jgourlay
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preferred vendor for glass acid bottles?
All, I need a few pint or quart size bottles for storing nitric and sulphuric acid. Prices from cole-parmer et. al. are REALLY high, and cheaper
places don't tell you enough about the caps to know if they have the teflon cap.
Nor whether the cheap bottle thread is compatible with the caps-sold-separately at chemical supply places.
Where do you guys buy?
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peach
Bon Vivant
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I, and quite a few others, avoid using glass bottles for storing acids as they are so easy to break and not all that necessary. And as you've found
out, the borosilicate bottles are expensive!
I buy concentrated sulphuric, hydrochloric and ammonia in HDPE bottles and they do, for all intents, nothing to the plastic.
A bigger problem is solvents, which can leach through the plastics over time, dissolve them or leach trace contaminants out. When people start doing
chemistry, there is always a tendency to let solvents evaporate off into the air for simplicity. The more and more experience they get, the more they
realise, it's going to cost a fortune to keep rebuying the solvents every time hundreds of mls of them need to come off. So they get recovered,
complete with trace contaminants. Over time, they then realise those contaminants are having an effect, so they begin cleaning their solvents.
Eventually, when looking at researchers in universities, they've switched to assuming it's all shit to start with, and re-distil the volume they need
immediately prior to use.
Borosilicate bottles are often used in labs to ensure it's as unreactive as the glassware being used and for high purity work; the solvent bottles for
HPLC are those kind, where any minute trace of contamination is likely to show up on the output, the blown glass can also tolerate pressure
differentials better, but I would be very cautious with that idea. The majority of supplier chemicals that don't come in HDPE come in standard glass
Winchester bottles. These are moulded rather than blown, and far cheaper than the blown borosilicate.
The caps on some Winchesters are R6. But the newer ones are GL45.
The caps on normal sized blown bottles, like the Schott Durans, are GL45, or one of the other GL sizes. The number is their diameter. The GL system is
being used as a standard because it allows adaptors to be screwed onto the bottle, such as dispensing pipettes and ported caps for chromatography
systems, there are even adaptors to fit standard taper glassware to the threads. The blown bottles can also be used on roller mixers to agitating
biological cultures without damaging the cells with stir bars and pumps.
GL is a DIN standard. There's 45, 32 and 25. That's all you need to worry about. Pick the right number, screw it on.
I would still recommend HDPE for most stuff. It's only second to PTFE in terms of plastics and most chemicals. The thick walled HDPE bottles cost
about the same as the moulded Winchesters. PTFE bottles are eye watering price wise. I would suggest you go for thick walled HDPE. The thinner walls
are next to impossible to break, but they're flexible, which makes it easier to spill stuff.
This question has come up a few times. We should have our own SM Wiki. I know ?home chemist? has one, but there seem to be barely any users on there.
These 1000ml Winchesters are £33 for 12
These 1000ml Schott Durans are £75 for 10, and that's likely without the VAT (an extra 20%)
A GL45 to B24 cap
The inside
Fits this big 10l bottle I have. I only really use this for temporarily storing and pooling results. For instance, I poured all the litres of crude
benzene in there since I didn't want it all over the place in beakers and other bottles, and I needed to wash it with litres of water
That's a 2.5l moulded Winchester from a lab supplier, full of ethyl acetate. The standard GL45 cap fits fine. The black cap in my hand is a GL45.
That's a HDPE bottle of concentrated sulphuric. The only trace of anything happening is the foam liner under the cap being a faint yellow / brown
tint. The rest of the plastic is fine. The linear is fine actually, I can turn the bottle upside down and nothing will come out. I could also drop it
on the floor and all it might do is leave a scuff.
Here's another example of a specialised GL cap, with multiple ports. This allows them to be easily connected to chromatography pumps. The ports can
also be used for things like sparging gas, microbial filters, nutrient lines, overhead stirrers and other fun stuff when growing a culture in the
bottle; a more advanced form of sticking a wad of cotton wool in the top of a demijohn.
A GL bottle / flask / vessel complete with bits for cell culture
GL45 bottles feeding a chromatography system
GL45 bottle dispensers
[Edited on 24-7-2011 by peach]
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Arthur Dent
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Registered: 22-10-2010
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There are many sources for large bottles, look at wine supply stores, they have many sizes and formats. Here's what I just found: BottleStore.com
I have a few of these big old jars, and they're excellent to store tasty spirits, but would also be ideal to store strong acids, with the proper
bottlecaps. My acids are currently stored in the bottles they came in, which happen to be gallon clear glass jars.
Robert
--- Art is making something out of nothing and selling it. - Frank Zappa ---
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Arthur Dent
National Hazard
Posts: 553
Registered: 22-10-2010
Member Is Offline
Mood: entropic
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There are many sources for large bottles, look at wine supply stores, they have many sizes and formats. Here's what I just found: BottleStore.com
I have a few of these big old jars, and they're excellent to store tasty spirits, but would also be ideal to store strong acids, with the proper
bottlecaps. My acids are currently stored in the bottles they came in, which happen to be gallon clear glass jars.
Robert
--- Art is making something out of nothing and selling it. - Frank Zappa ---
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