Don't know where else to post this so I am posting it here.

I was wondering why people always heat/boil solvents in a beaker. Boiling IPA in a beaker, for example, creates a lot of fumes, you need good ventilation etc. I have been doing it in a borosilicate bottle. I close the cap and heat it up, the bottle can withstand a lot of pressure but I make sure to release the pressure every now and then. The method is much more efficient and creates less fumes. You can put whatever you want to dissolve in the bottle, add IPA, heat it, release pressure every now and then, and pour it out when it's dissolved.
I have even boiled acetone that way, and acetone produces so many fumes that boiling it in a beaker would be a straight up health hazard.

But since I don't see anyone else doing it... I was wondering if there's a good reason for it or if I am doing something stupid...

Hi,

Are there safe pressure specifications for these bottles, I believe not.
You also have no indication of amount of pressure build up during the heating.
I think it's a gamble with some serious stakes, if it goes wrong the odds are not good looking.
Seen my own share of stuff flying around, not cool and dangerous! Can't recommend it.

What happens when the bottle fails (hopefully just cracks, but...) and spills the entire volume of hot solvent on the surface of whatever is being used to heat the bottle, and all over everything else. That's a lot of surface area, the solvent on the heater is going to boil off quickly. That's a lot of solvent in the air, to the point where sparks are a major concern (even from regular things you might not consider like brushed motors on fans etc.)

Why do you need to heat solvent that much other than for distillation? Maybe a magnetic stirrer is what you need?

Jees has a good point. Make sure if you use glass that you look into using the right equipment. Even then there are risks sometimes.

I used to do my extractions in mason jars until one cracked in a water bath and the bottom fell out.
For a while after that i used a round bottom boiling flask with a ground glass joint and stopper. The stopper popped on me one day and sprayed hot MHRB sludge and solvent everywhere. Luckily i had PPE on at the time.

I think that using glassware made for distillation might be much safer. Its common to distill under reduced or increased atmospheric pressure so the glass will be better suited for that type of work. The issue with the stoppers still stands though.

It may be possible to set things up in a way that mitigates the risk of popping stoppers out but i'm not a chemist and don't have experience with lab equipment.

Borosilicate is quite sturdy material! But I have been playing around with this for a while. For IPA for example, I can set the temperature high for the first 5 minutes or so and there is hardly any pressure build up. After that, on a light simmer there is minimum pressure build up if I loosen the cap every few minutes. On hard boil the pressure builds up more quickly. I have experimented with acetone and although it has worked fine so far but I would still rather not do it because the pressure build up is too much. But to be more on the safer side, you can loosen the cap just enough so that the pressure releases itself slowly. Even if you screw the cap only a little more than half way, it would be much better than heating in a beaker, smaller surface area, reduced release of vapor and condensation on the upper part of the bottle which makes the solvent run back down.



well... for different experiments etc. Dissolving different substances in IPA or acetone, recrystallizing them etc. etc.



I did my very first extraction in a mason jar... it cracked in water bath but luckily still stayed together. That was quite a scare! but I knew then that mason jars are a bad idea. Borosilicate bottles are a must! I have been doing different extractions and experiments for the past one and a half year and have never had any problems.

All borosilicate glassware is not equal. There are many different kinds of borosilicate glass, some of which are suitable for use with more caustic or reactive chemicals, pressure, etc.

This is why i mentioned using glassware designed for an application similar to whatever processes you are using. Cheap labware = cheap low quality glass.

If you look into the different kinds of borosilicate you will see what i mean. Its kind of similar to steel alloys. Changing varying additives, cooling rates, and temperatures etc. while producing the glass altere the physical properties of the finished product and in turn which applications it is suitable for.

I Don't mean to lecture, you will probably be okay using what you have, but i feel like this is good information to have when selecting labware and its not immediately obvious to those who don't have a background in glass or chemistry.

well I thought 3.3 was pretty much the standard! it's the most common and, as far as I know, the most resistant to heat, pressure and reactive substances. Not sure if there's much difference between the brands, but I have a DURAN bottle which I use for DMT extraction, and 2 SIMAX bottles which I use for heating solvents/dissolving things in boiling/near boiling solvents.

Basic borosilicate glassware is actually quite cheap! a 2 liter bottle costs between 20-30 euros. Same goes for normal beakers, but the more advanced stuff, distillation setups, buchner funnels (borosilicate one's), condensers, soxhlet setup etc. that is where everything gets crazy expensive.

It's about time we stop using mason jars or even HDPE bottles because borosilicate 3.3 is much much better and quite affordable.

Coincidentally, I just had a 3.3 borosilicate beaker crack and start leaking while heating using the same procedure I've used many many times without issue. Inspected prior to use, solids properly mixed, started heating from RT, no thermal shock. Granted, beakers this size have more issues.

It's common to heat solvents in a sealed borosilicate bottle, but I don't see it being done outside of a fume hood. That's all I'm saying.

Same! I had a beaker crack like that as well, but beakers are much thinner than bottles, perhaps thats why! also, beakers have a flat bottom, the bottles have ridges. May be the ridges cause a more equal distribution of temperature? but anyways, that is also another reason why bottles are better than beakers!

well, I figure I'm going to post the correct answer here even if it's not the right answer since a lot of you folks seem to be talking about some pretty fantastical options here anyways I just want to add that technically the correct procedure you were looking for here if you would so much as bother would be to heat your solvent underneath a water jacket

that is how to make a solvent maximumly hot

Problem solved, maximumly hot solvent in a sealed container in an unventilated room here we come

P.S. magnetic stirrers are easy to make with an old computer fan + PSU, a magnet (could even be from an old hard drive) and a plastic container. You can splice in a PWM controller to reduce the speed at 12V if you want to get fancy.