Different chemical grades

[Survival0200]

I was browsing a catalogue of chemical products and there were some terms, that confused me. I was thinking about buying diethyl ether, but there were so many choices, that I didn't know what would be the 'best' for me and what do those terms even mean? My purpose is to use diethyl ether recreationally, just to get an idea what it's like and buy 0,5 liters of it. These were the grades that confused me:

analytical grade
reagent grade
synthesis grade
extra pure
anhydrous

Which one would be the best for my purpose?

And if we're talking in general matter, in what order would you put those if you'd be told to list them from the dirtiest to the purest? I would imagine extra pure would be the purest, and maybe anhydrous right after it, but how about the rest of them?

 

[vecktor]

depends on the supplier, all of them would be suitable for sniffing,
anhydrous is really expensive for what it is. none of the would contain anything other than ether which will harm you (any more than the ether itself.)
most general purpose reagent grades are stabilised with a small amount of ethanol (ethyl alcohol).
the only diethyl ether that I have ever seen which was very impure was a technical grade.
Using ether is not really such a smart idea.

 

[Survival0200]

Umm. Now that we're on the topic about ether, I wanted to ask if it's too risky to store ether in room temperature, in a normal apartment room, with no fire extinguishing equipment? I mean, can it just start flaming/explode, without anything to launch it? It's hard to believe ... Is it enough if the bottle is just handeled with care? I'm a bit worried, because the bottle I'm getting is made of glass and I really don't want to get pieces of glass all over me, because the ether decided to explode. 8(

 

[Ylide]

Well, what do you mean handled with care? Are you keeping it tightly sealed in a flame cabinet away from sources of heat, sparks/flame, and light? Because if not, any of those could contribute to a fire or in the case of light, speeding up the formation of peroxides which can easily detonate.

Also the glass pieces would be the least of my worries, it would be the resulting fire that would concern me.

 

[MattPsy]

Anhydrous just means "without water".

Analytical is the purest grade. I would imagine synthesis grade would be the next most pure, followed by reagent and then extra pure, but may be wrong on that.

For your purposes, any of them will be fine. All of them will be >99%, and so for sniffing it you aren't going to be inhaling appreciable quantities of potentially harmful impurities. The ether will do enough damage on it's own, heh.

 

[DrugPhreak]

Most manufactures stabilize Et2O with BHT. Chloroform is normally stabilized with EtOH. It's common practice in the lab to test for peroxides even when fresh Et2O is purchased. This can be done several ways, but the starch/iodide test is probably the easiest.

Whether it's tested for peroxides or not if you plan to store it for an extended period of time it's recommended that you shake it with 5% FeSO4 at 10% volume and filter. Iron and copper rods can then be placed in the container, which will help to prevent peroxide formation also. It's best to store it in a dark cool room that's somewhat humid.

For your purpose it's not really necessary to purchase Et2O as it’s the major constituent in starting fluid… it just has to bee distilled (don’t evaporate to dryness). People even sniff gasoline.. I don’t think it could get much worse than that… well, sniffing anhydrous hydrazine I suppose. After almost loosing my hand when performing a procedure with a large amount of Et2O I gained a great deal of respect for this chemical. 250ml of Et2O has roughly the same BTU rating as a stick of dynamite.

 

[DrugPhreak]

Smyth, it won't let me PM until I become a Bluelighter.