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Acetone dangers

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ythan

ythan

Rising Star
air mixtures of between 2.5% and 12.8% acetone, by volume, may explode or cause a flash fire. Vapors can flow along surfaces to distant ignition sources and flash back.
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Source: wikipedia

How worried should one be about this? Its bassically saying theres a chance acetone will spontaniously explode if a certain amount of air is present!!! Thats pretty dam worring!

Flash fires are something that one can take many precautions against, but this random exploding thing has me wondering how safe the acetone method is? :?
 
The only way to get that high is to boil maybe a couple of gallons of acetone in a sealed closet. Think about it. A closet that is 4 x 3 x 10 feet is 120 square feet. In order for the air to be 2.5% acetone by volume, you would need 3 square feet worth of acetone in the air. That’s a lot of acetone. That's so much acetone you would not be able to breathe properly in the room. You would probably get acetone poisoning long before reaching that amount of acetone in the room.

None of the flammable solvents are safe at such concentration in the air.
 
OK,
my apologies for my lack of understanding.

Thanks for the explaination! :d
 
If it is possible to work doors outside you can eliminate solvent inhalation and possible accidents. I agree acetone is fairly safe to work with and one of the safer solvents.

I often do butane extractions outside when it is below 31f or so. Butane extractions of shake can produce a tastie golden yellow oil. Since butane boils at about 32f. The freezer works just fine also but has a lot more potentail dangers.

Boiling any flamable solvent you must know its boiling point. As well as flash temp were it will auto ignite. ;exploding in to flames. not good?
I always heat slovents until they just begin to boil just to be on the safe side. Never leave them boiling when your not monitoring them.

M.V.
 
ythan said:
air mixtures of between 2.5% and 12.8% acetone, by volume, may explode or cause a flash fire. Vapors can flow along surfaces to distant ignition sources and flash back.
Click to expand...
Source: wikipedia

How worried should one be about this? Its bassically saying theres a chance acetone will spontaniously explode if a certain amount of air is present!!! Thats pretty dam worring!

Flash fires are something that one can take many precautions against, but this random exploding thing has me wondering how safe the acetone method is? :?
Click to expand...

To further clarify, it would need some source of ignition for explosion to occur - it wouldn't just go off by itself! Badly worded Wikipedia article. The vapours of all flammable solvents are capable of igniting explosively when mixed with air. The percentages vary for each substance and are termed the lower and upper explosive limits, eg, for acetone, lower explosive limit: 2.5% and upper explosive limit: 12.8%.

This means that mixtures of acetone vapour with air will not explode (on contact with an ignition source) if there is less than 2.5%, or more than 12.8%, acetone vapour present.
 
Incidentally, for the cupboard/vapour example given above the amount of acetone required to reach the lower explosive limit is calculated as follows:

volume of cupboard: 120 cu ft

lower explosive limit (LEL) of acetone: 2.5%

therefore, volume of acetone vapour required to reach LEL = 120*2.5/100 = 3 cu ft

volume of one mole of ideal gas at 25degC = 24789.598 cm^3

3 cu ft = 3*(30.48 )^3 cm^3 = 84950.539776 cm^3

moles of acetone in 3 cu ft of vapour = 84950.539776 cm^3/24789.598 cm^3 mol^-1 = 3.426862339 moles

molar mass of acetone = 58.08 g mol^-1

therefore, mass of 3.426862339 moles of acetone = 199.032164628 g

density of liquid acetone = 0.79 g cm^-3

therefore volume of acetone required to produce 3 cu ft of vapour = 199.032164628 g/0.79 g cm^-3 = 251.939448896 cm^3, approximately!

So be careful of sources of ignition if you've evaporated more than 250 ml of acetone in a sealed cupboard 3 ft x 4 ft x 10 ft!
 
SWIM is more worried about cancer than explosions.

When he was hunting for it, he found one supplier that stated on their website that they sold only 'pure acetone'. They went on to explain that other sellers may be supplying recycled acetone (or something, maybe reconditioned?) that had previously been used for other uses and therefore may contain carcinogens. Their acetone, healthy, some other suppliers', cancer.

So SWIM websearched to see what other uses it has. It's used to produce bisphenol-A, the softening chemical for plastics, which was banned in many (if not all?) western countries because health concerns about this chemical are a who's-who of modern illnesses- breast cancer, prostate cancer, alzheimers etc. Even though it's banned in these countries it still crops up in plastic products from China etc. And if a company wanted to buy cheap acetone, I bet that would be where to get it from. Miniscule amounts of chemicals like this are dangerous. And that's just one former life that a bottle of acetone may have had.

Is this supplier correct? Or just using scare tactics to market their product?
 
I've read many MSDS forms for acetone found in the hardware store. Most say that they are 99.99% acetone. One brand, Kleanstrip, says theirs is 100.0% acetone.
 
ohayoco said:
SWIM is more worried about cancer than explosions.

When he was hunting for it, he found one supplier that stated on their website that they sold only 'pure acetone'. They went on to explain that other sellers may be supplying recycled acetone (or something, maybe reconditioned?) that had previously been used for other uses and therefore may contain carcinogens. Their acetone, healthy, some other suppliers', cancer.

[...]

Is this supplier correct? Or just using scare tactics to market their product?
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IMHO, scare tactics. Although they do have a point - it may be prudent to redistill cheap acetone before use. Bisphenol-A is not particularly volatile.

69ron said:
Kleanstrip, says theirs is 100.0% acetone.
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That's a bit hopeful for hardware store acetone, isn't it?
 
If you're worried about contaminants, use the acetone sold for doing your nails. That's USP grade. Get one that says its 100% acetone on the bottle. Even though it claims 100% acetone of the front, the MSDS shows it to usually contain traces of denatonium benzoate, a super bitter substance added to prevent kids from dinking it. Denatonium benzoate is not harmful and can be removed by distillation.

Denatonium benzoate is known to be soluble in water, alcohol, t-butyl alcohol, methanol, ethylene glycol and propylene glycol. It’s slightly soluble in acetone and practically insoluble ether.
 
endlessness said:
in a >99% acetone, what is likely to be the <1% impurity ?
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Probably mostly water?

I was just about to try a few teks involving acetone , thanks everyone for reminding me about the possible dangers of using non-foodgrade chemicals (even if exaggerated: better be on the safe side).
 
Ugh. Here's another acetone tip. Just because it comes in a plastic bottle, don't assume you can put it in another one. SWIM put 100ml in an old shampoo bottle and it reacted and melted the bottle to form a milky substance. SWIM needed that 100ml, it was the final piece of a puzzle! :(

The bottle's recycling code was 03 V, whatever that is.
 
ohayoco said:
Ugh. Here's another acetone tip. Just because it comes in a plastic bottle, don't assume you can put it in another one. SWIM put 100ml in an old shampoo bottle and it reacted and melted the bottle to form a milky substance. SWIM needed that 100ml, it was the final piece of a puzzle! :(

The bottle's recycling code was 03 V, whatever that is.
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Yep - I realised this when I tried pulling out of the bottle using a plastic pipette... pipette went milky white and started melting like superglue.
Always test with a small amount first... I tested on a milk bottle the other day and that seemed ok, think it was HDPE.
 
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