analytical chemist
   
Posts: 7463 Joined: 21-May-2008 Last visit: 03-Mar-2024 Location: the lab
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dcm is one of the only solvents I use at home. its toxicity is often overstated, it's not nearly as toxic as carbon tet or even chloroform. that being said, I never dispose of it in soil or water. "Nothing is true, everything is permitted." ~ hassan i sabbah
"Experiments are the only means of attaining knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." -Max Planck
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Chairman of the Celestial Divison
Posts: 1393 Joined: 21-Jul-2010 Last visit: 11-Aug-2024 Location: the ancient cluster
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DCM is excellent for so many reasons. The volatility makes distillation a breeze, its the easiest solvent to recycle and the one I use and distill most often. It is my go to solvent for almost all application. I have bottles designated for dirty DCM, and distilled DCM and dried DCM. Its great. Iv used many liters over just one year but am still running on the same 4L bottle. Investing in a distillation apparatus isn't only green, its cost efficient. Just pick up an aquarium pump while your at it so you can run ice water through the condenser. The toxicity isn't that bad. Im not as liberal with the fumes as I was when I was younger, I try to avoid inhaling it, but I work with old chemists who used to rinse their glassware with benzene in open air and with bare hands. The average life expectancy of a chemist is no different than the average persons. Severe chronic exposure is what causes the damage, like working 14hr days in an industrial environment in china with thousands of liters processed daily without proper ventilation. --- A few more tips of advice.. Don't pour DCM paintstripper into your brand new round bottom flasks to distill it. You'll have a real hard time getting the dried up polymer gunk out of the flask. Instead try to rig it up so you can distill right out of the container it comes in. You got most of the safety stuff down, one more thing I should mention... Especially if you are using brand new flasks, you need to provide a nucleation point for the solvent to boil off of, a teflon stir bar or boiling stone. Brand new or flasks fresh out of the base bath will not provide this, and its possible to super heat your solvent, causing the set up to not distill properly, bump and pop apart the joints and worse cause a fire. whatever you do, do NOT add the stir bar or boiling stone to the flask if it has already been heated, if it is super heated, it will flash boil and send a volcano of hot solvent and vapour everywhere. Expect nothing, Receive everything.
"Experiment and extrapolation is the only means the organic chemists (humans) currrently have - in contrast to "God" (and possibly R. B. Woodward). "
He alone sees truly who sees the Absolute the same in every creature...seeing the same Absolute everywhere, he does not harm himself or others. - The Bhagavad Gita
"The most beautiful thing we can experience, is the mysterious. The source of all true art and science."
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DMT-Nexus member
Posts: 83 Joined: 08-Aug-2008 Last visit: 26-Dec-2019 Location: The Desert
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Mindlusion wrote:Don't pour DCM paintstripper into your brand new round bottom flasks to distill it. You'll have a real hard time getting the dried up polymer gunk out of the flask. Instead try to rig it up so you can distill right out of the container it comes in.
True that! Video of DCM distillation straight from the canA toliet connector, as pictured below, is inexpensive and makes a perfect condenser. Fill with sand and bend to the shape needed. Drill a hole in the can lid, stick toliet connector through, screw the lid back on and you're set.  "The cost of sanity in this society is a certain level of alienation." - Terence McKenna
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DMT-Nexus member
Posts: 2889 Joined: 31-Oct-2014 Last visit: 03-Nov-2018
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pitubo wrote:Molecular gastronomy. Scroll down to see the rotovap. When I bought my rotovap second hand, I asked the seller if he had been using it for "cooking". His look back seemed both perplexed and disturbed. Apparently, he took the term "cooking" in the Walter White "drug cook" sense. He had never heard of the gastronomical use. I live in a state where medical and recreational cannabis are legal, and provided one is willing to jump through some hoops, advanced cannabis extraction is legal. A rotary evaporator is a must have for any serious cannabis extractor and processer, I have even heard of those with Roto-vaps renting them out to licensed cannabis extractors who have yet to purchase their own. Just another legitimate use for this handy piece of laboratory equipment. The rotovap has always mesmerized me, the large round domed glass vessel spinning over a metal steam bath with some fluid contained in it, the fluid rotating in the glass as its undergoing evaporation, the "sci-fi" look of the coil, the buttons, tubes, glass, nobs, and noises, and then there's the knowledge that there is a liquid which is becoming a vapor, traveling towards another glass vessel, then returning to its liquid state in another location, leaving behind residues, crystals, oils, or altered liquid solutions consisting of components which require higher temperatures to achieve this...all of this has always instilled a sense of childlike amazement and awe in me, the entire process is fascinating, and has just as many psychological implications as it does applications in real world chemistry Quote:
You all know what mercury looks like-at room temperature it's a silvery liquid that flows, it's like a mirror. For the alchemists, and this is just a very short exercise in alchemical thinking, for the alchemists mercury was mind itself, in a sense, and by tracing through the steps by which they reached that conclusion you can have a taste of what alchemical thinking was about. Mercury takes the form of its container. If I pour mercury into a cup, it takes the shape of the cup, if I pour it into a test tube, it takes the shape of the test tube. This taking the shape of its container is a quality of mind and yet here it is present in a flowing, silvery metal. The other thing is, mercury is a reflecting surface. You never see mercury, what you see is the world which surrounds it, which is perfectly reflected in its surface like a moving mirror, you see. And then if you've ever, as a child, I mean I have no idea how toxic this process is, but I spent a lot of time as a child hounding my grandfather for his hearing aid batteries which I would then smash with a hammer and get the mercury out and collect it in little bottles and carry it around with me. Well, the wonderful thing about mercury is when you pour it out on a surface and it beads up, then each bead of mercury becomes a little microcosm of the world. And yet the mercury flows back together into a unity. Well, as a child I had not yet imbibed the assumptions and the ontology of science. I was functioning as an alchemist. For me, mercury was this fascinating magical substance onto which I could project the contents of my mind. And a child playing with mercury is an alchemist hard at work, no doubt about it. -Terence McKenna
These processes were just as much psychological as they were physical/chemical in the mind of the alchemists, and in a near identical way i engage in this type of alchemical psychology while I'm observing something as seemingly mundane as a rotovap in action. I think this is a big part of what draws me to chemistry, well, that and the ability to be able to understand the chemical composition if the physical world, and how to be able to use that knowledge to better your daily life, and to be able to produce molecules, molecules which you intimately know every atom and bond of, and manipulated on an atomic level to produce through these fascinating chemical procedures...I'm also addicted to "notebook" chemistry, and spend a good deal of time in this area... So many have this interest and fascination with chemistry, yet in modern times so little opportunity exists. There are also many chemophobic individuals out there, most feel that all chemicals are the antithesis of "green" and have poor understanding of what chemistry actually is...it's sad to see so little opportunity for aspiring young chemists, As demonstrated by this excerpt from the begining section of "the llustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments: All Lab, No Lecture" by Robert Bruce Thompson Quote:What I experienced that Christmas morning was repeated in millions of other homes through the years as boys (and, alas, only a few girls) opened their first chemistry sets. From the 1930s through the 1960s, chemistry sets were among the most popular Christmas gifts, selling in the millions. It’s said that in the 1940s and 1950s there was a chemistry set in nearly every household where there was a child. Even as late as the 1970s, chemistry sets remained popular and were on display in every toy store and department store. And then something bad happened. By the 1980s, chemistry sets had become a dying breed. Few stores carried them, and most of those sets that remained available were pale shadows of what chemistry sets had been back in the glory days.
The decline of chemistry sets had nothing to do with lack of interest. Kids were and are as interested as ever. It was society that had changed. Manufacturers and retailers became concerned about liability and lawsuits, and “chemical” became a dirty word. Most chemistry sets were “defanged” to the point of uselessness, becoming little more than toys. Some so-called “chemistry sets” nowadays are actually promoted as using “no heat, no glass, and no chemicals,” as if that were something to be proud of. They might just as well promote them as “no chemistry.”
Even the best chemistry set that is still sold, the $200 Thames & Kosmos Chem C3000, is an unfortunate compromise among cost, liability, and marketability. The Chem C3000 kit lacks such essential equipment as a balance and a thermometer, provides little glassware, and includes only the tiny amounts of chemicals needed to do unsatisfying micro-scale chemistry experiments. Despite these criticisms, the C3000 kit is a good choice for giving late elementary school or early middle school students their first exposure to hands-on chemistry lab work. It allows kids to produce bright colors and stinky smells, which after all are the usual hooks that draw kids into chemistry. The problem is, that’s not enough.
Laboratory work is the essence of chemistry, and measurement is the essence of laboratory work. A hands-on introduction to real chemistry requires real equipment and real chemicals, and real, quantitative experiments. No existing chemistry set provides anything more than a bare start on those essentials, so the obvious answer is to build your own chemistry set and use it to do real chemistry. -The Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments; Robert Bruce Thompson It's sad to see how much interest still remains, but how little opportunity exists... Ok, I feel like I'm going off topic. Any way, how did CH2CL2 get brought up? -eg
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Boundary condition
Posts: 8617 Joined: 30-Aug-2008 Last visit: 07-Nov-2024 Location: square root of minus one
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Quote:You all know what mercury looks like-at room temperature it's a silvery liquid that flows, it's like a mirror. For the alchemists, and this is just a very short exercise in alchemical thinking, for the alchemists mercury was mind itself, in a sense, and by tracing through the steps by which they reached that conclusion you can have a taste of what alchemical thinking was about. Mercury takes the form of its container. If I pour mercury into a cup, it takes the shape of the cup, if I pour it into a test tube, it takes the shape of the test tube. This taking the shape of its container is a quality of mind and yet here it is present in a flowing, silvery metal. The other thing is, mercury is a reflecting surface. You never see mercury, what you see is the world which surrounds it, which is perfectly reflected in its surface like a moving mirror, you see. And then if you've ever, as a child, I mean I have no idea how toxic this process is, but I spent a lot of time as a child hounding my grandfather for his hearing aid batteries which I would then smash with a hammer and get the mercury out and collect it in little bottles and carry it around with me. Well, the wonderful thing about mercury is when you pour it out on a surface and it beads up, then each bead of mercury becomes a little microcosm of the world. And yet the mercury flows back together into a unity. Well, as a child I had not yet imbibed the assumptions and the ontology of science. I was functioning as an alchemist. For me, mercury was this fascinating magical substance onto which I could project the contents of my mind. And a child playing with mercury is an alchemist hard at work, no doubt about it. Where is this quote from? I know it well but its origin temporarily escapes me. Was it Shulgin? A mercury still is a pretty funky thing, btw. Creates its own vacuum. “There is a way of manipulating matter and energy so as to produce what modern scientists call 'a field of force'. The field acts on the observer and puts him in a privileged position vis-à-vis the universe. From this position he has access to the realities which are ordinarily hidden from us by time and space, matter and energy. This is what we call the Great Work." ― Jacques Bergier, quoting Fulcanelli
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DMT-Nexus member
Posts: 92 Joined: 08-Oct-2016 Last visit: 19-Sep-2019
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Mindlusion wrote:
The toxicity isn't that bad. Im not as liberal with the fumes as I was when I was younger, I try to avoid inhaling it, but I work with old chemists who used to rinse their glassware with benzene in open air and with bare hands. The average life expectancy of a chemist is no different than the average persons.
When I studied chemistry I learned that due to behavior like this the average life expectancy of a chemist was 7-8 years less than the average with the same educational background - at least in Germany. Workers who worked with tar at BASF used to wash their hands with benzene to get them clean. They did not get old. You may be right that DCM is not that toxic but the regulations say otherwise. If you are right fine. The chance of being wrong times the damage is what is important to asses the risk. It is up to you to do this 
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analytical chemist
Posts: 7463 Joined: 21-May-2008 Last visit: 03-Mar-2024 Location: the lab
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I'll take my chances. acute exposure isn't a problem, and I'm not subjected to prolonged exposure. eating red meat is probably more detrimental to my health, and will likely do me in quicker than dcm. "Nothing is true, everything is permitted." ~ hassan i sabbah
"Experiments are the only means of attaining knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." -Max Planck
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DMT-Nexus member
Posts: 2889 Joined: 31-Oct-2014 Last visit: 03-Nov-2018
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downwardsfromzero wrote:Quote:You all know what mercury looks like-at room temperature it's a silvery liquid that flows, it's like a mirror. For the alchemists, and this is just a very short exercise in alchemical thinking, for the alchemists mercury was mind itself, in a sense, and by tracing through the steps by which they reached that conclusion you can have a taste of what alchemical thinking was about. Mercury takes the form of its container. If I pour mercury into a cup, it takes the shape of the cup, if I pour it into a test tube, it takes the shape of the test tube. This taking the shape of its container is a quality of mind and yet here it is present in a flowing, silvery metal. The other thing is, mercury is a reflecting surface. You never see mercury, what you see is the world which surrounds it, which is perfectly reflected in its surface like a moving mirror, you see. And then if you've ever, as a child, I mean I have no idea how toxic this process is, but I spent a lot of time as a child hounding my grandfather for his hearing aid batteries which I would then smash with a hammer and get the mercury out and collect it in little bottles and carry it around with me. Well, the wonderful thing about mercury is when you pour it out on a surface and it beads up, then each bead of mercury becomes a little microcosm of the world. And yet the mercury flows back together into a unity. Well, as a child I had not yet imbibed the assumptions and the ontology of science. I was functioning as an alchemist. For me, mercury was this fascinating magical substance onto which I could project the contents of my mind. And a child playing with mercury is an alchemist hard at work, no doubt about it. Where is this quote from? I know it well but its origin temporarily escapes me. Was it Shulgin? A mercury still is a pretty funky thing, btw. Creates its own vacuum. Oh, I can't believe I forgot to attach a name to that quote! (I'll edit and add it now) It was terence McKenna from a lecture on alchemy. -eg
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DMT-Nexus member
Posts: 2889 Joined: 31-Oct-2014 Last visit: 03-Nov-2018
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DrSeltsam wrote:Mindlusion wrote:
The toxicity isn't that bad. Im not as liberal with the fumes as I was when I was younger, I try to avoid inhaling it, but I work with old chemists who used to rinse their glassware with benzene in open air and with bare hands. The average life expectancy of a chemist is no different than the average persons.
When I studied chemistry I learned that due to behavior like this the average life expectancy of a chemist was 7-8 years less than the average with the same educational background - at least in Germany. Workers who worked with tar at BASF used to wash their hands with benzene to get them clean. They did not get old. You may be right that DCM is not that toxic but the regulations say otherwise. If you are right fine. The chance of being wrong times the damage is what is important to asses the risk. It is up to you to do this I keep missing the origin of all the CH2CL2 talk...how did all this come up? -eg
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dysfunctional word machine
Posts: 1831 Joined: 15-Mar-2014 Last visit: 11-Jun-2018 Location: at the center of my universe
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entheogenic-gnosis wrote:Well, as a child I had not yet imbibed the assumptions and the ontology of science. I was functioning as an alchemist. For me, mercury was this fascinating magical substance onto which I could project the contents of my mind. And a child playing with mercury is an alchemist hard at work, no doubt about it. -Terence McKenna Culture may not be your friend, but TMK is certainly not your child's friend. Mercury is a very nasty poison. Romanticizing it and even children using it as a toy like in the above quote is IMHO so irresponsible that it is almost insidious. Here's a few youtube videos to illustrate the dangers of mercury: Mercury vapor videoHow mercury poisoning affects the brainPerhaps TMK really was as mad as a hatter - literally.
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DMT-Nexus member
Posts: 2889 Joined: 31-Oct-2014 Last visit: 03-Nov-2018
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pitubo wrote:entheogenic-gnosis wrote:Well, as a child I had not yet imbibed the assumptions and the ontology of science. I was functioning as an alchemist. For me, mercury was this fascinating magical substance onto which I could project the contents of my mind. And a child playing with mercury is an alchemist hard at work, no doubt about it. -Terence McKenna Culture may not be your friend, but TMK is certainly not your child's friend. Mercury is a very nasty poison. Romanticizing it and even children using it as a toy like in the above quote is IMHO so irresponsible that it is almost insidious. Here's a few youtube videos to illustrate the dangers of mercury: Mercury vapor videoHow mercury poisoning affects the brainPerhaps TMK really was as mad as a hatter - literally. He did acknowledge prolonged childhood exposure to mercury... "Projecting your mind" onto mercury can be done without exposure to it, by simply observing the mercury, it's properties, and it's behavior. Quote: I mean I have no idea how toxic this process is, but I spent a lot of time as a child hounding my grandfather for his hearing aid batteries which I would then smash with a hammer and get the mercury out and collect it in little bottles and carry it around with me. -terence McKenna Seriously though, McKenna was a philosopher, not a chemist, he was making a point about alchemical psychological processes, a purely intellectual venture, and not giving advice on the handling of mercury. Even those who know the bare minimum about chemistry know that mercury is not something you want to expose yourself to like that, we are all familiar with "mad hatter syndrome", no? from some time in the 1600s until 1898 mercury was used in felting work in hat manufacture, and hat makers encountered prolonged exposure to mercury vapours which would lead to "erethism mercurialis"...most are aware of some type of toxicity resulting from exposure, even if only by reference to a Lewis Carroll character, which is the only "mad hatter" most recognize. I'm sure mckenna was aware of this as well...though honestly mercury safety was the last thing I intended to be the focus of that excerpt, but rather the psychological manifestations of early alchemists and it's relation to similar psychological processes in myself in relation to modern laboratory work in organic chemistry. -eg
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Boundary condition
Posts: 8617 Joined: 30-Aug-2008 Last visit: 07-Nov-2024 Location: square root of minus one
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entheogenic-gnosis wrote:DrSeltsam wrote:You may be right that DCM is not that toxic but the regulations say otherwise. If you are right fine. The chance of being wrong times the damage is what is important to asses the risk. It is up to you to do this I keep missing the origin of all the CH2CL2 talk...how did all this come up? -eg It's very amenable to distillation and if recovered from paint stripper it's best distilled straight from the can. Lines 1-2 of the OP: "I've become interested in distillation, it looks like a really practical way for obtaining organic solvents that would otherwise be very expensive to obtain, DCM for example." “There is a way of manipulating matter and energy so as to produce what modern scientists call 'a field of force'. The field acts on the observer and puts him in a privileged position vis-à-vis the universe. From this position he has access to the realities which are ordinarily hidden from us by time and space, matter and energy. This is what we call the Great Work." ― Jacques Bergier, quoting Fulcanelli
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DMT-Nexus member
Posts: 2889 Joined: 31-Oct-2014 Last visit: 03-Nov-2018
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downwardsfromzero wrote:entheogenic-gnosis wrote:DrSeltsam wrote:You may be right that DCM is not that toxic but the regulations say otherwise. If you are right fine. The chance of being wrong times the damage is what is important to asses the risk. It is up to you to do this I keep missing the origin of all the CH2CL2 talk...how did all this come up? -eg It's very amenable to distillation and if recovered from paint stripper it's best distilled straight from the can. Lines 1-2 of the OP: "I've become interested in distillation, it looks like a really practical way for obtaining organic solvents that would otherwise be very expensive to obtain, DCM for example." Perfect! Thank you! I did not want to join in until I understood the context of the conversation, and it looks like knowledgeable individuals have already discussed the issue, so I'll leave it alone for now, unless anybody actually wants my input.
back to the topic of basic distillation set-ups: I've had a Liebig condenser with some round bottom flasks, connecting glass pieces, and stands which served perfectly for a simple distillation set up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1APqbnACBkIn this link an identical distillation set up is used in regards to CH2CL2 -eg
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