[dudeman]

I brought home some contaminated chloroform today from school and was trying to distill it. Its only about 50ml in volume so I figured it would be quite easy. I distill the cloudy white chloroform only to find that the cloud is following the chloroform. The white stuff is from the plastic tubing we used to demonstrate proper use of lab equipment and the out come of lack of planning and attention to detail.

Does anyone know if this crap is even worth thee trouble? Ive distilled it 2-3 times and have not seen a difference. It's always coming out cloudy white.   

[408]

First off add a few drops of ethanol to your chloroform.  Phosgene can form in unstabilized chloroform, which is a war gas (read: really really poisonous), ethanol inhibits this.  Also, keep it in a brown-glass bottle.

Perhaps rinse the chloroform with a saturated salt solution.  Some liquids are cloudy when they contain small amounts of water.

[dudeman]

  Thanks for the answer! Phosgene?! That's some nasty stuff... Will add ethanol asap and move to a glass bottle... The only thing is this... I have made a little pure chloroform from the merky stuff but there is still a lot left. I will try to rinse the solution tomorrow but onto the update... Thank you again for your reply btw...

Soon after my post I began experimenting with this stuff again. I decided to boil it at exactly the right temperature 61C... This resulted in a slow drip of clear chloroform but the drip soon stopped. The chloroform has plastic in it because it was distilled through plastic tubing instead of glass.  This resulted in fogging of the tubing and chloroform due to the chloroform eating away at the tubing as it condensed. I tried to see if the white stuff could be transferred over to water by adding an equal portion of water to the glass jar... I forgot to mention that I had put the liquid into a plastic water bottle before leaving class... This also may have added plastic to the chloroform. When I got home the bottle had expanded to the point of almost exploding... The bottom was bulging, discolored, and very thin... It is evident to me that this chemical should not be stored in plastic containers... heh.

So with that said how could you explain the small amount of clean chloroform I got out of it while the rest wont budge unless I turn up the heat?

EDIT!:::

______UPDATE!!!

Ok look... I shook it up and some of the white crap transferred to the water layer... So now I have two nasty milky layers but the chloroform layer has more... I think the plastic stuff likes it more than the water... So all I can think to do now is add a BUNCH of water and then remove it. Add more water and shake it up again. Wait for it to settle and remove it... Do this until the chloroform layer is clear enough to see through then try to distill at 61C again... What do you think?

[dudeman]

Even if i cant distill this stuff it still looks pretty cool... I might keep it because the plastic is forming little pillars of plastic with A bubble at the top holding it up...


Edit...

Nvm... I gave up on this quest. The contamination was to potent to be bothered with... I did receive a small sample of pure chloroform which will in my head forever. I now know most of the properties of this chemical... It really does have a nice smell and tastes even nicer... I did not breath in enough to feel any effects although i did get a light head ache while distilling... I now know what to look out for when handling this chemical... Oh yeah just for anyone that reads this... I put a few drops of this stuff on some styrofoam and it ate through it faster than hot solder. I also filled a Styrofoam cup with water and put a few drops in it and the chloroform sank to the bottom and did the exact same thing... Cool stuff...