solo
International Hazard
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Location: Estados Unidos de La Republica Mexicana
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Mood: ....getting old and drowning in a sea of knowledge
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white powder unknown mystery
Currently I was asked to try to find out that this white powder is.....
Case I
Appearance: White substance material with a glisen , under microscope a white shiny powder with occasional shards which are a dull white.
heated in aluminum foil: odd white smoke turns to white cotton puffs when heated and then liquifies and when cooled it looks yellow-tan solid powdery
material and when the cotton material is touched it leave a white powdery residue.
MP: turns amber and finally melts amber color at 292 C
Solubility:
Not soluble in water at 20 C but will dissolve at 100 C, when allowed to cool there is a crystalline precipitate and when the water is evaporated off
there is a powdery white ash.....not done MP yet but the crystallized material looks like needles like fiberglass netting plates. when heated the
white smoke turns to fluffy cotton soot no change on either of the two save for the appearance.
not soluble in acetone
not soluble in chloroform
not soluble in ether
not soluble in alcohol cold or hot
Conclusion: I have a strong suspicion that this material is some type of cellulose or polymer.
Any ideas?............java
It's better to die on your feet, than live on your knees....Emiliano Zapata.
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chemoleo
Biochemicus Energeticus
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Location: England Germany
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Does it burn?
What flame? The type of flame is often indicative of the type of polymer/plastic (i.e. what type of smoke, sooty or white, or none)
But anyway I doubt it's a polymer as they do not have a sharp MP transition.
Does it dissolve better when a base or an acid is present?
How serious are you about identifying it?
Never Stop to Begin, and Never Begin to Stop...
Tolerance is good. But not with the intolerant! (Wilhelm Busch)
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JohnWW
International Hazard
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"White powder"? I hope you were assured that the stuff was not anthrax spores, or heroin, or morphine, or methamphetamine, or cocaine!
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MagicJigPipe
International Hazard
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Well, judging by the information he gave I am 100% certain it is not a drug or any alkaloid.
And, depending on his point of view, it might actually be a good thing money-wise if it was one of those things in large quantity.
"There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry ... There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any
question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors. ... We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it and
that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. And we know that as long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think,
free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost, and science can never regress." -J. Robert Oppenheimer
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crazyboy
Hazard to Others
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How or where did you get it? Did you buy it or was it the product of a reaction?
This information could help narrow down the possibilities.
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solo
International Hazard
Posts: 3967
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Mood: ....getting old and drowning in a sea of knowledge
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It's the rainy season in my part of the world and power outages are common hence the delay to the comments.....solo
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| Quote: |
chemoleo........Does it burn?
What flame? The type of flame is often indicative of the type of polymer/plastic (i.e. what type of smoke, sooty or white, or none)
But anyway I doubt it's a polymer as they do not have a sharp MP transition.
Does it dissolve better when a base or an acid is present?
How serious are you about identifying it?
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There once was a service made availabe by PharmChem.....to identify unknown material , mostly purported one type of drug or another, the purpose was
to jelp those that insisted on using drugs as part of their personal choice.....the feds shut it down .....they claimed it provided quality control
for dealers......figure that?
.....back to the question....when heated it produces white plumes of soot reminecent of cotton puffs, when examined they leave a whit powdery
residue....and the material finally liquifies to a dark amber and upon cooling solidifies to a dark yellow brown material....
As to the melting point I use capillary tubes hence with the afore said behaviour of the material it would have been difficult to see when exactly the
melting occurred until the liquid amber showed up otherwise the color of the material tanned gradually after 200C till I saw it liquify at 292 C
the material seems to favor an acidic environment for dissolving .....not an issue of serious about solving the id of the compound ....but curious
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| Quote: | JohnWW...........
"White powder"? I hope you were assured that the stuff was not anthrax spores, or heroin, or morphine, or methamphetamine, or cocaine!
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No John, i was told it was some amino type precursor to some synthesis.....
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| Quote: | MagicJigPipe
Well, judging by the information he gave I am 100% certain it is not a drug or any alkaloid.
And, depending on his point of view, it might actually be a good thing money-wise if it was one of those things in large quantity.
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..........not so sure since no amine test was done
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| Quote: | .....crazyboy
How or where did you get it? Did you buy it or was it the product of a reaction?
This information could help narrow down the possibilities.
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.............I think i answered that above.....not bought was asked to identify...
It's better to die on your feet, than live on your knees....Emiliano Zapata.
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not_important
International Hazard
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Registered: 21-7-2006
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With what you've said it sounds like an amine salt. The melting properties could be a polymer, but not too many would give the white smoke. Solubility
matches a salt or polymer with high hydroxyl or sulfonate content; however a lot of those polymers that I know of tend to char when heated. Check pH
of cool solution, test solution with AgNO3 for halide, BaCl2 for sulfate, your test of choice for phosphate.
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