RogueRose
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Cyanoacrylate (Superglue) production/synthesis - possible for home chemist?
One of the most useful substances I have in my house, with as many applications as imagination allows. I would think that this would be one substance
which would be very handy to be able to make - especially once one has found a lot of uses for it. $1 for .015 oz is kind of expensive and at that
price is $67/oz and almost $1100 per lb.
So, does anyone know how to make this?
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Corrosive Joeseph
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You might like this...............
http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/motm/superglue/superglueh.htm
/CJ
Being well adjusted to a sick society is no measure of one's mental health
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RogueRose
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Thanks CJ, I saw that page and it seemed that the synthesis step was a little lacking in details such as temps, pressures, atmospheric conditions,
reaction times, etc. IDK if these factors are not very important in this synthesis and I've seen many synthesis written that seem simple but when the
conditions necessary are listed, it is a whole other deal.
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JJay
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That page lists several references that likely have more information, in particular: Clayden, J., Greeves, N., Warren, S., Wothers, P., Organic
Chemistry, 1st Edn, Oxford University Press, (2001) pp. 703
I have been working on a methodology for determining reaction conditions for named reactions. Basically, I just search for a lot of applications of
the same named reaction and look at exactly what transformations/etc. are being made, what functional groups might cause problems, what reaction
conditions are used, and how the authors of the article or book discussing the syntheses worked around problems. Obviously this won't tell you much
about reaction conditions that no one has ever tried before, and I've had some pretty low-yielding experiments, but it's a vast improvement over
taking wild guesses like I did previously.
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Deathunter88
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Quote: Originally posted by RogueRose  | One of the most useful substances I have in my house, with as many applications as imagination allows. I would think that this would be one substance
which would be very handy to be able to make - especially once one has found a lot of uses for it. $1 for .015 oz is kind of expensive and at that
price is $67/oz and almost $1100 per lb.
So, does anyone know how to make this? |
Why not buy 16oz of almost pure cyanoacrylate on eBay for like 40 dollars?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/BIG-16OZ-BOTTLE-FLEXIBLE-THIN-HYPERBOND-CA-SUPER-GLUE-Cyanoacrylate-FLEX-/351971924500?hash=item51f3295a14:m:mumTQbPDdZ8HRgBfC
mHByCw
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Dr.Bob
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The challenge with cyanoacrylates is that they polymerize very easily, thus forming glue/goo on any surface. You would need to keep an inhibitor in
the material, then distill and likely add a trace of inhibitor to keep it good until sealed. And each container to hold it has to be immaculately
clean, or any traces of impurity will likely polymerize it in the container. That is what you are paying for in a small tube, not the chemical
inside.
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halogen
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Glue! I wonder if glue expressed from the devil's hoofs themselves has an activity of superglue. It seems probable.
F. de Lalande and M. Prud'homme showed that a mixture of boric oxide and sodium chloride is decomposed in a stream of dry air or oxygen at a red heat
with the evolution of chlorine.
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jack44556677
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It would be cool if someone could supply the procedure for synthesis...
Short of that, I was very pleased with the superglue-like substance I made recently.
I had a very specific use case, where the adhesive needed to work well glass on glass, be completely non-toxic and foodsafe, and be able to routinely
withstand heating and cooling from room temperature to 235C. Because I could find no commercial glue that ticked all those boxes, I decided to do
some home experiment.
I found a research paper from 2 years ago "Egg Albumen as a Fast and Strong Medical Adhesive Glue" 2017 that outlined the process and I was shocked by
the results (both theirs and my own).
First you air dry the albumen (egg white) in a fume hood / fan desiccator until it is as dry as possible ( according to the paper this was a 110fpm
fume hood and the albumin was added by pipette to petri dishes that sat overnight ). I made mine with a computer fan and a Rubbermaid container. When
completely dried, the albumen will be a light yellow and have a crystalline appearance. It will fleck off easily and will be hard like silica/quartz
flecks, it will not be deep yellow and moist / bendy / sticky in any way (that would indicate there is more drying to do). This dried albumin (
measured at 5% of its original water content) should then be pulverized by mortar and pestle into a light yellow powder that appears more white as it
becomes more ground. This pulverized material is then vacuum dried, held under vacuum at room temperature, for some time to further purge as much
water as possible and the powder is declared EAA (egg albumin adhesive).
The proportion suggested in the paper was 0.875g of EAA to each ml of water for the ideal "gel superglue" like consistency, but they were also
concerned with it's ability to be squirted through a syringe (which is a GREAT way to apply superglue by the by). Personally I used a small amount of
the EAA and mixed a few drops of water in (drop at a time) until I got something I could work with. Ultimately the consistency I used was more like
rubber cement, and formed sticky little balls/clumps with itself readily.
I used heptane (Bestine brand Solvent / Thinner) to clean both sides of the broken glass ( clean break, sides match pretty perfectly ) which seems to
help a great deal when using any superglue then applied a very small amount of EAA mixed with water ( it really didn't seem like enough) on one side
of the glass and pushed the two pieces together with some wiggling to ensure sliding / even application in the broken joint. Within a minute or so it
seemed attached enough to stop holding it with my hands, and after about 5 minutes I had the courage to try putting the glass into position and begin
heating it ( opposite to superglue, this glue cures as the water leaves it ) to get it to cure faster. So far the joint is performing well (it is air
sealed and mechanically solid) but the paper didn't do much in the way of long term / duration stress-testing.
A little of the EAA got stuck to my finger and after the water dried the feeling and effect on my skin was barely discernible from superglue. In fact
in terms of my experience using it, from the visible look of it, to the viscosity, to handle-ability it seemed functionally the same as gel superglue.
If this stuff is this effective ( and biomedically seems ideal ) then the superglue syndicate may need to find a new scam.
It is recommended to keep the EAA powder fully desiccated and in the freezer until you are ready to mix up a batch for single use, or do so from fresh
egg each time. It is still perishable and can harbor deadly disease. When used bio-medically it was sterilized under UV before use.
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