Melgar
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Benzaldehyde on Amazon Prime?
Great price too:
https://www.amazon.com/HiMedia-GRM7863-500ML-Benzaldehyde-50...
I noticed that a lot of people on eBay were selling benzaldehyde with the same image, and messaged one of them what they knew about the legal
restrictions on it, since it's a DEA List I chemical. He said he didn't know, and that he'd take it down; apparently he'd post it on eBay, and if
someone ordered it, he'd have it shipped as a gift through Amazon. I think he thought I was a cop or something. Sure enough, it's listed on Amazon,
with the exact same icon. Theoretically, it's totally legal to buy it, and the seller wouldn't even have to report it to the DEA, since it's below
the threshhold, which is either 1L or 4L, I can't remember which. Might be a good time to pick up a bottle while you can.
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Cryolite.
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Yep, HiMedia is an actual lab supplier, and they do sell a lot of things through Amazon. If you're willing to put up with the insane wait times (a
couple months), you can get some pretty obscure chemicals for very cheap. Just the other day, I bought a half liter of acetophenone from them for 20
bucks.
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Melgar
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Huh, I just put in an order from them, and their prices on stuff seemed almost arbitrary. Like, I got 250g of TBAB for $24, and then see something
like DMSO at over $100 for 100 mL. Their search kind of sucks too, so I had to scroll through everything manually. Ended up getting some silicone
grease, because why not? Also lactic acid, because nobody ever seems to sell it for a reasonable price, and it was $22 for 500 mL. No word on the
concentration though, and I'm pretty sure it polymerizes when you try to remove too much water from it.
They seem to have changed their shipping protocols though, possibly opening a warehouse in the US. When I checked out, I was given a whole bunch of
options that are only available domestically, all quite cheap too.
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Cryolite.
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I'm guessing they are using Amazon as a way to clear up stock: things that they want sold quickly get offloaded on schmucks like us. 
Regardless, everything I've ordered from them seems to be of good quality.
Also, what exactly do you mean by only domestic shipping options? Everything they sell is shipped by Amazon, but Amazon very rarely has their items in
stock and has to order them from HiMedia directly. This takes AGES.
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gdflp
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What are everyone's opinions on this? I personally would love to have 500mL of benzaldehyde, and I would purchase this in a second, but I am
concerned about it coming up as a suspicious purchase.
While it is technically completely legal(below the exemption quantity), I'm worried that it might be misconstrued as being used for illegal purposes
and, considering that eBay has be known to give away transaction information freely, I have no interest in getting a visit. Thoughts?
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Melgar
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Quote: Originally posted by gdflp  | What are everyone's opinions on this? I personally would love to have 500mL of benzaldehyde, and I would purchase this in a second, but I am
concerned about it coming up as a suspicious purchase.
While it is technically completely legal(below the exemption quantity), I'm worried that it might be misconstrued as being used for illegal purposes
and, considering that eBay has be known to give away transaction information freely, I have no interest in getting a visit. Thoughts?
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I was pulled out of work and questioned once, by the FBI and the ATF, for a Sigma Aldrich product that I ordered to my lab address in grad school, and
had been storing in my brother's garage. Turns out, my brother's idiot roommate found it, saw the warning labels on the side, and called the fire
department rather than me. It escalated a few times, because I guess it's one of those chemicals that could be used to make a bomb if someone was
desperate. They closed down the whole street, pulled me out of work and searched my car. Eventually, the ATF questioned me, but by that point, they
realized I had no bomb-making intentions, and were actually rather nice to me. I wasn't charged with anything, and the ATF was even nice enough to
tell my employers that I wasn't up to anything illegal, but they still viewed me suspiciously, and even revoked a pay increase that I was supposed to
be getting. So I quit and got a job where instead of being micromanaged, I make a lot of company decisions.
But as far as benzaldehyde, it's definitely not viewed the same as say, safrole by the DEA, especially if you don't have it right next to a bottle of
nitroethane. I think the reason you don't see it more, is because the SELLER would need to fill out all the requisite DEA paperwork in order to buy
it in bulk, and they'd rather not.
[Edited on 10/25/16 by Melgar]
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Khemi
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Is there a threshold amount for piperidine? I love the smell of the stuff and wouldn't mind 100g!
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DraconicAcid
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| Quote: Originally posted by Melgar | | No word on the concentration though, and I'm pretty sure it polymerizes when you try to remove too much water from it. |
I think it just dimerizes. It's sold as an 85% solution from Aldrich et. al., but we used some of it for a titration lab, and found that the diluted
solutions were much more dilute than I had calculated. After the flasks sat for a few months, the dimer hydrolyzed, and it was the right
concentration.
Please remember: "Filtrate" is not a verb.
Write up your lab reports the way your instructor wants them, not the way your ex-instructor wants them.
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careysub
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Note that "bitter almond essential oil" is basically just benzaldehyde. And it is widely sold.
Check this out:
https://www.spectrumchemical.com/OA_HTML/chemical-products_A...
Do not confuse this with "sweet almond oil" which is quite different.
About that which we cannot speak, we must remain silent.
-Wittgenstein
Some things can never be spoken
Some things cannot be pronounced
That word does not exist in any language
It will never be uttered by a human mouth
- The Talking Heads
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Maroboduus
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| Quote: Originally posted by Khemi | | Is there a threshold amount for piperidine? I love the smell of the stuff and wouldn't mind 100g! |
Did you know it can be extracted from black pepper?
Extract the piperine, and hydrolize it.
The amine part of that amide is piperidine.
Probably need 5 or 10 kilos of pepper to get 100 grams though.
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careysub
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| Quote: Originally posted by Maroboduus | | Quote: Originally posted by Khemi | | Is there a threshold amount for piperidine? I love the smell of the stuff and wouldn't mind 100g! |
Did you know it can be extracted from black pepper?
Extract the piperine, and hydrolize it.
The amine part of that amide is piperidine.
Probably need 5 or 10 kilos of pepper to get 100 grams though. |
Here is a nice lab experiment for undergraduates precisely describing how to get piperidine. Piperidine yield might be as much as ~3% of the weight of
the black pepper (30% of 10%), though piperine content varies and might be half that.
The best place to buy spices from (IMHO) is Penzey's, they have the best quality spices anywhere (they go around the world to buy direct from growers)
so their premium peppercorn should have the highest piperine content that is available:
https://www.penzeys.com/online-catalog/whole-special-extra-b...
Their prices a good too. Their regular grade matches prices from bulk Indian suppliers on eBay.
Attachment: Expt 4 Piperine from Black Pepper09.pdf (148kB)
This file has been downloaded 4342 times
Seeing Dr. Bob's post below, I wanted to clarify that the paper I posted describes both the extraction of piperine from pepper, and its hydrolysis to
piperidine. That is what my (30% of 10%) means - the molecular weight of piperine is 285.34, that of piperidine is 85.15, after hydrolytic cleavage
you get a piperidine yield of 85.15/285.34 = 29.8%.
[Edited on 3-11-2016 by careysub]
About that which we cannot speak, we must remain silent.
-Wittgenstein
Some things can never be spoken
Some things cannot be pronounced
That word does not exist in any language
It will never be uttered by a human mouth
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Dr.Bob
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Piperidine is not the same as piperine, they are two different chemicals. Just want to clarify that, as people mix them up often.
Piperidine is a widely used base, often used for deprotecting Fmoc groups on amino acids. Piperine is the piperdine amide of a methylenedioxyphenyl
unstaurated acid, thus it contains piperidine as a piece of it. While piperine has a slightly hot, pungent smell, piperidine smells like dead fish.
But piperidine was first isolated from hydrolyzed piperine, thus the related names.
Piperine = 5-(3,4-Methylenedioxyphenyl)-2,4-pentadienoyl-2-piperidine
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Maroboduus
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| Quote: Originally posted by Dr.Bob | Piperidine is not the same as piperine, they are two different chemicals. Just want to clarify that, as people mix them up often.
Piperidine is a widely used base, often used for deprotecting Fmoc groups on amino acids. Piperine is the piperdine amide of a methylenedioxyphenyl
unstaurated acid, thus it contains piperidine as a piece of it. While piperine has a slightly hot, pungent smell, piperidine smells like dead fish.
But piperidine was first isolated from hydrolyzed piperine, thus the related names.
Piperine = 5-(3,4-Methylenedioxyphenyl)-2,4-pentadienoyl-2-piperidine |
Actually, I WAS kind of wondering how he could like the smell of piperidine, but I try not to make value judgments about esthetics. Didn't occur to me
that it might be name confusion.
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Camroc37
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Can someone explain some of the uses for benzaldehyde? I've seen a few videos about it, but why is this a chemical to get excited over? Thanks for any
reply.
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Maroboduus
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A lot of the excitement elsewhere about benzaldehyde is that it can be condensed with ethyl nitrate[EDIT: Yes, it's nitroethane as mentioned below,
not ethyl nitrate.] and either reduced to amphetamine, or used to make phenyl 2 propanone which can be reductively aminated to meth.
This is probably why it's a watched chemical.
I'm sure posts about Sciencemadness type uses for it will follow, but I just thought that should be gotten out of the way.
[Edited on 4-11-2016 by Maroboduus]
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careysub
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| Quote: Originally posted by Camroc37 |
I noticed that a lot of people on eBay were selling benzaldehyde...[/rquote]
Can someone explain some of the uses for benzaldehyde? I've seen a few videos about it, but why is this a chemical to get excited over? Thanks for any
reply. |
It is the essence of almond scent and flavor, and is thus used in food and perfume.
It is a very useful intermediate that leads to dye aniline and acridine dyes, and other intermediates (mandelic acid, etc.).
It is very widely used.
It also undergoes a condensation reaction with nitroethane (not ethyl nitrate) to phenyl-2-nitropropene which can then be reduced to amphetamine or to
phenylacetone and then to methamphetamine. This is why the DEA gets "excited".
[Edited on 3-11-2016 by careysub]
About that which we cannot speak, we must remain silent.
-Wittgenstein
Some things can never be spoken
Some things cannot be pronounced
That word does not exist in any language
It will never be uttered by a human mouth
- The Talking Heads
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Maroboduus
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I always confuse those two.
Ethyl nitrate's the one you DON'T distill, right?
[Edited on 3-11-2016 by Maroboduus]
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NitreRat
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Are you sure you're not thinking of the other ester: Ethyl nitrite, the molecular isomer of the non-ester: Nitroethane, which is different
from Ethyl nitrate and not to be confused with Nitrosoethane
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Maroboduus
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Ethyl nitrate is an unpopular high explosive because it blows up if you make faces at it.
Ethyl nitrite I know has a fruity odor and is made along with nitroethane when you treat ethanyl halide with nitrous acid.
Those you're supposed to be able to separate by distillation. I've never done that though.
You appear to be a real asshole, Nitrerat.
[Edited on 3-11-2016 by Maroboduus]
edited to replace ethanol with ethyl halide
[Edited on 4-11-2016 by Maroboduus]
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zed
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Ummmm. A Control Agent may, or may not, get excited about Benzaldehyde.
I can buy it, with no problems, cheaply as Almond Flavoring, pretty much anywhere (though it may be diluted). While on the other-hand, buying it
though a Chemical supplier could set off an investigation.
Just depends.
A Big Chemical distributor, may have a Control Agent, in shop. Depending upon the area of the country, the political climate, and the agent's
personal motivation....This agent might be very aggressive. Even clearly legitimate purchases, by major academic institutions, can be fastidiously
investigated.
Unhappily, often, the stink of inquiry comes months or even years, after the suspect purchase in question. And reckless, unfounded accusations may be
made.
Comes with the territory.
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Melgar
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If you had benzaldehyde, the police would have to prove that you intended to use it to make controlled substances. Probably the best way to do that
is not having any nitroethane. However, to answer the question about what's so interesting about benzaldehyde, it's the simplest aryl aldehyde, and
many introductory organic reactions use it as a starting reagent. When getting into reactions of aryl groups in organic chemistry, it's one of the
absolute essentials for studying, since then you can analyze how other ring-substituted benzaldehydes react in similar conditions, and thus, how those
substituents affect the reactivity of the molecule. It's also probably the easiest building block to use for forming carbon-carbon bonds to a benzyl
group, and its presence or absence is easily detected by its strong smell, which is a lot more pleasant than say, benzyl chloride.
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