Why is bench agno3 stored in a brown bottle

Mostly alcohol and with toxicity warnings. The label is in good nick and it's in a safe place. A local antique dealer had a set of old chemists bottles in the window. The ones with glass stoppers and varnished hand written labels, very nice, and complete with pretty contents, in the front window on sale as ornaments!

One was marked corrosive sublimate the old chemical name for Mercury Chloride it was half full of the chemical a white crystalline mass. The antique dealer thought it was interesting.

I can only wonder about the other bottles. He was surprised when I told him how poisonous it was. I am not a chemist but had purchased a few grains from a chemical supplier to make a bluing solution for steel previously. The formulas, there are many, are in the Modern Gunsmith by James Vergil Howe if anyone is interested, you can find it on line. I guess you could not even buy it now due to regulation. On the unknown Bottle. If it is any tools near it may rust badly if it fumes through the cap.

Don't mess with it - contact your local Council. Pack it very well when transporting it. Don't lift the bottle by its neck because they can crack around there. One good habit when you are dealing with anything that you are not sure of, is to smell the cork or stopper - don't put your nose over the container.

Waft the stopper in front of you and sniff the 'trail' that it leaves. Concentrated sulfuric acid is almost twice as dense as water so carefully picking up the bottle may tell you what it is. If on opening the bottle it appears to fume then it is probably concentrated hydrochloric or nitric acid.

If the acid dissolves the lime but dose not attack the copper it is probably hydrochloric as the three acids mentioned were the main ones stored at school. Hydroflouric acid has been mentioned and, as has also been said, this is VERY unlikely if it is in a glass bottle. The acid is used to etch ie dissolve glass.

Note also the dangers associated with heating PTFE. If you don't know what the acid is seek professional help with its disposal. I don't actually know if it is acid, now that the question has been put to me. There is no sign of rusting in the vicinity and I have not opened it in years. Having read the posts I may do so carefully and have a smell but after that As I have no immediate use in mind and there were few suggestions of what could be done with it, I agree my workshop might be a safer place if I can neutralise it or otherwise dispose of it.

If you work much with steel, you can save lots of dosh buying black bar instead of bright and pickling it to remove scale, with the bonus of being more stress relieved.

I once had an Edwardian book that was filled with lots of useful chemical recipes for home and small workshop use. One of the more interesting ones was a set of instructions to brew nitroglycerine, though it did tell you to be careful.

Between the wars, my dad bought gunpowder over the counter, buried a bomb in Dartmouth College's parade ground and blew it up as part of graduation celebrations. He and his chums were just told to reinstate it. I can't help feeling that we've become a nation of wusses to be scared of something that is really quite easy to test in a safe manner using the brains that the good lord gave us.

Disposing it with the powers that be is a bit rude since it costs a great deal of money to do it officially which is a service we all pay for.

I would say, however, that if you keep it, do label it, even just "Unknown Acid", since you never know that the proverbial bus with your name on it isn't on its way.

Falco, I spent many years as a secondary school science teacher who wasn't afraid to take risks but I wouldn't touch it - literally! You only suspect that it's an acid and have no idea of the concentration. Unless the school from which you obtained it was very different from the ones I taught in there would be many acids and alkalis of various strengths and vintages around.

On one of our periodic 'clear outs' we found an old bottle of Picric acid gm for gm several times more powerful than TNT that had completely crystallized and could have exploded simply by unscrewing the cap. Remember, also, that what was originally in your bottle may have decomposed to something even more nasty by now.

I wouldn't even try to move it until you've spoken to the hazardous waste bods at Environmental Elf. Use our magazine locator links to find your nearest stockist!

The hazards of each chemical in use must be known so that what level of caution to use when handling it can be deduced. Flammable Chemicals examples: diethyl ether, acetone, hexanes, ethanol, methanol; in case of fire:. Hazards of Corrosives examples: hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, phosphoric acid, nitric acid, sodium hydroxide:. All the chemicals' and wastes' present in the lab hazards and warning signs and lables must be known and present.

Some of the main hazard signs are shown below:. Conversations with personnel from the Ministry of the Environment reveal that many chemicals can be disposed of by simply flushing them down the sink with copious amounts of water.

The toxicity and amounts of chemicals used in high school labs is not a serious concern in many cases, and does not justify extensive and expensive procedures for disposal. The school district has made arrangements for once—a—year collection of unwanted or waste chemicals, provided that the chemicals are labeled with a detailed list of the contents. Chemicals to be disposed of in this manner should be set aside until the end of the year.

Unknown solutions: NOTE: Try to get as close as possible to the masses mentioned, but record the exact masses used. The resulting solution is almost grey. Add mL of 2—butanone and then 0. Note: AgNO 3 stains fingers, fingernails and clothing a dark brown colour. Always wear protective gloves when handling silver nitrate!

If you get a silver nitrate stain, immediately rub the affected area with a paste of NaI crystals. Recycling Silver Metal This method has been used successfully to recycle between 10 g and 1 kg amounts of silver metal into silver nitrate having a purity of over Collect and save the waste silver metal until at least 10—25 g has accumulated; the more the better.

In a fume hood, dissolve the silver metal in the minimum amount of concentrated nitric acid possible. If large amounts of silver are used, a colourless mass of thin rhombic silver nitrate crystals may accumulate and bring the reaction to a premature halt.

In this case, add just enough water to dissolve the crystals. Extra nitric acid may then be required. Note that too much silver nitrate hampers the formation of good silver nitrate crystals and produces a white paste of crystals that absorbs impurities and lowers the quality of the product.

Vacuum filter the resulting solution to eliminate any insoluble impurities. Collect the filtrate. Wash the filter flask with a little water to get all the silver out and combine the wash water with the filtrate.

Note the volume of the combined filtrate and boil the solution down to about one half the original volume. Let the solution slowly cool to room temperature and then cool in ice or the freezing compartment of a refrigerator for about 15 minutes. Collect the first crop of beautiful, colourless rhombic plates, using vacuum filtration.

Wash the crystals with a few millilitres of ice—cold distilled water. Care: silver nitrate is extremely soluble in water. At this point the impurities in solution are usually too concentrated, and acidic, to risk further collection of silver nitrate crystals. See Answer. Best Answer. It's light sensitive.

The amber bottle keeps it from being exposed to light that can harm it. Study guides. Chemistry 20 cards. To name a monatomic anion change the suffix of the element's name to.

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How does an atom become a positive ion. How do humans receive energy from food. Which phrase best describes passive transport. What are elements and compounds in states of matter. What is true about the molar mass of chlorine gas. If What information is needed to calculate the percent composition of a compound. Q: Why silver nitrate stored in amber colored bottles? Write your answer Related questions. Why silver nitrate is kept in amber colored bottles?

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