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Continuously-operated solvent stills have been the cause of many laboratory fires in the last several years. Although alternatives exist, not every lab is willing to upgrade. Does your lab currently use solvent stills? If so, what best practices do you follow when working with them? |
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Most labs I know are switching to solvent purification columns. In many cases, due to cost, they may be shared between multiple academic groups. As far as "best practices" working with existing stills, you must consistently check the stills every day to ensure they never, ever, ever run dry. Also, if you are discontinuing a still, be very careful when decomposing any NaK alloy. |
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In process chemistry we rarely dry our solvents, except in very special cases, the we do it by azeotroping out the water. Solvent stills are just too dangerous to use in a lab as they are usually neglected and become a major hazard. For example the THF we use has <50ppm water, the toluene <50ppm out of the bottle, measured by Karl-Fischer titration. Worse are the peroxides for ether solvents. |
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