Australia's Science Forum

Hi,
I have found that rubber teats degrade on certain dropper bottles depending on the chemical. I was wondering where I can check whether it's ok to use plastic stuhl bottles instead to avoid this. I looked on CSIS but couldn't find any storage on individual chemicals. Is there anywhere you know of to check each chemicals bottle storage requirements? I am using concentrated sulphuric so wanted to check. Thanks

Hi Soozle
I don't think I would store concentrated sulphuric in dropper bottles of any kind. Who uses a class set of concentrated sulphuric?
J

Hi,
I know that oxidising agents are unsuitable for HDPE bottles.

Here is a link to HDPE compatability:

http://www.ineos.com/globalassets/ineos ... -guide.pdf

Hope it works, and I hope I have helped....

I'm with J. You shouldn't have to give more than one bottle to a class and that would be for a teacher demo anyway. I've found some of the solutions (acids, even vinegar; copper sulfate) are tough on the rubber teats. I've bought a stack of caps for the droppers so the worst offenders are capped after they've been used, if not a common chemical. The common ones, I cap at the end of the year. I always leave a couple of containers with dropper assemblies made up. This worked out cheaper and easier than switching to the stuhl bottles. I'm not sure about what these are suitable for. I have found in the past that the lids can crack and leak after having NaOH in them, but I've never used them for anything else.

You could check the SDS it may tell you.

I give them H2SO4 in a capped bottle in a beaker with a plastic Pasteur pipette.

Conc sulfuric acid is teacher only, give the teacher a bottle and a disposal plastic pipette.

Cheers MariaQ