottles for the rubber eating acids.

lacrima97 - 3-1-2006 at 16:52

Perfect bottles

Guys, I have a problem.

I get these 240ml Dr.Pepper drinks all of the time, and they come in a very nice glass bottle, which I have found out takes a #2 stopper perfectly.

The problem is, I don't like the fact that these bottles have dr.p and nutrition facts and all that shit on it.

It is some type of paint on the bottle. I have tried scratching it off with a knife, dissolving it in acetone, and this paint will not come off.

Does anyone know what im talking about, and/or have any ideas on how to get this damn paint off? This would be the perfect solution to storing liquids, becuase I just don't have the money to be buying expensive bottles.

Thanks a lot.

DeAdFX - 3-1-2006 at 18:05

I use "stock container" 90% of the time Ie if it came in a glass bottle it stays in a glass bottle.

neutrino - 3-1-2006 at 18:55

It doesn't come off with a knife? That is no ordinary paint!

My advice would mainly be scraping, preferably with steel wool. Burning it off would require an annealing oven (soda-lime glass is notoriously prone to thermal stress and must be annealed unless heated very evenly and slowly, which would be difficult at these temperatures). Chemical means would mainly involve dissolving it, after all they had to put it on there somehow... Try some more solvents, if you have any.

lacrima97 - 3-1-2006 at 20:15

Alright, I'll give several solvents a try. Steel wool doesn't work either. Thanks neutrino.

Rabidwolf - 4-1-2006 at 04:32

ammo boxes make very secure places to store any chem.
and all the boxes i've seen have a rubber seal around the lid that makes it pretty much air/water-tight

Lotek_ - 4-1-2006 at 08:09

i wouldnt wanna put any chem in a metal box...

the idea is to go for beign as inert are you can(exept mabye making a teflon cube)

Rabidwolf - 4-1-2006 at 20:29

lol,
after i posted i saw the potential it had to being interperted as you did.

i ment the ammo box used as a water/air tight container for storage of smaller vessels filled with misc. chemicals.
considering an ammunition box is spacifically designed to be a box that can safely store and protect a sizeable ammount of explosive meterial, i'd highly recommend a few to safely store various energetic materials, and componets related thereto.

jimwig - 5-1-2006 at 13:47

a lot of containers might be acceptable for long term storage but I have always been concerned about the possible leakeage via the gasket material.

therefore cutting a approipriate shaped gasket from something like thin Teflon
would give a much added life to the vessel.

just an idea

Magpie - 5-1-2006 at 16:53

My habit is to leave the chemical in the container in which I receive it. If it is a plastic bag I usually overpack this in a recycled food jar. I agree that the gasket material may not be appropriate. Jimwig's idea of making own Teflon gaskets is a good one where this extra effort and expense is warranted.

I like the Quorpak bottles. They can be bought with either polyethylene or Teflon gaskets in various sizes. It seems like there are always a lot of good buys on bottles on eBay. But check the freight before buying.

If the material is particularly hard to contain I use ground glass stoppered bottles.

[Edited on 6-1-2006 by Magpie]

woelen - 6-1-2006 at 06:35

Within a few weeks I hope to receive 2 ampoules, each having 250 ml of bromine (pro analysi)in them. These are all-glass ampoules from an old GDR lab, which, once broken, cannot be sealed anymore. The ampoules are intended for use in a lab, where the contents is used at once in a synthesis reaction. Of course, I will use the bromine in much smaller parts, in a lot of nifty experiments

.

So, I need a bottle of 250 ml, in which I can store the bromine, once the original container is broken. I already had some bromine before, which I had isolated myself, but I never stored it for more than a few days, because it leaks away from its container and it eats the cap. I would be really pleased if one of you can give me a location of a supplier, who can sell bromine-resistant bottles and who ships these bottles internationally. These bottles also should be such that the bromine does not slowly leak/diffuse out of the bottle over the course of months or years.

A question, a little bit off-topic: I had to pay EUR 30,- (appr. $35) per ampoule of bromine (appr. 250 ml -- 800 gram). This is not particularly cheap, but do you think I have been ripped off or is this a fair price? I myself have the impression that this is a fair price, although I have not a real good idea about the price of bromine. I purchased NaBr from the same seller for appr. $15 for one kilo, which is a good price to my opinion. I decided to buy the ampoules anyway, it is a one-time offer and it is a very interesting chem to have.

[Edited on 6-1-06 by woelen]

chromium - 6-1-2006 at 06:55

I suppose that best container you can have is bottle or flask with ground glass stopper but i do not know what grease to use if content is bromine.

Another way is to repack this bromine into your own ampoules. Its not as hard as it may seem. You can use long test tubes or small flasks or just suitable glass tubes as material for ampoules.

[Edited on 6-1-2006 by chromium]

Fleaker - 6-1-2006 at 17:04

No ground glass will not do it, it will escape right out. You can store it temporarily in a phenolic cap that's been sealed with hot paraffin, but a bakelite cap is best. I have a 500mL amber glass bakelite cap bottle that would suit you just fine.

Woelen, here's where to get small but outrageously expensive bottles (I doubt fisher will sell to you, so go through these people):

http://www.enasco.com/science/BrowseMinorIndex.do?majorIndex...

click reagent bottle, it has a solid teflon cap and pretty hefty walls, but only 100mL

Trust me though, they work very very (emphasis here) well holding iodine and bromine (7 months and it's still the same lvl). You can also keep the bromine in the freezer (it will freeze, 19F).

Oh, chromium, fyi, ampouling your own bromine, I strongly advise against it, it's fumes are very irritating and with a small spill on yourself, and you'll regret it for weeks (put a strong sodium thiosulfate solution on it immediately). I speak from experience here, bromine hurts. I suppose if you chilled it to 0*C or so, it might be tolerable, but at room temperature, bad idea.

Actually $35 for 250mL is a good deal. Since I've seen it at $145 for 500mL bottle or thereabouts on several occasions, you were not ripped off. Don't you think you bought a little much though? :-P

mick - 7-1-2006 at 16:34

I have stored 250 ml of Bromine for over 10 years, checked every year. The seal is PTFE covered silicone, the bromine is through the PTFE and is attacking the silicone rubber, but nothing serious.

mick

Nick F - 8-1-2006 at 04:17

It seems to me that the cheapest and easiest way to buy bromine, and the easiest way to store bromine, is as a bromide salt. Potassium bromide seems to go for about $10/kg, depending on the source, which is equivalent to over 200mL of bromine. Then you can easily produce bromine as and when it is needed by oxidation, assuming that you have a bit of quickfit glass.

lacrima97 - 8-1-2006 at 08:29

I have finally collected 20 dr.pepper bottles, and my stoppers should be in soon. Only problem is I think I am going to have to live with the writing on them.

ADP - 8-1-2006 at 09:56

Perhaps acetone or something could remove this...?

Darkblade48 - 8-1-2006 at 10:11

Quote:

Originally posted by ADP
Perhaps acetone or something could remove this...?

If the bottles are LDPE (as most pop bottles are), the acetone will mar the surface of the plastic, since LDPE doesn't stand up too well to acetone. HDPE, on the other hand, will not mar if you use acetone to rub off writing, sticky tape residue, etc.

Lotek_ - 8-1-2006 at 12:40

he is useing some glass bottles with bizzare uber paint on them.

woelen - 8-1-2006 at 12:41

Quote:

Originally posted by Fleaker
No ground glass will not do it, it will escape right out. You can store it temporarily in a phenolic cap that's been sealed with hot paraffin, but a bakelite cap is best. I have a 500mL amber glass bakelite cap bottle that would suit you just fine.

Woelen, here's where to get small but outrageously expensive bottles (I doubt fisher will sell to you, so go through these people):

http://www.enasco.com/science/BrowseMinorIndex.do?majorIndex...

click reagent bottle, it has a solid teflon cap and pretty hefty walls, but only 100mL

Trust me though, they work very very (emphasis here) well holding iodine and bromine (7 months and it's still the same lvl). You can also keep the bromine in the freezer (it will freeze, 19F).

Thanks for the link. Very interesting bottles. Indeed a pity that they are so very expensive. That would cost me more on the bottles than on the bromine (I need three of these for one ampoule).

Quote:

Actually $35 for 250mL is a good deal. Since I've seen it at $145 for 500mL bottle or thereabouts on several occasions, you were not ripped off. Don't you think you bought a little much though? :-P

One of the ampoules is for my element collection (apparently, the bromine is ampouled in colorless glass), which makes a really beautiful large sample. The other is for experiments. Smaller ampoules were not available and asking the seller to open up such an ampoule is out of the question for me. As long as the bromine is in the ampoules, it is safe to transport.

lacrima97 - 8-1-2006 at 12:44

Ha, I tried acetone AD, and the only thing I can think of to get the paint off is to dissolve the bottles...:-/, which would defeat the purpose of having them. The bottles are glass.

[Edited on 1/8/2006 by lacrima97]

Fleaker - 8-1-2006 at 17:42

Give the bottle an introduction to H2SO5 :-), that should remove anything organic on the outside of them, unless this is some sort of wierd metal oxide glaze put on the bottles?

[Edited on 9-1-2006 by Fleaker]

neutrino - 8-1-2006 at 17:59

Lining the cap of an ordinary glass bottle with a teflon disc will make it impervious to bromine vapors. Would something like this be applicable in your case? It is not so expensive or hard to do.

Fleaker - 9-1-2006 at 14:33

Neutrino, the amber glass bottle I had my bromine stored in had a PTFE-lined cap, but the vapors creeped around it and seriously messed up the phenolic cap (literally ate a hole right through) despite keeping it frozen! I wouldn't say impervious to it, but it will definitely make the cap last longer.

Nick F.: could you please post a source for that sodium bromide at $10/kg, or perhaps U2U me, I'm interested. TIA

[Edited on 9-1-2006 by Fleaker]

mick - 9-1-2006 at 15:53

Try using a polypropylene cap with good seals rather than a phenolic cap

mick

woelen - 20-1-2006 at 14:57

The two bottles of bromine arrived yesterday

. They are really cool samples of bromine. Also somewhat scary, to have such massive amounts of bromine around. I must not think of one of these bottles breaking. These samples of bromine are very old. They are from an old GDR (former Eastern Germany) lab, dated May 2th, 1971. I included some pictures of the huge bottle of bromine (its total weight, including the glass bottle is almost 900 grams!).

http://woelen.scheikunde.net/science/chem/pics/bromine.html

I have two of these large bottles of bromine now. I'll try to break one of these carefully at its head and want to remove almost all bromine, besides appr. 10 ml. Then I want to seal it again. Then I have two samples, one showing liquid bromine nicely, the other showing gaseous bromine much better. I have two little bottles now, with caps, with a teflon disk in it, but not totally teflon-covered. I'll try how these bottles stand up against bromine (I'll make a small quantity myself) and if they stand up against that well enough, then I'll open up one of these large ampoules of bromine.

Really cool to have this amount of Br2, it allows me to do many interesting experiments

.

If someone has a suggestion for safely breaking the seal at the top, without shattering the entire bottle, then I would be pleased. In every case, before I open up such a bottle, I'll freeze it in a freezer at -18 C. If something goes wrong, then at least I do not have bromine flowing around everywhere (that would be a real disaster to my opinion

).

[Edited on 20-1-06 by woelen]

Esplosivo - 20-1-2006 at 15:06

Of course it does! I envy you! That's some large quantity of bromine! Just to imagine all I ever head was approx. 25mL I produced from KBr

Bromine is so expensive unfortunately. Being 'old' (not that anything could have happened to the sealed bromine!), you must have gotten it at a good price.

Edit: To open up the large 'ampoules' I would suggest one of those metal objects similar to a saw, which is used to cut the 'head' off an ampoulle. I've got a whole collection of them, together with hundreds of ampoulles of the 'old' age (adrenaline, etc...) which I collect.

[Edited on 20-1-2006 by Esplosivo]

Rabidwolf - 22-1-2006 at 19:01

use a file to make a small scratch at the height you want to break it at.
then using a red hot glass rod, touch the scratch.
a crack should form around the circumference of where the origonal scratch was made

neutrino - 22-1-2006 at 19:21

Vogel had a good section about this. I would upload the relevant text, but my copy of Vogel's 5th was accidentally deleted. Does anyone know where I might find a copy?

Darkblade48 - 23-1-2006 at 05:10

Quote:

Originally posted by neutrino
Vogel had a good section about this. I would upload the relevant text, but my copy of Vogel's 5th was accidentally deleted. Does anyone know where I might find a copy?

I believe there's a copy floating around on axehandle's FTP in the books folder

The_Davster - 23-1-2006 at 05:51

Our library

Nick F - 23-1-2006 at 09:23

Scary. I'm glad I don't have that much elemental bromine!

Very cool though

YAY

lacrima97 - 25-1-2006 at 16:20

The bottles I mentioned as having the irremovable paint, finally shed a little paint. I accidentally let a little H2SO4 spill on one, and the paint just smeared off.

ADP - 25-1-2006 at 18:51

Methyl Ethyl Ketone does wonders too.. Dissolves polyvinyl chloride among other things..

kazaa81 - 1-2-2006 at 00:16

Some of the fear you have in storing certain chemicals can be undestand...but soon someone here will say "I would like to store my chemicals in a space shuttle, with no gravity, so that it will not touch anything!"

evil_lurker - 1-2-2006 at 00:43

www.cynmar.com has some 4/8/16/33 oz narrow mouthed plastic safety coated 1000ml amber bottles with PTFE lined screw caps for $6.70 or so.

You won't find them on their website yet.. they are only in the 2006 printed catalog.

They look pretty tough in the catalog, I'll find out later this week.

mick - 14-2-2006 at 11:47

Best of luck
Sort out your storage, crack the ampuole and everything should be OK. A lung full of bromine is not recomended, worse that chlorine because chlorine is a gas.

mick

woelen - 20-2-2006 at 12:26

I still have all bromine in its original ampoules. I'm waiting for a friend, who works on a lab, where they use bromine for synthetic purposes. When they have an empty bromine-bottle, then he gives me the bottle in which the bromine was stored. He then also gives me a special transfer pipette (I do not know how these look like, I'll let me be surprised) which can be used to transfer bromine from the bottle in sub-ml quantities, without the need to tilt the bottle. No dripping of bromine and no risk of pouring over the rim, pouring besides the test tube and other kinds of very unpleasant things. That's precisely what I want.

In many labs in the Netherlands I understood it is forbidden to pour bromine from bottles. An opened bromine bottle must be fixed to its place and may not be moved. The only way to get bromine from the bottle is through a transfer pipette. I think this is a good safety measure, which makes working with this dangerous chemical more safe (but still risky of course).

Magpie - 5-6-2006 at 19:21

I have tried to store concentrated HCl (36%) in a ground glass bottle in my hood. Over time the other glass bottles in the hood acquire a white film, and some of my nearby steel tools are showing rust. I have concluded that this HCl must be banished to the shed outside.

I have not had much luck with ether also. I placed it in a freezer but it began to smell in there also. I now have it in a glass bottle with HDPE lid seal. This seems to be working. I'm planning on buying a case of 250mL bottles with narrow necks and Teflon lid seals for volatile liquids.

The_Davster - 5-6-2006 at 20:22

On a ground glass stoppered bottle with something volatile inside, I put a layer of saran wrap secured with a tight rubber band. Works wonders on the HCl and HNO3. Saran wrap is not attacked by fuming nitric, this is easy for it. And this is for HCl in a bottle indoors, without a hood over it. I do keep the bulk HCl outside though.

My chemical cabinet has a nice smell to it inside...

100PercentChemistry - 2-4-2016 at 04:29

I used film canisters, juice bottles from online, and amber glass bottles. The proper Pyrex bottles are too expensive considering the array of chemicals I have and the small amount of each.