Hi all. I've just noticed that most catalytic reactions that I've encountered mainly involve organic products and reactants. Inorganic catalysts can be used in these reactions, but there are only a few catalytic reactions where the reactants and products are mainly inorganic. I wonder if this is just because we haven't discovered as much inorganic catalytic reactions or there is something in nature that lead to this.

Hi, I hope this subreddit is suitable for this question, can't find one that seems more suited than this.

I've got silica gel packets with some coloured beads that even show if one is saturated or not, but after asking the AI out of curiosity I am now at odds. It gave some clearly wrong answers because I already dried a pair once with my air frier and it took far less, but also said that the packets can release dangerous chemicals and so not to dry them somewhere I also cook food into.

So... what can I do? probably dumb question, but is it safe to put ONLY the packets in to dry them, and then after cook food? Possibly after several hours have passed and I leave it open so that any chemical gets out... unless it is depositated, again, I have no idea. Another option that comes to mind would be, if they can be dried in the microwave (or ia it too aggressive?), put them inside a smaller container that is sealed so that any chemical released doesn't contaminate the microwave.

Yeah, just some thoughts but I don't have any idea how sound they are. Hope to get some advice, would be much appreciated. Thank you 🙏

I found this interesting piece of schlenkware in a drawer in a now defunct lab who was at this university for many decades. I’m very intrigued what the purpose is, since the j young tap opens the flask to gas and to air. My thought was that the left side arm was for reagent addition, but then it’s impossible to keep it under positive pressure while not adding reagents? I guess you could cover that side arm… My boss is an experienced air free chemist, and he was also not sure. Perhaps it’s for storage of dry solvents? Has some similarities to the bombs we use for that in my lab.

Hi everyone, I have a question for those working with food analysis.

I’m analyzing iron in fortified wheat flour, and I’m wondering which sample preparation method you usually use: microwave digestion with HNO₃/H₂O₂ or dry ashing before analysis by AAS or ICP-OES.

I tried dry ashing at 450°C for 12 hours, but the flour still has black particles and doesn’t turn into proper ash.

Has anyone experienced this before? If you use dry ashing, what temperature and time do you normally use?

Also, have you ever compared the results obtained by dry ashing and microwave digestion? Which method gives you better iron recovery?

I’d appreciate hearing about your actual lab experience. Thanks!

Hello. Are there any websites, YouTube channels, or other resources to practice multiple-choice questions, matching, etc., for first-year chemistry? I want to quiz myself on theory and some math that doesn't require solving and can be done easily by looking at the formulas, like when something is inversely proportional to something else, so that will be low, and then solving the problem with shortcuts and tricks. For example, chapters like ideal gases, quantum mechanics of the atom, etc. Idk if that makes sense.

Just a random question I thought about but while there always standard safety protocols in a lab I was just curious as to what is a habit that bother or annoys you in a lab. Not to shame anyone or anything just curious
Edit: can’t get to every comment but thank you all for the replies:)

I promise I'm not a terrorist, I'm just writing a story 😅

So basically for plot reasons some characters have to blow up a dam and do so with something that won't leave relevant traces of itself and possibly is a chemical agent not specifically designed as a bomb (one of them is the owner of a chemical company so she'd have little trouble acquiring chemical agents, but proper bomb components would be super hard to get without arising too much suspicion).

So I thought of anhydride sodium bc it reacts violently with water and unlike a lot of other explosives, its explosive reactions should be enhaanced intead of slowed by it. Plus Na+ ions are rather common in water, so it would be hard for people trying to find the culprits to understand what they used in the first place.

The sodium would be dropped in one or a few sealed boxes from basically a plane flying over the dam with a small device/mechanical component that causes them to open once they're already in the water.

The question is, would it work? How much sodium would they need to use? (They're not trying to destroy the whole structure, just to create a large enough breach that the dam is no longer of use).

Thank you!

Perdon si este no es el foto adecuado, es que no se que mejor que un quimico para un consejo de estos; pero, Ya realice el truco de pasarle un marcador borrable encima, alcohol de grado medicinal (estoy en trabajo de campo y me quede sin isopropílico) y otros trucos, pero pese a que el pigmento se aclaro bastante, aun hay manchas... quisiera saber que puedo hacer para eliminarlas completamente... ya que me encontraba realizando unos calculos y me quede sin espacio en la pizarra y por error estuve usando un marcador permanente por bastante tiempo, hasta que lo noté... algun consejo sobre como puedo diluir la tinta seca en el material?

So I set up my reaction with 80ml DMF, and after completing the reaction (starting material consumed as monitored TLC), the procedure stated to filter the reaction mixture and wash the solid with h20, i tried to filter it and started washing with h20, but none persisted on the filter paper on buchner funnel and almost all went to filtrate, perhaps it wasn’t pure on TLC, hence not solidyfying.

Now I have a miscible mixture of DMF and water , I added nearly 200ml water. I tried extracting with chcl3 since my product is readily soluble in that but I am not observing layer separation on the extraction funnel.

Now I have a miscible mixture of dmf water and chcl3, whats the best course to get my product?

I intend to do column after this to isolate the red spot at the top (in 2nd lane) which is my target compound. Please ignore my novice english.

Some time ago, I created two quiz courses on QuizAcademy for our students covering instrumental (bio)analytics, with a main focus on NMR spectroscopy and MS spectrometry.

Since my English is unfortunately quite poor, I decided to translate these quizzes from German into English with the help of AI. Now my request: If anyone here has the time, inclination, and/or interest to take a look, I would really appreciate any feedback or spotted errors.

Thank you!

Basic Course

https://quizacademy.io/U-COJYYR

Master Course

https://quizacademy.io/U-CIDYNN

The use should be possible anonymously. I cannot draw any conclusions about users. In addition, the operator should work in accordance with the European GDPR.

Many thanks

ps: I am just an employee and do not have the means to pay students for this activity. However, I would like to make the quizzes available to the general public.

Ask the r/chemistry intelligentsia your research/technical questions. This is a great way to reach out to a broad chemistry network about anything you are curious about or need insight with and for professionals who want to help with topics that they are knowledgeable about.

So if you have any questions about reactions not working, optimization of yields or anything else concerning your current (or future) research, this is the place to leave your comment.

If you see similar topics of people around r/chemistry please direct them to this weekly thread where they hopefully get the help that they are looking for.

I am trying to obtain a sample ( could be as small a 0.25 grams ) of ¹³C activated carbon. While I can find ¹³C as "amorphous carbon" powder or as chemical compounds, I am specifically looking for a GAC with high proportion of C-13. The ¹³C powder seems to be analogous to lamp black, but not really wanting to "try" to see if this $2000 a gram can adsorb in the same way as GAC.

DISCLAIMER: I understand I am not what you would call an informed person on chemistry subjects, and I don't have a full understanding of the chemical side of things when it comes to these topics. I'm only in my second quarter of my class, and I just wanted to have a look into chemistry. I do have some interest in going into a chemistry-related field and am excited to learn more, but I would like to see the opinions of those who far outclass me knowledge-wise.

Hi, I'm a High School chemistry student right now, and my teacher has assigned us an argumentative academic essay. He gave us a list of topics, and I chose to talk about chemical recycling vs. biodegradable plastics. When I started researching, it seemed like a pretty simple choice for me, but then I kept questioning things and started digging further and further, and now I've spent way too much time thinking about the aspects of my research for a 1500 word essay. Anyway, I'm now having trouble choosing a side to argue. I haven't asked my teacher if he would let me argue for neither of them, but I'd rather not. I do think it would be best to learn to choose a side here and now so I can have an easier time writing my second essay next semester. So far, I have chosen the side of chemical recycling because it simply seems like a safer side to choose. I talked to my friend, and she had also chosen that side. So I chose the topics I would cover, and I decided that chemical recycling had a head start in comparison to biodegradable plastics. My second topic is what's making me have second thoughts on the side I chose. I chose to talk about how chemical recycling would be safer in the long term. The sources I had pointed to biodegradable plastics potentially being more harmful for the environment, but that's because I don't believe that we would be able to implement the correct procedures in a timely fashion. Then I started thinking that I should look into the environmental impact of chemical recycling, and then I found that they are both harmful in different ways. Anyway, the point I'm trying to get to is that I want to see what other people, people who have much more knowledge on the subject, think.

Thanks

P.S. I can write a reddit post, but I can't write an essay (-w-)v

Hey everyone,

I’m an engineering student setting up a small benchtop experiment to test liquid-liquid phase separation in aqueous amine blends for CO₂ capture.

Right now, I have DEEA, AEEA, and anhydrous Piperazine (PZ) on hand, and I’m looking at testing a few aqueous and alcohol-assisted (1-butanol) blends in small 25 mL screening vials before scaling up to a 500 mL gas washing bottle and separatory funnel.

Since this is my first time running a lab-scale gas sparging setup with these specific amines, I wanted to ask for some practical lab advice from anyone who has worked with similar systems:

1. Sparger clogging with Piperazine: How quickly does PZ carbamate precipitate inside a fritted glass sparger if it hits saturation, and am I better off just using an open-ended tube or coarse diffuser for the PZ runs?

2. Temperature & evaporative losses: If I run the bubble column in a 25–30 °C water bath without an overhead condenser for a 20–30 minute saturation test, will gas stripping noticeably throw off the water/1-butanol ratio?

3. Handling & storage: Beyond keeping anhydrous PZ sealed with Parafilm to avoid moisture/air uptake, are there any annoying quirks when mixing or storing DEEA/AEEA solutions that I should watch out for?

Appreciate any benchtop tips or warnings before I start mixing!

Removing a pollutant from water does not necessarily eliminate it. Filters and membranes can leave persistent chemicals concentrated in another waste stream, still requiring disposal or treatment. A catalytic membrane now offers a way to combine capture with the chemical reactions needed to break those contaminants down.

An international team involving Arizona State University tested the approach against six per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. During a 58-day continuous laboratory experiment, average removal ranged from 93% to 99%. The system also released fluoride, evidence that it was breaking carbon-fluorine bonds rather than simply collecting the pollutants.

The study appears in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Bruce Rittmann, director of ASU’s Biodesign Swette Center for Environmental Biotechnology, worked with colleagues at Rice University, Tongji University, the National University of Singapore and Nanjing University.

PFAS have been used in firefighting foams, water-resistant materials and other products because of their durability. That persistence also creates a contamination problem. Exposure to certain PFAS has been linked to immune effects, developmental problems and increased risks of some cancers, although the thousands of compounds in this family differ in their properties and evidence of harm.

Cleaned tile on left; as-found tile on right.

I'm cleaning up a bunch of antique reclaimed subway tiles. Muriatic acid seems to work great for removing the old mortar. The only damage it seems to do is slightly discolor the tile.

My question is: does anyone know why the acid is turning the glaze slightly eggshell? Can it be reversed?

And as a slightly related question: does anyone know a good way of getting the acid out of ceramic? Soaking them in warm water with baking soda works but if anyone has a better idea I'd love to hear it.

Thanks for your time.

I ask because I've seen people say the legendary "will o wisp" phenomenon could have been caused by phosphine gas escaping from peat bogs. But pure phosphine won't ignite on its own (to my understanding)

is diphosphane also a product of anaerobic bacterial activity? Is the will o wisp theory plausible?

I've spent more than 12 years in university research administration and currently serve as an Associate Vice President overseeing sponsored programs. One thing I've seen repeatedly is how much time researchers spend trying to identify funding opportunities that actually fit their work.

There are thousands of opportunities across NSF, NIH, DOE, DOD, Grants.gov, private foundations, and other sources. The problem isn't a lack of funding. It's that the opportunity perfectly suited to your research is buried somewhere in a list of 1,500+ announcements, alongside hundreds that are irrelevant, poorly aligned, or for which you're ineligible. Finding that needle in the haystack takes time away from actual research.

That's the problem CONVERGE (www.convergeri.com) was designed to solve.

Rather than giving researchers another database to search, CONVERGE continuously screens funding sources, intelligently matches opportunities to individual researchers, and delivers personalized recommendations directly to their inboxes.

Here's what makes CONVERGE different:

• Intelligent funding matching: Opportunities are matched to your expertise, publications, prior funding, and research interests, not just keywords. Whether you work in organic chemistry, materials science, biochemistry, or interdisciplinary research, recommendations reflect what you actually study.
• No profiles to create or maintain: CONVERGE draws on publicly available scholarly information from ORCID, Google Scholar, PubMed, OpenAlex, and other sources. No CV uploads, manually maintained profiles, or additional systems to manage.
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• Broad funding coverage: Federal, state, foundation, and other funding sources are screened to surface opportunities you might otherwise miss.

How is this different from Pivot, GrantForward, or other funding databases?

Those are valuable tools, but they generally require institutional subscriptions, and researchers may still need to configure searches, maintain profiles, or review large numbers of opportunities. Grants.gov is free, but you're still responsible for searching and filtering. Keyword alerts can help, but matching a keyword doesn't necessarily mean an opportunity is relevant.

CONVERGE takes a different approach: Instead of another database to search or profile to maintain, intelligently matched opportunities come directly to you.

It's also available to individual researchers without an institutional subscription.

Individual subscriptions start at $19/month, with a 14-day free trial and the flexibility to cancel anytime. Solutions are also available for departments, research centers, colleges, and universities.

Learn more or start your free trial: https://www.convergeri.com

Disclosure: I'm one of the founders of CONVERGE, and the r/chemistry moderators have authorized this promotional post.

Happy to answer questions about how the matching works, funding sources, or anything else about CONVERGE. I'd also welcome feedback from chemistry researchers about how you currently find funding and what would make the process easier.

Today I accidentally dropped the product of four days of work into the Rotavap water bath, how are your days going?💀