Nemo_Tenetur
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Inflated prices
I was really shocked after a quick search for actual prices for some lab chemicals here in Germany!
Fuming sulphuric acid , 500 gram (about 250 milliliter!) 408 Euro.
Even the non-analytical grade ("rein" means slightly better than technical grade) calls for 585 Euro per 500 milliliter.
Nitric acid fuming 572 Euro per liter.
Carbohydrazide, not analytical grade (lousy 97%, thats technical grade), 452 Euro per 500 gram.
Don´t forget to add taxes in each case (19%).
All these chemicals are produced in very large quantities worldwide from cheap precursors. Are the prices in other areas of the world also at such an
outrageous level?
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fx-991ex
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sigma are known to be ripoff, you may get better price if you call them but almost everyone avoid them because as i said, they are a ripoff.
[Edited on 15-1-2025 by fx-991ex]
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Nemo_Tenetur
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Here is another example, tetrachloromethane:
https://www.analytics-shop.com/de/sa289116-100ml
100 ml = 385 Euro plus taxes. That´s insane for large-scale industrial chemical produced from natural gas and elemental chlorine.
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Fery
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CCl4 is banned in EU, my friend who is a chemistry company cofounder buys CCl4 from India and pays import taxes.
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Plateings
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Quote: Originally posted by Fery  | | CCl4 is banned in EU, my friend who is a chemistry company cofounder buys CCl4 from India and pays import taxes. |
It's surprising that CCl4 is prohibited in the EU but not in Turkey. Despite Turkey not being an EU member, its chemical regulations often align with
EU standards. However, in Turkey, it seems much easier for ordinary consumers to purchase many chemicals directly, without needing to be a company or
present specific documentation. For instance, CCl4 can be bought in 0.5L quantities for $16.50.
[Edited on 15-1-2025 by Plateings]
"I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned." -Richard P. Feynman-
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Texium
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CCl4 is practically unavailable and very expensive in the US, even from companies that only sell to businesses and universities. I have
always used alternatives when adapting procedures that call for it.
Sigma's prices are generally very high, but I've found that in a few cases the cost justifies it. Anhydrous solvents, for instance. Other companies'
septum sealed bottles are simply inferior to Sigma's SureSeal bottles. I've checked water levels with Karl Fischer titration and never found a bottle
from Sigma to be out of spec, while bottles made by Acros or Alfa-Aesar have had orders of magnitude more water than they were supposed to before even
being used. This can make or break water sensitive reactions. When you're doing research on a professional lab budget, you need to be able to trust
the quality of your reagents, and it's worth paying for it.
Also, most universities and large companies have pricing deals with Sigma and the other big companies so the prices you see on the public site are not
what they actually pay.
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Keras
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Starting this year Laboratorium Discounter sells carbon disulphide for quite a low price. Make it react with an excess of chlorine and you get
CCl₄. You get also S₂Cl₂, that you can use with, e.g. sodium acetate to get acetic anhydride.
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Nemo_Tenetur
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Do you mean laboratoriumdiscounter.nl ? I´ve just checked their website and it doesn´t contain carbon disulphide.
Carbon disulphide is highly poisonsous and extremely flammable, therefore not allowed in Germany to sell online to private individuals.
I was redirected from their .nl website directly to their German language website. Maybe this is the reason why I didn´t found it?
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Deathunter88
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| Quote: Originally posted by Texium | CCl4 is practically unavailable and very expensive in the US, even from companies that only sell to businesses and universities. I have
always used alternatives when adapting procedures that call for it.
Sigma's prices are generally very high, but I've found that in a few cases the cost justifies it. Anhydrous solvents, for instance. Other companies'
septum sealed bottles are simply inferior to Sigma's SureSeal bottles. I've checked water levels with Karl Fischer titration and never found a bottle
from Sigma to be out of spec, while bottles made by Acros or Alfa-Aesar have had orders of magnitude more water than they were supposed to before even
being used. This can make or break water sensitive reactions. When you're doing research on a professional lab budget, you need to be able to trust
the quality of your reagents, and it's worth paying for it.
Also, most universities and large companies have pricing deals with Sigma and the other big companies so the prices you see on the public site are not
what they actually pay. |
To add on to this, in a research setting the main cost is human resources and not the reagents. I only began to appreciate this after starting working
on my PhD. I am funded on a 100k grant but only 5 grand goes to supplies, the rest goes to salary, tuition, university overhead etc.
When I'm in my home lab if my hardware store grade toluene has an impurity that messes up my extraction, it's a bummer but not a big deal. If I'm
working on a sponsor funded project with a tight deadline and my toluene wash adds some contamination that I don't notice until I'm doing TEM then
that's at least a couple grand worth of instrument time wasted plus potentially loss of a sponsor not to mention my own paid time. So I would happily
pay 10x the cost of what I can get toluene elsewhere for the peace of mind.
Also to back up what Texium said about discounts, I was ordering more isopropanol for my lab yesterday. The publically listed price for a case of four
4L jugs of HPLC is $728. When I log in to my university account the price drops to $100, which is actually on par with what it would cost for me to
buy isopropanol from the hardware store. I find most things actually cost just 10-50% of the publically listed price.
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Nemo_Tenetur
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| Quote: Originally posted by Fery | | CCl4 is banned in EU, my friend who is a chemistry company cofounder buys CCl4 from India and pays import taxes. |
I doubt that CCl4 is banned in EU. According to the european chemical agency website carbon tetrachloride is manufactured and/or imported in
quantities between 1.000 and 10.000 tonnes per year and used:
https://echa.europa.eu/de/substance-information/-/substancei...
That´s a little bit too much for research and laboratory use only.
It is regulated in different ways (for example, as an ozone depleting agent, as CMR substance not available for the general public/private individual,
it may be used only in closed reaction systems to avoid release into the environment etc.) but not generally prohibited for any use.
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Keras
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Check their ‘own brand’ chemicals,
here.
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6dthjd1
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Fuming sulfuric acid is always very expensive in my experience. It is made in huge quantities but not in the same proportion as of concentrated
sulfuric acid. Fuming sulfuric acid is harder to store and maintain compared to sulfuric acid. Though this price is very high. I've seen more like
240 USD for 250 ml
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Sulaiman
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Sigma is owned by merck so a near monopoly, hence expensive.
CAUTION : Hobby Chemist, not Professional or even Amateur
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Keras
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This is ridiculous, given how easy it is to make oleum. I don’t even mention pyrolysing sodium bisulfite into sodium trioxide, but the method Nurd
Rage demonstrated on his channel.
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Texium
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Sure, making it is relatively easy and cheap, but it's not that ridiculous when you consider the expense and risk involved with storing and shipping
it. Same goes for fuming nitric acid.
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6dthjd1
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| Quote: Originally posted by Keras |
This is ridiculous, given how easy it is to make oleum. I don’t even mention pyrolysing sodium bisulfite into sodium trioxide, but the method Nurd
Rage demonstrated on his channel.
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As indicated above and below it may be easy to make but it's hard to do so safely compared to H2SO4.
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Fery
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| Quote: Originally posted by Nemo_Tenetur | Do you mean laboratoriumdiscounter.nl ? I´ve just checked their website and it doesn´t contain carbon disulphide.
Carbon disulphide is highly poisonsous and extremely flammable, therefore not allowed in Germany to sell online to private individuals.
I was redirected from their .nl website directly to their German language website. Maybe this is the reason why I didn´t found it?
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They sell CS2 in aluminium bottles. Delivery into a lot of EU countries. Maybe there are some transport safety limits and they had to split into
smaller packs to reduce delivery costs. I encountered something similar with 35% HCl from Poland where 5x 1L glass bottles delivery at normal price
and 5 L plastic barrel too much overpriced delivery cost so I opted for the 5x 1 L choice).
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Dr.Bob
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I do understand the cost as shipping these is a nightmare. And any accident will be a major issue and lawsuit. If it is so easy to make, just make
it. I have found that even small amounts of things considered highly hazardous can cost a fortune. If you use a lot of them, you can buy larger
amounts, but if you only use a little, then everyone will be afraid to sell them to you, as you will be considered a risk.
Dynamite is not very expensive, but costs a lot to buy a little, due to regulatory burdan and shipping being a nightmare, but I have seen a semi of it
before, and that likely provides it at a reasonable price, but only quarries and such buy it in that amount. Buying one stick will likely cost a lot
as no one wants to sell it to someone who only needs one stick.
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MrDoctor
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Where i live, shipping is generally the main issue and cause of high prices, since theres usually a significant import-addon, which is then coupled by
the limited access to actual shops and factory outlets, some even insist that by rule/law they NEED to ship products out and that their warehouses are
prohibited from allowing collections. I think my local sigma does that, or used to until very recently.
But safety regulations are going up, so hazmat shipping gets more expensive and restrictive.
You may want to consider buying larger quantities, although i realize fuming acids are not exactly the easiest things to store. you may find that
youll be able to get vastly better deals.
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Dr.Bob
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| Quote: Originally posted by Dr.Bob | | Dynamite is not very expensive, but costs a lot to buy a little, due to regulatory burdan and shipping being a nightmare, but I have seen a semi of it
before, and that likely provides it at a reasonable price, but only quarries and such buy it in that amount. Buying one stick will likely cost a lot
as no one wants to sell it to someone who only needs one stick. |
Apparently I was wrong, dynamite is readily available to the public in Bolivia:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/mountain-eats-men-bolivian-town-1...
Maybe you can get acids there cheap also...
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Osmiridium
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Since SO3 is the intermediate in large scale sulfuric acid production one might think oleum is a cheap and readily available compound in industry but
it actually isn't in the actual sense. Most sulfuric acid plants absorb it directly in less concentrated oleum (actually oleum because it is less
corrosive to metals used for plant construction than water containing acid) which is then diluted with conc. sulfuric acid. Eventually it's diluted to
obtain the usual standard conentration of 96-98%. Where oleum is desired and produced as such it is usually sent directly for its use in synthesis at
a large scale, often even on site.
Pure SO3 has some properties that make it notoriously difficult to work with so the plants keep it in it's gaseus form. Oleum is a bit better to work
with but also a nasty stuff that can freeze but you should't overheat it while melting and it creates a dense corrosive mist on contact with moist
ambient air. It's not used when not necessary.
Fuming nitric acid is also mostly produced on site where it's needed and there aren't that many uses for it anyway.
In the lab there are only niche uses for it and safe handling and transport costs make it very expensive as a retail product. Even for Sigma
standards.
[Edited on 25-3-2025 by Osmiridium]
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