That Chemist - 2022-05-29
In this video, I decide which oxidizers are best! https://www.patreon.com/thatchemist Community Discord - https://discord.gg/QWNPETtPcZ
"This is an evil chemical. It burns sand." I always refer to the article "Sand Won't Save You This Time" whenever someone mentions ClF3.
"Let's put it this way: during World War II, the Germans were very interested in using it in self-igniting flamethrowers, but found it too nasty to work with. It is apparently about the most vigorous fluorinating agent known, and is much more difficult to handle than fluorine gas. That’s one of those statements you don’t get to hear very often, and it should be enough to make any sensible chemist turn around smartly and head down the hall in the other direction."
It once burned through 1 foot of concrete and 3 feet of gravel after a large spill. 😧
@@joeylawn36111 It also happily burns asbestos
The great comment of how to handle an accident involving ClF3 - “I have always recommended a good pair of running shoes.” -Dr John D. Clark
Originally from the book "ignition".
"Ozone smells the way a lethal radiation dose feels." -Ex&F
Yeah
Smells like an old slot car track.
The arcing of the contact brushes generated lots of ozone.
When I was a lifeguard in high school, we just chlorinated our pool with a giant tank of cl2 (like the size of a liquid n2 tank), it was terrifying to change out.
why the fuck did they chlorinate the pool with chlorine gas?
it's gonna be one hell of a desinfactant, but thry forgot they might desinfact you and you from the face of the earth
@@VerbenaIDK Chlorine gas pool chlorinators are very common on public pools.
I've also been to a country where what I assume was a public water supply shed had a tank of chlorine gas outside viewable from the road, with some pipe going in.
It terrified me.
Only capitalism would make high schoolers change giant tanks of Cl2
@@gliiitched this is a really dumb take.
Chlorine trifluoride also gives out hot HF gases when it reacts with any moisture. Like in air or on your skin
Kinky
I think part of the reason mcpba is more popular is its high melting point. Perbenzoic acid melts at ~40 degrees whereas mcpba melts at 90 or so.
Fun fact: F is such a strong oxidizer NASA experimented with it as a rocket fuel. It was used with H and liquid Li and produced the highest specific impulse of any chemical rocket. However it was never used in practice because a failure means covering large areas, or even the launch site and accompanying engineers, in F and Li which is really bad for obvious reasons.
Anyone curious about rocket fuels is required to read Ignition! by John D Clark, 1972. Here is an excerpt from a section about fluorine:
It can be contained in several of the structural metals: steel, copper, aluminum, etc. because it forms, immediately, a thin, inert coating of metal fluoride which prevents further attack. But if that inert layer is scrubbed off, or melted, the results can be spectacular. For instance, if the gas is allowed to flow rapidly out of an orifice or a valve, or if it touches a spot of grease or something like that, the metal is just as likely as not to ignite and a fluorine-aluminum fire is something to see. From a distance.
[...]
The development of large fluorine motors was a slow process, and sometimes a spectacular one. I saw one movie of a run made by Bell Aerosystems, during which a fluorine seal failed and the metal ignited. It looked as though the motor had two nozzles at right angles, with as much flame coming from the leak as from the nozzle. The motor was destroyed and the whole test cell burned out before the operators could shut down.
Fuming nitric acid is also a great oxidizer for rocketry, as is N2O4. ClF3 was once tried as an oxidizer, and had excellent performance, but it is of course truly evil and was not very popular.
If you're interested in reading about the terrifying propellant chemistry that went on in the early days of rocketry, check out the book Ignition! by John D. Clark.
Cool, thanks!
Maybe post a link to it in the discord so other people can enjoy it :)
On the subject of rocketry, hydrogen peroxide decomposed with potassium permanganate catalyst deserves an honorable mention, not as an oxidiser but as a means of driving turbopumps for main fuel/oxidizer. Used in torpedoes, missiles, and the early days of rocketry, it's still used in the Soyuz rocket (1950s to present) to generate oxygen/steam at high pressure to drive the propellant pumps. In other words, the "elephant's toothpaste" reaction has engineering uses.
Hydrogen peroxide has been used as an oxidiser in rocketry but the major use is catalytic decomposition for driving turbopumps, or as a monopropellant.
I really can imagine an hydrazine - ClF3 rocket. Rocket and chemical weapon at same time
The concrete was on fire!
Great book.
Oxone really should have been on the list! It’s high molar mass, i.e. large amounts are necessary, which is a downside but it’s very useful, non-toxic and even used in pools. Who doesn’t like pools? S-tier for me!
(And it can even be purified to stay as reactive but using smaller amounts)
yes. easy to generate using germicidal lamps and/or spark gaps.... and don't you have to be at a low pressure to create singlet oxygen?
@@petevenuti7355 You are confusing oxone and ozone I think. Very similar names.
@@zockertwins yup, I was moving too quick, multitasking too much earlier today. Not quite squirrel gone plaid but... Yeah , easy error....
> Air is super convenient to handle
Love the vids for these moments
The similarity between hydrogen peroxide and FOOF is more surprising than it should be.
Dupont at their Teflon plant outside of Parkersburg, WV uses 10% Fluorine Gas with 90% nitrogen in Small trailers. Gentlemen told me they actually wanted to use a higher ratio but anything higher than 10% caused issues. He went on to say if they had a trailer leak it would overwhelm the entire 50 acre site in 10 minutes.
When they would need to unload the trailer it would be back up to an Overgrown Fume hood so they could connect the trailer in a sealed environment. This fume hood was actually located outside the building incase of a leak.
dang that is scary
Thanks for the addition of names it really helps.
I figured it would be nice for non-experts
Should be mentioned: Concentrated perchloric acid will explode when heated. I once tried to clean a bit of expensive glassware with perchloric acid. Put the apparatus filled with the acid in a microwave. I thought I was being careful by trying 'only' 20s first. About 10s in, the whole thing exploded.
An interesting oxidizer is ferrate salts. Iron really does not like being in the +6 oxidation state. It is a stronger oxidant than permanganate. A new manufacturing process has recently been developed, so it's not as expensive as it used to be. A promising industrial application is as a lethal oxidizer in water purification. Since it reduces to rust in water, a film of rust settles in the water, trapping particulates and sinking them to the bottom of the container. Since it's only iron, unlike permanganate or chlorine, it's nontoxic. A big con is that it decomposes in water, esp. acidic solutions, and it's mildly hygroscopic. Keep it dry, or keep it alkaline.
interesting!
6:42 I'm thinking of the 2 times when a room mate in our students' dorm cleaned the mold in the shower and the whole hallway reeked of clorine gas. Not the typical pool smell, but real clorine. First I thought I was imagining things (why the heck would I smell clorine at home?) but then I checked the hallway and the shower and was greeted with a cloud. I opened all windows (they hadn't done that in the shower) and the backyard door before I furiously send some massages in our WhatsApp group. I remember how terrified they reacted, when I told them, that they produced real clorine gas. I don't know how the did it, but I guess they mixed different cleaners.
Yikes
@@That_Chemist I have 2 budgies so I was quite worried that I could smell it in my room. I had to cover the slit beneath my door where the chlorine came through with a towel to protect them (at least a little).
It's easily done. Hypochlorite bleach and acid down the toilet at the same time. Hypochlorite will always have a big warning about this somewhere on the bottle.
Bleach/Javel (Sodium hypochlorite) reacts with acidic drain/toilet cleaners to release Chlorine gas.
Potassium persulfate is a really convenient source of peroxysulfuric acid. I would use this sometimes as a way to clean out dirty, clogged up fritted glass filter funnels: Add some potassium persulfate to the funnel, pour some concentrated sulfuric acid in after it, and heat it up gently with an electric hot air heat gun until the persulfate crystals dissolve in the acid. Then just let the liquid dribble through the fritted glass, and on its way it will oxidize anything stuck in there. Really easy and very effective.
Potassium permanganate and hydrogen peroxide solutions also make good post treatments for sealing trivalent chromium coatings. Any oxidising agent would really, but weak solutions of those mentioned agents are good.
Edit: (conversion coatings on aluminium) I should’ve mentioned the substrate
16:38 Because it's just using air/
it's great, it's free, it's there.
This man is spitting bars, as they say.
lmao
Definitely make more Toxic videos! they're great. Data fraud doesn't get nearly enough attention, even within academia. Hopefully raising awareness can help prevent it
I hope so!
FINALLY I KNOW WHAT THESE ARE NOW, I'm a FedEx driver and I deliver to a hospital every day. I'd say maybe once or twice a week I have to go through a special procedure to deliver hazardous materials to them, and most commonly it has a big "oxidizer" label on it
I wouldn't put oxygen in the S tier, it can destroy too many things. Too many of my copper nanoparticles syntheses have failed because of it :(
I got to use Potassium Ferricyanide in my undergrad analytical chem class. We used it with glucose oxidase to measure glucose. No idea if it is a good oxidizer, but I used it.
Yess!!! The DMSO is a mild oxidant but perfect when is a methionine in the reaction and you have to make a cys-cys breach in a solution also to conserve the cys in a reduced state
Interesting and thanks. Noticed that you mention Chlorine a couple of times. There's a sort of trick that you can do with Ferric Chloride. An older one, been around since at least the 1930s. If you heat up this material to about 70 degrees C or so, you get a sort of equilibrium that goes: Ferric Chloride <==> Ferrous Chloride. An acquires solution of this material will work nicely to etch copper printer circuit boards. You get cuprous chloride and ferric chloride. If you pour off the liquid, while still warm, you can rinse off your board. I suppose there might be an equivalent for iodine, and I've looked, but have yet to find any. Have yet to get around and trying this last.
I have several (working) antique violet ray units, basically a hand held "medical" tesla coil, and as such creates ozone during use. They had different electrodes to use depending on what part of the human body they were "treating" and it could cure all... For example, did you have breathing problems? Here's a twin nozzled adapter that allows you to breathe lovely ozone in through each nostril! Because 3 oxygen molecules are better than 2 right! 😳
3 oxygens are too many
10:56 googles how to make singlet oxygen
as one does
My uni professor introduced us to both TPAP and CAN in our final year, pretty cool oxidants
same for MnO2, lol, he was trying to show off a bunch of rarer agents.
ClF3 is excellent for lighting concrete on fire.
I'll write in my will to add that to my ashes.... 🔥 burn twice
and test engineers
It's a pretty low-brow joke and I would have thought I'd stop finding it funny, but "D for DMSO" and suchlike cracks me up a little every time. It's the deadpan delivery I think; it really complements the absurdist nature of these presentations.
my low broke joke with dmso: ever since someone introduced me into the DMSO song version of DVNO i can never listen to it normally without smiling and people are always creeped out, but explaining to them is way to hard and makes it just worse and even more funny for me.
B for Bromine
@@contomo5710 what about DMSO version of YMCA?
@@NoNameAtAll2 even harder to explain, also somehow doesnt fit the vibe
I guess it's kinda funny to me because he talks about all this cool educated chemistry stuff with the jargon and anecdotes, and then justifies the placement with "starts with this letter" lol. I do think the bit has run its course tho
I don't know why, but i find these videos so calming that I often watch them as ASMR
So what I’m hearing is that I should do a podcast
@@That_Chemist I'm not much of a podcast watcher but perhaps
That chemist not recalling phagolysosome is hilarious.
hey >:(
hey cut him some slack..... lysome was the first thing that popped into my mind... at least he didn't say it if he didn't know , right? .... I was going to look it up but you beat me to it.
I missed dioxygen difluoride. It oxidzes and is structured F-O-O-F. How can any Oxidizer ever be cooler?
It really is cool, in that it boils at 216K.
O2F2 fans simply must read https://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/jklein2/O2F2.pdf - Dr. A.G. Streng's study of, as Derek Lowe puts it, mixing O2F2 with everything you wouldn't mix it with.
As to ClF3, John Clark claims it "consistently lives up to its reputation." Which would be nice if its reputation was "well, it's not QUITE as bad as nuclear weapons..."
I mean krypton difluoride directly oxidizes gold to Au2F10 which is pretty cool. And also just a stronger oxidizer than foof.
@@MrDJAK777 I'd like to know where they manufacture krypton difluoride so I can maintain a safe distance!
Suggestion: Tetranitromethane!
It isn't really used often, but an absolute monster of an Oxidizer!
N2O4 seems like it might be worth a mention as well. For a long time it was used with UDMH as a rocket fuel because it's an excellent oxidizer and it's stable to store. It's also extraordinarily nasty stuff, but hey, there's always a downside. 8-)
There are still a bunch of N2O4/MMH+UDMH powered rockets in operation, just none in the US or Europe anymore :)
@@johannesgutsmiedl366 Many in the US and Europe. N204/MMH is used in most bipropellant thrusters including for CST-100, Dragon and Dragon v2, X-37b, Orion. Japanese HTV uses bipropellant thrusters. Many commercial satellites use bipropellant thrusters, either alone or in combination with hydrazine monopropellant RCS or electric station keeping.
N2O is by far my fav oxidant. its also really easy to make on the spot
Don't make me laugh.
It can sure make a vehicle traverse 1320 feet of pavement very quickly, sometimes leaving a trail of molten aluminum that used to be the pistons. Great oxidizer and refrigerant.
What about FOOF?
Not only is it a powerful oxidizer, it decomposes to F2 and O2 so you get a triple oxidation whammy.
Oxygen is an automatic S tier, because we breathe it. So is ozone, the less stable brother of oxygen, which is also used in disinfection. So is fluorine, the oxidant of oxygen.
Chlorine is S tier, as it's used for disinfection. Bromine is S tier, as it's the "scary cool liquid element". Iodine is S tier, as it's used in disinfection of wounds. So, basically, all (non-radioactive) halogens are an automatic S tier from me.
Water is an S tier, because we live with it.
t-Butyl hypochlorite is a B, as it's spontaneously flammable. Sodium hypochlorite is B, as it's unstable.
Chlorine trifluoride is an automatic, unforgettable, S+, so is chlorine pentafluoride.
Perruthenate looks cool with ruthenium(VII), so A tier.
Chromyl chloride and chromyl chloride are A tier, but dimanganese heptoxide is an S tier, both as an oxidant, and as an explosive.
Selenium dioxide is F, as it smells bad.
Tetraacetoxylead/lead tetraacetate is a C, as it's a lead compound.
DMSO is a B/C tier, because of the garlic smell if absorbed by skin.
DDQ is an E tier, as it releases hydrogen cyanide.
Dibenzoyl peroxide is used (2-4%) in skin care products, so an automatic A tier.
3-chloroperbenzoic acid, mCPBA, is an A tier. So is perbenzoic acid, although that melts at 40-42°C.
Osmium tetroxide is a C tier, as it's toxic, smells bad, and was claimed to be used by the al-Qaeda in 2004. Though, we can't forget that it's a good oxidant and a good reagent to make 1,2-diols from alkenes.
Potassium ferricyanide is also one of the components of cyanotype sensitizer and Prussian blue is a lovely pigment.
chlorine trifluoride!!!! glad it was included
You should do protecting groups next
I second this!!!
Yeah maybe
I once worked in a lab where they had a teflon ampule with ClF3. It was behing a glass shield with big sign " DO NOT TOUCH" on it. And behind it was another glass shield with even bigger "DO NOT FUCKING TOUCH" on it. Chemists are memers.
From formal point of view the strongest one-electron oxidizing agent is F2.
Looks like Tyranosaurus Rex in redox reactions.
XeF2 > F2 its a Solid, you can weigh it and you have all the benefits of fluorine + noble Gas compound credits ;D
The semiconductor industry uses a lot of ClF3 for cleaning purposes. On the other hand they seem to use every nasty compound ever invented.
I heard a talk on fluorinated etchants - it’s super interesting!
tier lists are so cool and fun to watch and educational, thank you. unfortunately i can not help you with ideas for tier lists since im not too deep into the subject, only introductory lab courses, hmm i believe you already did solvents right? glassware as well i believe, damn.... something in the realm of physical chemistry or inorganic chemistry? those lanthanides with relativistic effects on their electrons do sound cool tbh....
thank you for everything :)
8:49 this guy is scary in that it burns anything and everything
Man this gives me motivation to finish my chem degree
<3
I hardly ever comment, but again, you should be on the safety third podcast. WITH NIGEL THERE! We'd all love to hear you all talk!!!
DMP is the best if you want to make aldehydes/ketones - great selectivity, easy to workup and purify afterwards. Downsides - relatively expensive, decomposes.
you can make it yourself in a research context, and it can be repurified with Ac2O if the stuff you have decomposes a bit - just use a solvent that dissolves DMP but not IBX
SeO2 oxidation is also known as Riley oxidation and it works wonders! Can we do a series on Top 50 named reactions?
I just got stuck on that, thinking about things to do with my Te, would Tellrillic(bad spelling) acid work the same,
and
what about chirality and allylic position, how does that work?
makes me think of going for my MCSE and being told that tokens in token ring networks go counterclockwise while showing a picture of an Ethernet thinnet 'T' connector ..... what is convention and what is physics?
I'm terrible with names, I would have had a hard time with that if I continued biochemistry studies....
@DrSchnufflez - 2022-05-29
IBX is easily S tier, is such a clean oxidant - it + the thing you want oxidised in DMSO, stir at RT for ~ 30 mins then dilute with water, filter and extract with ether - it has helped me out of a few tight spots
@suleyman2768 - 2022-05-31
Depends on the context. IBX/DMP are great for smaller scale academic/medicinal chemistry routes. For us process chemists not so much a S tier reagent :)