Chemical Forums
Specialty Chemistry Forums => Citizen Chemist => Topic started by: nj_bartel on June 18, 2010, 02:59:51 AM
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Before going to bed, I decided to quickly set up a reaction vessel of 200 mL ~60% sulfuric acid to characterize a metal by formation of the sulfate salt. Anyway, prepare the solution then carefully drop the sample in only to have it shatter the flask with the lightest contact. In my lazy brilliance (shirtless and in athletic shorts), I managed to get my lower extremities, including something rather important, doused. Sprinting to then stripping in shower took all of 15 seconds, but the burning sensation was already pretty present. Doesn't look to have done anything permanent however.
An hour of spritzing and wiping with bicarbonate soln later, everything looks to be fine (other friendly fire targets included a wooden door, dresser, wall, and some carpetting. So no more unsafe procedures happening at this residence anymore.
Any of you care to share stories of incidents?
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What? How? (glad you're ok)
My story starts with a class mate. She was one of "those" students in the most stereotypical fashion imaginable. Let's just say she wished her boobs were brains.
Anyway, we were making sodium methoxide by dropping solid sodium into methanol. For some reason, she decided to do lab next to me. At this point I realized it was going to be a bad day.
When it came to the reflux part, she put a stopper in her reflux tube...really tightly...without grease...
It did not take very long for the whole bloody 250 mL of sodium methoxide to explode, sending deadly shrapnel across the table. And that wasn't the worst part! The worst part was that I had just set down 20 grams of solid sodium. Which immediately mixed with her water and methanol to explode violently and send more base flying into the air. And it gets better! The methanol was concentrated enough to catch fire! So now my clothes are melting, there's glass everywhere, and the table is on fire.
And that was the only time I've ever had to use the emergency shower. Thank goodness the glass didn't actually break the skin, or that could have stung a whole lot worse.
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Eek, some scary stories. Fortunately, all my lab accidents have been reasonably minor.
There was the time when I was disposing of some calcium hydride - just dumped it into the solid waste container and carried on about my business, when I saw smoke out of the corner of my eye. Turns out there was something wet in the waste that I hadn't noticed. Anyway, in my intelligence, I took the lid off and the whole thing went up in flames. Me and my friend just stood there dumbfounded for a few seconds before I finally went and got the fire blanket and together we saved the fume cupboard ::)
The very next day (yeah, safety officer wasn't happy) I was putting a suba seal in the top of a dropping funnel when the glass broke and cut my index finger down to the bone. Again, a few seconds of standing there like ??? before I had to tell someone and sit down pronto.
I have a friend that as an undergraduate had a Winchester of toluene accidentally emptied onto his lap ... The university had to pay for a lot of fertility testing (he was fine thankfully).
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*looks at scar*
Uh, what accident :P
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Mine are much less dangerous. The worst would be the time I did the AgNO3+Mg "flash powder" demo, with 3 grams of silver nitrate and an equal amount of Mg. After adding water to dilute the reactants, I simply picked up the foil I did it on, I didn't remember that silver nitrate stains until well after my fingers and hands turned a nice deep black. I still have a 1 inch square spot on a finger.
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Lets see... explosion that numbed my right hand and made some nice holes in the golf (turtle-neck) I was wearing (not to mention temporary blinding and deafening, especially blinding was dangerous as I had to run away down the stairs, people don't like loud bangs behind their exit doors). Sixth finger made of glass tube that I put between my index and middle fingers. Organic reaction (http://www.chemicalforums.com/index.php?topic=38151.0) that ended on my face. Some interesting holes made in my jeans by solution of chromic acid. Can't remember anything else atm.
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Heating a liquid in a sealed glass tube. The tube was long and the pressure was slightly lower than atmosphere in the tube. I heated too much and the liquid boiled and popped the glass.
I had glasses on. No damage done.
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This is minor, but I had a droplet of 95% formic acid land on my arm. Didn't notice until it had already burned thru my skin (felt like a bee sting). Got a nice little scar on my arm now. ;)
Something a little more serious, I ended up spilling a solution of uranyl acetate all over the floor when I added too much sodium bicarbonate to neutralized the remaining acetic acid. Now the room has background radiation slightly higher than the rest of the house :P
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"uranyl acetate" + "Now the room has background radiation slightly higher than the rest of the house"
The house?
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The house?
Citizen chemist section.
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"uranyl acetate" + "Now the room has background radiation slightly higher than the rest of the house"
The house?
My place of residence.
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I got a phosphorus burn 2 weeks ago that is still healing. after performing a synthesis of white phosphorus the water in the receiver was hot and when you have liquid P4 in hot water if it sloshes some P4 can surface and burn on the surface of the water. burning P4 has a way of splattering and a couple of droplets landed on my F-U finger on the right hand. it is no joke that phosphorus will turn the area necrotic when it burns you... :P
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Sorry don't mean to post twice but i can't edit my last...Anyway a couple of other things that happened, while not in the lab, are sort of chemical related. Once I was handling a car battery and didn't realize until much later that it had leaked H2SO4 all over me. somewhere around an hour or so later i became seriously itchy and when i went in the bathroom to take a shower, my jeans had holes all over them and my shirt came off in pieces. i had some red irritated spots but no major damage.
Also there was a time in high school(when I was in school they still had real science classes with experimentation and metal shop classes that let you weld, forge and work foundry) when my idiotic teacher (shop class) wanted me to melt down some scrap aluminum from the auto class across the vocational wing. we smashed up the metal and put it in the crucible and i periodically checked the temp of the melt with a pyrometer. i knew what was in the crucible and expected the teacher to as well. i told him we needed to pour now (temp at about 1150 but usually pour aluminum at 1300-1350) and he said wait till 1300. i sort of knew what was going to happen but i was just a student so i gave him the benefit of the doubt. remember that the metal came from the auto shop. part of the scrap in there was a piston from a jaguar. if you don't know it, many auto manufacturers alloy their aluminum pistons with magnesium :o the rest is easy to figure out. that's a fire you can't put out! it sure did look cool though. 4 foot tall pillar of green/white fire and the densest smoke i have ever seen. evacuations were necessary. the crucible did not survive.
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I got a phosphorus burn 2 weeks ago that is still healing. after performing a synthesis of white phosphorus the water in the receiver was hot and when you have liquid P4 in hot water if it sloshes some P4 can surface and burn on the surface of the water. burning P4 has a way of splattering and a couple of droplets landed on my F-U finger on the right hand. it is no joke that phosphorus will turn the area necrotic when it burns you... :P
That's nasty - no P for me (don't mind the fact that I only wish I had the equipment to make it in a reasonable way :P).
The holes from sulfuric acid are really ridiculous. The spill I had was on my dresser, and tiny amounts of it apparently had splashed through my clothes. However many months later, half my wardrobe has random tiny holes and my boxers (which were hit hardest) look appropriate for Tarzan.
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A while ago I was demonstrating the H2SO4 dehydration of sucrose to some friends but I had never done this before so didn't know what to expect. When I added the acid to a jar of sugar, I expected the reaction to begin immediately so I concluded that I did something wrong so I decided to clean up. I added some NaOH to neutralize the H2SO4 and instantly a violent reaction start and gas + vapour began spraying out of the jar and hissing loudly. It was mainly water vapour coming outta the jar but I didn't know that at the time so I got the hell outta there and told everyone to get indoors thinking it was a potentially life threatening situation. I have repeated this reaction without the NaOH plenty of times now and its always a very slow reaction so I'm not sure what exactly happened first time I tried it. Maybe the heat from the NaOH sped up the reaction but it was fairly concentrated H2SO4 so there wasn't much water for the NaOH to dissolve in so I suspect it catalyzed the reaction somehow.
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Make a 30/70 solution of sulfuric acid and water. The solution gets HOT upon addition of the acid to the water. This is due to the largely heat release accompanying the formation of the weaker acid (hydronium) from the stronger acid (sulfuric acid).
Now picture what you did.
You formed water as the weaker acid, by reacting the sulfuric acid with sodium hydroxide. This releases a TREMENDOUS amount of heat. You instantly boiled all the water in solution and probably straight charred the sugar.
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I got a phosphorus burn 2 weeks ago that is still healing. after performing a synthesis of white phosphorus the water in the receiver was hot and when you have liquid P4 in hot water if it sloshes some P4 can surface and burn on the surface of the water. burning P4 has a way of splattering and a couple of droplets landed on my F-U finger on the right hand. it is no joke that phosphorus will turn the area necrotic when it burns you... :P
That's nasty - no P for me (don't mind the fact that I only wish I had the equipment to make it in a reasonable way :P).
The holes from sulfuric acid are really ridiculous. The spill I had was on my dresser, and tiny amounts of it apparently had splashed through my clothes. However many months later, half my wardrobe has random tiny holes and my boxers (which were hit hardest) look appropriate for Tarzan.
That's what happened to my clothes as well. Cotton fibers break apart.
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In quant lab were were acid base washing our fritted glass crucible filters. There was supposed to be two seperate hoods used for nitric acid and sodium hydroxide, but some enterprising student decided to try and save time by vaccum filtering his acid through with the filtering flask in the base hood. Unfortunately, I was the unknowing student that followed with the base. Luckily for me though there was only a small volume of acid present (procedure wasnt followed) and the flask didnt explode. There was however alot of white smelly smoke and the flask was very hot to touch. It was really emberassing as the whole class stopped and stared at me, most backing away slowly.
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I have another to add. I was trying to electrolysize a brine solution to make chlorates, and trying different electrodes types. I finally found that graphite didn't corrode fast so I went and looked into the bowl I was using to see the bubbles, and stupid me, took a breath. Huge breath of chlorine. I was dizzy for a few mins after it, and had a pounding sinus headache for the rest of the day. I hate working with chlorine. :(
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Chlorine and HCl gas are both just >:( >:( >:( to the sinuses and lungs.
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I have limited lab experience compared to most others so I've fortunately never been in any serious danger. However I remember one time in my first chemistry class a girl with a methanol filled bottle (Winchester) nearly full trying to pour it directly into a 10mL graduated cylinder. She was fairly small herself, which made situation so much more dangerous. I broke out laughing while simultaneously trying to warn her how dangerous this was. I laughed because I was blindsided by such recklessness. Long story short she somehow managed to finish pouring it without spilling it everywhere or on herself and it seemed like she didn't really believe me that it could cause blindness and death.
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This one's pretty bad, but luckily I'm fine now and not scarred or anything. :)
A couple of weeks ago, I bought a blowtorch to heat up and melt salts with the intention to electrolyse them. I decided to melt some sodium hydroxide to see how powerful my blowtorch was. I was excited about my new purchase and stupidly forgot to put on a face visor before attempting the experiment (I remembered safety glasses, thank goodness). I had melted NaOH before, using a bonfire, and had worn my face visor then, along with other safety gear. But this time I forgot. I began to heat the NaOH (which was in the bottom of a steel can) from beneath, and for a minute or two, nothing seemed to happen. So I peered over to take a look into the can and it erupted. Molten sodium hydroxide sprayed out of the can for three feet until it hit me in the mouth (some hit my tongue). For the next five seconds I was yelling in pain and sprinting across the garden to my water trough, where I dunked my head under. I kept on dunking my head underwater repeatedly for an hour or so, until I went inside and called 999, then went to hospital. They gave me this really good cell regenerative cream to heal the burns, and now I'm fine and the burns don't look so bad anymore, just pink marks that will eventually fade. :) I was very lucky.
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One time I was using xylene as a solvent to recrystallize elemental sulfur. I bought the xylene in a can and, after many attempts, I am of the opinion that one simply cannot pour xylene from a can without spilling any of it. So I would go over my kitchen sink to pour into a smaller more manageable vessel. I didn't pay much attention to the rather careless amount of xylene that went down the drain. I just flushed it down with soap and water when I was done (very bad for the water supply, shame on me).
A bit of background; xylene is immiscible with water and floats on top of it. Its vapors are much heavier than air and will sink down into voids and collect. This prevents evaporation of xylene in an enclosed space (such as a drain).
Nearly a week later, I was making a pot of ramen noodles and went to drain the boiling water in the sink. Half way through pouring, I was hit with an overwhelming smell of xylene. The xylene I had poured a week ago had been floating on top of the water in the S bend of the drain pipe and couldn't evaporate from such a cool, deep, and enclosed area. When the boiling water hit it, it evaporated quickly and produced a visible fume! The whole kitchen stank of the solvent and I had to air out the place. Serves me right for disposing of it so irresponsibly anyway.
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This one isn't so bad, but I had an almost foul run with a cheap alcohol burner. I was trying out a new cheap metal alcohol burner right when I needed to use it. So I set it up, thought I had filled it with lighter fluid, but I couldn't get the thing to light. So I open it up and it's empty. I figure I forgot to fill it, so I fill it and try to light it again. Nothing happens. I put it over on the dry side of the counter and go to get my butane burner. I come back and the whole counter is covered with lighter fluid. The thing had leaked everywhere. I think I'm sticking to glass alcohol lamps from now on.
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Narrowly escaped some 3rd degree burns just there myself. I was distilling hydrochloric acid and noticed the solution was bumping. I had a magnetic stir rod in the flask but forgot to turn the stirrer on. I decided to turn it on. Big mistake. The still head flew out and the flask spit out hot HCl solution in all directions, some of which landed in the hot oil bath causing the thing to erupt. I got the hell outta there and cut off the power to my lab to turn the hot plate off. Lesson learned. Never turn on the stirrer if the solution is already hot.
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I usually have "one of those days". The first was right after christmas when I got a lot of new glassware. I somehow knew that today would be a bad day. I first accidentally dropped my crucible while it was in my crucible tongs. That wasn't bad cause they are like 2 bucks. The thing was it was full of molten sodium chloride! Luckily I was wearing super heavy gloves, my lab coat and face shield so no skin was exposed. Then as I was cleaning was cleaning up the mess after I let the NaCl cool, I knocked over an erlenmeyer flask. Then I cut myself on the glass. ( where were my gloves then? ) after this, I decided to slow down and plan all my moves. Unforunately I forgot that I had just simply put the broken glass in the trashcan. As I was emptying it, I cut myself AGAIN! Essentially this has happened twice to me about 2 weeks later with different glassware variables without the molten salt. But listen. The best is still to come! While I was still ignorant of safety and common sense, I didn't take head off all the warnings of the instability of KMnO4. So I was grinding some potassium permanganate and sugar inside, with a crucible without gloves or basic protection. Obviously, this mixture went off. A.spark just formed and grew for about a quarter of second until it burst into flames about 2 feet high. Luckily it was only a small amount. About 5g at the most. That's bout it. Had lots of minor accidents that aren't worth writing. Now I have had enough accident to realize that safetyIS important. All amateurs, take head! Always research any reactions you are going to attempt, always do anything outside that produces even microscopic amounts of fumes toxic or smelly, and ALWAYS wear gloves and goggles even if you are just boiling water.(you all know that boiling "bumps")
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I had a distillator setup with a plastic keck clamp holding the flask to the adapter. I had to heat the stuff to some high temperature but I figured under 200 C would be enough. Unfortunately, I didn't have the means to measure the temperature. It got hot enough to melt the plastic and it caught fire! I had to cut the heat fast. I had to put out the fire fast. Luckily the flask didn't separate from the glass adapter because the contents was flammable and full of vapor.
Other than that, on a separate occasion, I was distilling some sulfuric acid. The vapor coming off has a lot more H2O. When the H2O got sucked back in (as a liquid), the thing vaporizes so fast that it make a high pressure in the flask. One of the glass stoppers blew off and fell to the ground. Luckily, it did not break. I had to put it back on before too much vapor escaped out of the flask.
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In the chemical storage closet, my less than bright lab mate mixed nearly pure t-butyl lithium (that he mislabeled and stored in a tube that said H2SO4 on it...) with 99% pure sulfuric acid waste from last weeks' experiment. A giant boom resulted. He emerged looking like someone had successfully suicide bombed him, with glass protruding from all over his various appendages, bleeding like a stuck pig, dripping acid. That explosion knocked a jar of cake potassium in kerosene into a mob bucket full of water, which then literally blew the sheet rock right off the wall, including a few 2x4s and set off the sprinklers in the hole building. It blew out my left ear drum, and I actually needed surgery so I wasn't deaf.
The same guy ended up with third degree burns over 50% of his body in college upstate because he "passed" his chem partner a sealed bottle of diethyl ether that Jesus used in his chem class not knowing that when ether's stored in a clear glass bottle and is left to sit in light, volatile peroxides result, which react with the ether and go boom. So now he kinda looks like Freddy Crougar and Darwin's test dummy had a lovechild. True s#*$, I kid ya not.
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I escaped having extremely hot, black goop sprayed all over myself by a few seconds a couple years ago. I was experimenting with the decomposition products of sucrose and other substances when mixed, with the goal of forming carbon-reinforced solids.. I allowed my thoroughly black mixture to cool so I could step out for a bit. When I began heating it again upon my return, it had already solidified. I heated it too rapidly, and it began decomposing on bottom before the topmost portion had re-melted (if it could at that point).. there was probably about a liter of the stuff in a thinnish stainless steel vessel.
I hadn't quite figured out what was very, very wrong when the bottom of the steel vessel bulged out, somewhat slowing the heating, and causing a little bit of wobbling. I will never make that mistake again!
But when I saw the shiny black surface start to bulge, I RAN around a corner. A split second later, POP! and it sprayed burning hot stuff everywhere, the majority of it sticking to the ceiling 8 feet up ... I'm 6'4" or cleanup would have been a serious labor, and as it was I had to re-paint the ceiling in that location because of the vast amounts of brown coloring that remained soaked in..
Yay materials science..
The most interesting part of this accident, I think, is that it was an explosion, and it occurred using only food-grade (FDA-GRAS list) materials - yet had the potential to cause seriously life-changing burns had anything gone differently. Its the kind of thing that makes you stop and think about how dangerous life as a whole is, even if you get rid of all the "dangerous" materials or chemicals.
Then again, if you're making something intended to be stiffer than steel out of sugar, one should probably expect unusual accidents as a possibility..
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So I haven't done much chemistry lately and it is perhaps due to an incident that occurred earlier back in spring which was discouraging. This is not a tale of near disfigurement but a run in with authorities.
A friend of mine and I were working on a methyl salicylate synthesis as an introduction to esterification. It was actually more of a prep session as we were purifying store bought methanol through distillation and hydrolyzing and purifying salicylic from acetyl salicylate (asprin tablets). All of this was happening in my small apartment by the way. We had a distillation setup with water pumps, hot plate stir, glassware everywhere, the works and we were geared up with goggles, gloves, and aprons. We had been working all day and it was quite warm in the apartment so I just kicked the door open and we continued on with our business not thinking twice. It wasn't until later that evening I heard some footsteps on the stairs outside. I looked over to the door to see a man peek into the doorway as an alarmed look came over his face. Thinking it was a nosy neighbor, I said bluntly, "Can I help you?" At which point the man stepped into, hand on his holstered gun and said, "So what we got goin on here boys?" There were three city police officers at my door.
I was so sick I could have just died. Of course, at that point I decided it was best to be polite and cooperative, so I invited them in. They explained they had received a tip from someone in my neighborhood that I was running a meth lab (ABSOLUTELY NOT TRUE JUST SO YOU KNOW). I attempted to explain my hobby and that I was making methyl salicylate or wintergreen oil and that the distillation setup was for the distillation of methanol. At which point, they couldn't decide if it was meth related or moonshine related (Both are pretty common in my state). Of course they asked me all the standard cop questions, if I had any firearms on me or drugs in the house and what not. About this time, my roomate who was shut up in his room the whole time writing a term paper came out to see what the commotion was, much to his horror. The officers needed me to explain what every item was and what I intended to use it for. One officer in the back (I guess he felt left out) shined his flashlight on a crock pot on my counter and asked what I had going on in there. To which I muttered "A pork roast?" The one thing they couldn't get past is what I intended to do with the wintergreen oil. It had never occurred to me what I would do with the stuff, probably just discard since the point was the process not the product. I finally reasoned that I could make a candle or something. So the officer asks, "So you're making candles here then?" I looked at him not really knowing what else to say but, "Sure?" He wrote it down.
In the end they actually apologized for the disturbance, saying we didn't quite fit the profile of meth dealers. No charges, no fines, they just told us to be careful and have a good evening. I was quite astonished actually. Especially since we were also messing around with extracting iodine from povidone iodine which was admittedly questionable. I thought for sure between the iodine, the smell of acetic acid, the crushed pills, and distillation of at least a kind of alcohol that they would have torn the place apart but nothing ever came of it. Again, I was not nor ever intended to manufacture an illicit substance but they still could have given me a lot of trouble. I was VERY lucky. That close call sort of turned me off of the hobby a while but I've been thinking about it lately I may get back to it soon. Quite a shame for all that equipment to lay around unused.
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Come to Canada. Our Mega-low-mart doesn't sell dry ice or compressed argon or uranium fuel rods but you can order them online.
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A Story About Young Age Curiosity To Everything Offers Flame
Once upon a time when i wasn't have enough knowledge about chemistry i have tried to make make black powder.
Results:
1.)I have inhaled boiling nitric acid solution while trying to make NaNO3 (with drain cleaner and %20 nitric acid including some cleaning liquid)
2.)I have inhaled SO2 while burning NaNO3 and S
Another accidents:
-Exploding a glass bowl with just cologne(loss of only a cheap tablecloth and a bowl with calmness i saved whole building ;D)
-Inhaling lot's of methane and causing a house smelling like turd for days
-Inhaling Ethyl Alcohol,and good violet Iodine (While trying to gain some iodine crystals i don't remember what was the purpose)
-A chemical burn as Tyler's one but thankfully only little scars ;D
At least i'm alive.Even i can not believe that i am still alive.I have asthma since i was 3 years old.And i have only little scars after these trial and error experiences ;D
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I discovered a compound that spontaneously detonates when dry...
Oh, and I spilled molten bismuth on my arm when shaking it off a crystal I had just grown.
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Trying to make H2 gas in a balloon connected to a flask with aluminum and HCl.
mistake #1: using POWDERED aluminum.
mistake #2: dumping a random amount (too lazy to calculate theoretical volume of H2 produced).
Result: Balloon expanding extremely fast, HCl spurted into the balloon, then it exploded. Acid flew everywhere, including on my neck, face and, arms. No injuries since I immediately washed the acid off with cold water.
And that is what happens when you don't do stoichiometry, lol.
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Spilled HCl on my brown chino pants, not while wearing them. They are still intact without visible corrosion or holes, fabric is intact. Sad part is that the parts of the pants the acid soaked is now permantly discoloured, with light red stains. What does HCl do to the brown pigment to make it red? Chemical reaction with lightabsorbing aromatic pigments that changes its structure and therefore absorbtion spectrum?
This might sound really minor, but i really liked those pants, they fit me like a glove.
Is there anyway to turn them brown again?
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Spilled HCl on my brown chino pants, not while wearing them. They are still intact without visible corrosion or holes, fabric is intact. Sad part is that the parts of the pants the acid soaked is now permantly discoloured, with light red stains. What does HCl do to the brown pigment to make it red? Chemical reaction with lightabsorbing aromatic pigments that changes its structure and therefore absorbtion spectrum?
This might sound really minor, but i really liked those pants, they fit me like a glove.
Is there anyway to turn them brown again?
Have you washed them yet after the spill?
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Spilled HCl on my brown chino pants, not while wearing them. They are still intact without visible corrosion or holes, fabric is intact. Sad part is that the parts of the pants the acid soaked is now permantly discoloured, with light red stains. What does HCl do to the brown pigment to make it red? Chemical reaction with lightabsorbing aromatic pigments that changes its structure and therefore absorbtion spectrum?
This might sound really minor, but i really liked those pants, they fit me like a glove.
Is there anyway to turn them brown again?
Have you washed them yet after the spill?
Yes, of course, i put them in the sink and filled up with water ASAP to minimalize any damage the acid would have on the cloth would it remain soaked in the pants. Then i washed it in the washing machine. The stains remain the same, and its clear that the dye in the pants itself is miscoloured.
I've been thinking of treating it with bicarbonate, or if all else fails, maybe see if there are any clothes dye availabe to buy with a similar color.
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I asked because once I had a tiny H2SO4 spill on a coat that looked like only discoloration till I washed the coat. Post-wash, large gaping holes! ;D