November 26, 2024, 03:38:26 AM
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Topic: Ever throw out a substance you really wish you had analyzed out of curiosity?  (Read 3072 times)

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Offline nj_bartel

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Recently I was drying an imidazole compound under vacuum.  Long story short, the compound apparently has a melting point right around room temperature and a boiling point not too much higher.  Some of the compound made its way into the hosing, but didn't APPEAR to make it into the trap (I opened to inspect and take NMR).  The system managed to get quite a lot of air in it, and I ended up getting ~20 mL liquid O2 in the trap.  So I pumped it off.  Afterward, upon looking at the trap, there was quite a lot of bright purple liquid - almost identicial looking to the attached image, but without the solid looking specs.  Looked almost fluorescent, but didn't fluoresce under UV light.  Really wanted to take a proton NMR but got lazy and ended up cleaning it.  Oh well!

Offline azmanam

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no... but I sure have analyzed a lot of compounds I wish I had rather just thrown out... :-\
Knowing why you got a question wrong is better than knowing that you got a question right.

Offline 408

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No, my organic waste bottle is perpetually full, and being lazy I always leave my waste in random glassware on the side of the fume hood.  I cannot count the number of crystal structures I have got, that I had given up on by conventional means, by just letting waste reaction liquor sit.

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