I found this pretty interesting especially bc I’ve messed around w boric acid and methanol mixtures and borax and methanol mixtures and I hadn’t seen someone actually produce and then isolate trimethylborate I’ve always had a cloudy solution even when I’ve used boric acid probably bc not using the sulfuric acid like you did but it still always produces a nice green flame whenever I use boric acid
I'm glad you liked it! And yeah if you make sure to thoroughly dissolve the boric acid you'll get a similarly bright green flame, but it will always be a bit cloudy just because boric acid cant fully dissolve in methanol (at least at room temp). You can also do this process with sodium bisulfate instead of sulfuric acid.
Great Scot! I had no idea the triskele was a symbol of alchemy like Hermes Trimestigus. There's an old drag racing story about trimethyl borate being used as top secret rocket fuel. I know one of the SpaceX rocket boosters had a green flame while the official fuel source is listed as ? ammonia. Perhaps it's just a holiday themed promotional stunt
Borax and boric acic are meanwhile hard to obtain for private individuals here in the EU, because they are a little overestimated CMR substances. Only a few Polish or Bulgarian shops still sell them. I guess they are really not to dangerous as long as you are not trying to become a parent at the moment, don't eat boron containing substances and do wash your hands after handling them. I would also recommend not to inhale the volatile ester vapors or the smoke from burning them. So these experments should only be done outside or in a fumehood - and if it just was because of the neurotoxic methanol vapors. That's why making methyl esters isn't that satisfying for me because nearly all esters form hard to separate azeotropic mixtures with their corresponding alcohols and in case of methanol it's not the best idea taking a too deep breath of these vapors into your nose to test the fruity odor. And I limited myself on making trimethyl borate only in situ, too. Unfortunately conc. sulfuric acid is banned here, so we have to use bisulfate or toluene sulfonic acid as possible catalysts for the Fischer esterification instead.
I had actually read a bit about boron toxicity last year when an incredibly stupid trend of drinking borax for its supposed health benefits swept the nation.. Obviously it has no health benefits, and is toxic, but from what I read the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health found way back in 2012 that anything shy of extreme levels of exposure did not increase boron levels in the blood enough to constitute any meaningful reproductive toxicity.. That said, I am surprised even borax is hard to get in the EU.. Its somewhat off topic but I have mixed feelings on the EU, on one had the European Union is powerful as an economic bloc, and holds way more political sway than any one euro nation would. It also serves its initial function of keeping Europe from being in a constant state of war (although I feel we have mostly moved past that). On the other hand, the level of bureaucratic bloat/regulation seems like a living nightmare in some ways, and large economies like Germany and France subsidize poorer EU nations to a staggering degree. Merkel held it together well as she was an absolute political powerhouse, but Scholz can't fill that role, and nobody in France can. Anyway, I definitely feel the same way about methyl esters.. I couldn't help smell the methyl salicylate but in general I avoid them for that reason. Also you just reminded me, I need toluene so badly for several projects I want to do, but in the US state I live (massachusetts) toluene is de facto banned and very difficult to get as in only Massachusetts it is considered a top-priority CMR. To be fair, it is certainly more mutagenic than borax, but the degree to which it is regulated here is somewhat annoying.
@@integral_chemistry As I said: purely as a precaution, I wouldn't use borax if I'm currently planning a family. I also wouldn't use it to make toy slime for my children. Caution is also advised when using it to produce a volatile and therefore respirable substance. But beyond that, the toxicity is exaggerated. I only use it in very small quantities to detect heavy metals using a borax bead. In this form I don't have much to worry about, I think. I even had my children do the experiment. Of course, they wore protective gloves and also had to wash their hands afterwards. But there is actually no reason to panic and restrict trade in the substance, as is happening here in Western Europe. Toluene is not a CMR substance, but is certainly toxic to nerves and organs. That's why I only experiment with it outside. It would only be mutagenic if it contained benzene, which can certainly be the case if it is technically pure. But it is a good substitute for benzene as a solvent because it is not nearly as dangerous. Overall, I only use toluene extremely rarely and - as is often the case - only in fairly small quantities because I am only active sporadically in the field of organic synthesis, where toluene is used in large amounts as an azeotropic water entraining agent in distillations. Even with a total ban, I would be able to cope better than with the current ban on nitric acid and concentrated sulfuric acid, which amateur chemists are particularly suffering from. Toluene is also not available on every corner here, and the solvents sold in hardware stores these days are very low in aromatics and can hardly be processed to this extent. Toluene is also a legally monitored excipient in dru* production. That's why some sellers require an end-use declaration before purchasing. However, the permitted limits are so high that the normal hobby chemist could hardly exceed them, even if he focuses on organic chemistry. This means that ordering small quantities of toluene (1 liter or less - I only store 100 ml) hardly leads to any problems with the authorities, as long as you don't make yourself suspicious by purchasing other relevant components at the same time. I know two German and one Dutch dealers who sell it privately by mail order. German chemical laws are the strictest in all of Europe. In principle, chemicals that are CMR or toxic may be legally owned, but may not be sold to private individuals by German dealers. This means that you have to buy supplies legally in other European countries instead. That doesn't actually help anyone, but it at least hurts German sellers, most of whom no longer sell to private individuals anyways. In fact, you can only get household chemicals relatively easily here. Without the sellers in our European neighbors, ambitious hobby chemistry would hardly be possible in this country. The EU and its regulations - yes, that would be a whole separate chapter and a tragedy. They not only affect our niche hobbies, but also every area of daily life. Here you can choose which gender you want to be, but not what you heat your apartment with.... Even the EU has recognized that bureaucracy is a problem, but still, for every law that is abolished, there are five new ones... If we continue like this, we will strangulate ourselves ourselves one day... In combination with our counterproductive energy and climate policy, the unchecked flow of immigration into our social systems, our foreign policy and our ideology-driven sense of values and mission, we will almost certainly maneuver ourselves into a global marginal position that will bring us to the level of developing countries. Ultimately, Merkel only maintained the status quo while the problems caused by the backlog of reforms continued to grow in the background. During her time the EU has become the juggernaut it is today... The new government is certainly the most incompetent we have ever had. Although it has increased the pace, it is running in the wrong direction. Anyone who wants to pull the cart out of the quagmire here has no choice but to vote for populist parties - even if they don't support them politically. Because nothing more can be expected from the established parties except that they drive us deeper and deeper into it... Yes, if I were young and independent again today, I would almost certainly leave this EU madhouse. But unfortunately we are now far too deeply rooted as a family. I just have to hope that I can somehow survive the 25 or 30 years that I might have left. But for our children I see black. I would understand if they wanted to emigrate one day - then I would follow them at the latest... The only question is where, because all the governments in the world seem to have secretly taken up the cause of the Great Reset... For you it seems to be comparatively tolerable at the moment - even without toluene. In any case, you don't have to be afraid that a special task force will storm your house because of a few milliliters of concentrated sulfuric acid... I'll be completely honest: if I didn't have a registered business that allowed me to legally handle many chemicals, I wouldn't be at all anymore dare to still have some in the house... There are house searches here for every little thing: with a population of 80 million, around 100,000 per year - but only 2% of them lead to a conviction. Actually, this is unconstitutional. But as a citizen here you are now helpless against the overreaching state. It's worse now than it was back in the GDR...
I have right next to no idea what's happening in this video, but I'm all here for it.
This is awesome
I found this pretty interesting especially bc I’ve messed around w boric acid and methanol mixtures and borax and methanol mixtures and I hadn’t seen someone actually produce and then isolate trimethylborate I’ve always had a cloudy solution even when I’ve used boric acid probably bc not using the sulfuric acid like you did but it still always produces a nice green flame whenever I use boric acid
I'm glad you liked it! And yeah if you make sure to thoroughly dissolve the boric acid you'll get a similarly bright green flame, but it will always be a bit cloudy just because boric acid cant fully dissolve in methanol (at least at room temp). You can also do this process with sodium bisulfate instead of sulfuric acid.
This video gives me INTENSE SATISFACTION! 🌈
The flame at 0:24 resembles veins on a leaf, very cool!
Great Scot! I had no idea the triskele was a symbol of alchemy like Hermes Trimestigus. There's an old drag racing story about trimethyl borate being used as top secret rocket fuel. I know one of the SpaceX rocket boosters had a green flame while the official fuel source is listed as ? ammonia. Perhaps it's just a holiday themed promotional stunt
Yer yes brother!
Nice!
7 hours of distillation isn't too long in organic chemistry standard🤣
Honestly that's 1000% true 💀 some of the things I've been doing lately have taken offensively long
Boric acid is available at hardware stores as a pest control chemical.
👍
I wish you can synthesis sodium borohydride 🙏🏽
Borax and boric acic are meanwhile hard to obtain for private individuals here in the EU, because they are a little overestimated CMR substances. Only a few Polish or Bulgarian shops still sell them.
I guess they are really not to dangerous as long as you are not trying to become a parent at the moment, don't eat boron containing substances and do wash your hands after handling them. I would also recommend not to inhale the volatile ester vapors or the smoke from burning them. So these experments should only be done outside or in a fumehood - and if it just was because of the neurotoxic methanol vapors. That's why making methyl esters isn't that satisfying for me because nearly all esters form hard to separate azeotropic mixtures with their corresponding alcohols and in case of methanol it's not the best idea taking a too deep breath of these vapors into your nose to test the fruity odor. And I limited myself on making trimethyl borate only in situ, too.
Unfortunately conc. sulfuric acid is banned here, so we have to use bisulfate or toluene sulfonic acid as possible catalysts for the Fischer esterification instead.
I had actually read a bit about boron toxicity last year when an incredibly stupid trend of drinking borax for its supposed health benefits swept the nation.. Obviously it has no health benefits, and is toxic, but from what I read the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health found way back in 2012 that anything shy of extreme levels of exposure did not increase boron levels in the blood enough to constitute any meaningful reproductive toxicity.. That said, I am surprised even borax is hard to get in the EU..
Its somewhat off topic but I have mixed feelings on the EU, on one had the European Union is powerful as an economic bloc, and holds way more political sway than any one euro nation would. It also serves its initial function of keeping Europe from being in a constant state of war (although I feel we have mostly moved past that). On the other hand, the level of bureaucratic bloat/regulation seems like a living nightmare in some ways, and large economies like Germany and France subsidize poorer EU nations to a staggering degree. Merkel held it together well as she was an absolute political powerhouse, but Scholz can't fill that role, and nobody in France can.
Anyway, I definitely feel the same way about methyl esters.. I couldn't help smell the methyl salicylate but in general I avoid them for that reason. Also you just reminded me, I need toluene so badly for several projects I want to do, but in the US state I live (massachusetts) toluene is de facto banned and very difficult to get as in only Massachusetts it is considered a top-priority CMR. To be fair, it is certainly more mutagenic than borax, but the degree to which it is regulated here is somewhat annoying.
@@integral_chemistry
As I said: purely as a precaution, I wouldn't use borax if I'm currently planning a family. I also wouldn't use it to make toy slime for my children. Caution is also advised when using it to produce a volatile and therefore respirable substance. But beyond that, the toxicity is exaggerated. I only use it in very small quantities to detect heavy metals using a borax bead. In this form I don't have much to worry about, I think. I even had my children do the experiment. Of course, they wore protective gloves and also had to wash their hands afterwards. But there is actually no reason to panic and restrict trade in the substance, as is happening here in Western Europe.
Toluene is not a CMR substance, but is certainly toxic to nerves and organs. That's why I only experiment with it outside. It would only be mutagenic if it contained benzene, which can certainly be the case if it is technically pure. But it is a good substitute for benzene as a solvent because it is not nearly as dangerous.
Overall, I only use toluene extremely rarely and - as is often the case - only in fairly small quantities because I am only active sporadically in the field of organic synthesis, where toluene is used in large amounts as an azeotropic water entraining agent in distillations. Even with a total ban, I would be able to cope better than with the current ban on nitric acid and concentrated sulfuric acid, which amateur chemists are particularly suffering from. Toluene is also not available on every corner here, and the solvents sold in hardware stores these days are very low in aromatics and can hardly be processed to this extent.
Toluene is also a legally monitored excipient in dru* production. That's why some sellers require an end-use declaration before purchasing. However, the permitted limits are so high that the normal hobby chemist could hardly exceed them, even if he focuses on organic chemistry. This means that ordering small quantities of toluene (1 liter or less - I only store 100 ml) hardly leads to any problems with the authorities, as long as you don't make yourself suspicious by purchasing other relevant components at the same time. I know two German and one Dutch dealers who sell it privately by mail order.
German chemical laws are the strictest in all of Europe. In principle, chemicals that are CMR or toxic may be legally owned, but may not be sold to private individuals by German dealers. This means that you have to buy supplies legally in other European countries instead. That doesn't actually help anyone, but it at least hurts German sellers, most of whom no longer sell to private individuals anyways. In fact, you can only get household chemicals relatively easily here. Without the sellers in our European neighbors, ambitious hobby chemistry would hardly be possible in this country.
The EU and its regulations - yes, that would be a whole separate chapter and a tragedy. They not only affect our niche hobbies, but also every area of daily life. Here you can choose which gender you want to be, but not what you heat your apartment with.... Even the EU has recognized that bureaucracy is a problem, but still, for every law that is abolished, there are five new ones... If we continue like this, we will strangulate ourselves ourselves one day... In combination with our counterproductive energy and climate policy, the unchecked flow of immigration into our social systems, our foreign policy and our ideology-driven sense of values and mission, we will almost certainly maneuver ourselves into a global marginal position that will bring us to the level of developing countries. Ultimately, Merkel only maintained the status quo while the problems caused by the backlog of reforms continued to grow in the background. During her time the EU has become the juggernaut it is today... The new government is certainly the most incompetent we have ever had. Although it has increased the pace, it is running in the wrong direction. Anyone who wants to pull the cart out of the quagmire here has no choice but to vote for populist parties - even if they don't support them politically. Because nothing more can be expected from the established parties except that they drive us deeper and deeper into it...
Yes, if I were young and independent again today, I would almost certainly leave this EU madhouse. But unfortunately we are now far too deeply rooted as a family. I just have to hope that I can somehow survive the 25 or 30 years that I might have left. But for our children I see black. I would understand if they wanted to emigrate one day - then I would follow them at the latest... The only question is where, because all the governments in the world seem to have secretly taken up the cause of the Great Reset...
For you it seems to be comparatively tolerable at the moment - even without toluene. In any case, you don't have to be afraid that a special task force will storm your house because of a few milliliters of concentrated sulfuric acid... I'll be completely honest: if I didn't have a registered business that allowed me to legally handle many chemicals, I wouldn't be at all anymore dare to still have some in the house... There are house searches here for every little thing: with a population of 80 million, around 100,000 per year - but only 2% of them lead to a conviction. Actually, this is unconstitutional. But as a citizen here you are now helpless against the overreaching state. It's worse now than it was back in the GDR...
Can you make boron nitride?
Can i use isopropanol instead of methanol?
Now please convert THAT into a borohydride and enjoy the uptick
I was thinking about it tbh.. I need a dry ice/liquid nitrogen source badly.. for several projects
Next make dimethyl sulfate.
You know, I did very briefly consider doing that 😅 dont think it's worth the hazards
@@integral_chemistry 😈
@@integral_chemistryIndeed.
@@integral_chemistryi don't think A&E's insurance covered that
Reageant more like reageanites
wyldfyre