Storing chemicals on my balcony (storing in changing temps)

[H3inbloed]

Hello gentlemen,
i recently started doing chemistry experiments at home. After going a little into literature and freshing up my decade-old, poor chemistry memory.
i have all basic safety gear and also installed some own measurements. Theres spilling and fumingprotection (air gets sucked out of the room through a flextube)edit: not the whole room has airchange, its a diy-funnel with about 12inch diameter that i cant move around and over whatever is being heated or is reacting at the time. I also have protection glasses and gloves, i dont have a gasmask yet but will order one soon.

Im also using very small quantities.theres a large tub filled with 1,5 inches of sand, on which the apparatus and the glases stand, as a last safewall in case something spills over or breaks. Easier to deal with and to dispose than a wooden table. My thought was that sand is in general not very reactive.

from the more "interesting" stuff i have so far made hydrochloric acid, For the next experiment i want to take on diethylether for which i already have sulfuric acid. Before the experiment/reactions i make myself very aware of the substances, especially how to store them.
I have both borsilicat-glass glasses and small HTFE containers. Both with screwcap.

I also have some rectangle containers (look like lunchboxes) in which i put the glasses, each glas gets its own box, to catch any gases that might escape the bottle. Also i dont think gases should escape, these bottles are made for harsh lab chemicals though.

So i hope i managed to make clear that i treat these things with respect, even its only very small quantities. That being said,
i still feel nervous keeping the things under my roof. I dont have a ventilated chemical-cabinet and in general, the only well ventilated place is my balcony. That would be much more secure i think.

So what do you think about balcony? I would put them in a watertight suitcase. There are, the temp-changes , which can go, if we talk about whole year, from -5 or even -10c to maybe 28-30c degree max. Its not so easy to find out how every single chemical reacts to that. Or doesnt, hopefully. Maybe im just a bad googler. In the general storing-guidelines ofc, they suppose that youre storing indoors.

the 2 potential problems that strike me, so far, are, boiling point? diethylether for that example might not be good in summer. And freezing/ increase in volume? i think most stuff does not freeze at zero like water, but to be honest i never looked really into it. Even if it did, the bottles have enough empty space inside. So if they dont freeze and dont have low boiling point, does that automatically mean its ok?

So what dou you think? Maybe some problems with storing outside that i missed?
please excuse any bad translastion-mistakes from German to English

 

[Bystander]

Neighbors?

 

[H3inbloed]

hello,
theres no other balcony near. were a 2-household house, but their balcony is the other side. theres nothing under, over or next to my balcony. They have a window app 3,5m over my balcony...is usually closed.

 

[Frabjous]

According to this, 15 to 25 degrees
https://www.carlroth.com/medias/SDB...DRiYzNkZjU4MjZjOGExYTQxNWYzMmI2MWMxOGUyOTk3Ng

You need to get material data sheets for every chemical and understand them. I assume there are German versions.

 

[H3inbloed]

yeah, diethylether is a special case i think...was obvious for me it wont go there..im not even sure if i wanna store this long term in general.

 

[Frabjous]

Here are some generic storage instructions.
https://ehs.wisc.edu/labs-research/chemical-safety/chemical-safety-guide/chemical-storage/#:~:text=General%20Storage%20Requirements&text=Hazardous%20chemicals%20must%20be%20stored,or%20adding%20to%20the%20container.&text=Use%20rated%20storage%20cabinets%20or,—required%20for%20%3E10%20gal.

This is a potentially dangerous hobby. Safety concerns should be your first concern. Do not look for work arounds.

 

[H3inbloed]

for sulfuric Acid it only says "store cool" and freezing/melting point is 11C. Now what do we make with that? I guess 28c is not so cool anymore. Allthough boiling point is over 100C. Thats what i said when i meant its often not so easy to extract the answer for my case. And what happens if it goes above and below 11c regularly?

 

[berkeman]

Thread closed temporarily for Moderation...

 

[berkeman]

Thread is reopened provisionally.

i have all basic safety gear and also installed some own measurements.

So I have some general safety questions for you on this:

** What are the regulations in your city about having household hazardous chemicals and waste in your home? There are zoning laws where I live in the US that limit the kinds of activities we can do at home.

** What are the regulations in your city/county for disposing of household hazardous waste? Here in the county where I live, there are some drop-off sites that take reservations and allow a number of HHW materials to be dropped off. The HHW materials are definitely not allowed to go out in my trash or flushed down my drains.

** Where are you venting your "hood" fumes to, and what are the wind patterns in that area?

** What are the regulations for hazardous material placards in your area? Here in the US, the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) regulates the placards/signage that is required for the storage of chemicals. Placards must be placed at the entrance to places where hazardous chemicals are stored (to alert firefighters and EMS/first responders so they can handle the situation if they are responding to a fire or other emergency at that location):

https://www.nfpa.org/news-blogs-and-articles/blogs/2021/11/05/hazardous-materials-identification

 

[Vanadium 50]

Neighbors?

Not any more.

 

[Vanadium 50]

diethylether

"There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge" - Hunter S, Thompson

To be honest, this strikes me as a really bad idea. I would use as a rule of thumb that nothing goes on the balcony that I wouldn't mind if poured on the ground below. Because that might happen.

 

[gmax137]

When I was a kid, my brothers and I had chemistry sets and a "lab" in the basement. We did all kinds of things that are probably illegal now. I would suggest you get a good fire extinguisher or two, and learn how to use them. We nearly set the house on fire more than one time.

 

[BillTre]

When my time at the U of Oregon was coming to a close, I was probably the world wide king of using ENU (ethyl nitrosourea) to mutagenize zebrafish. I came up with new approaches to make it safer for the fish and the people (me) doing the mutagenesis. Its a really nasty mutagen you don't want too contact.
This gave me the opportunity to make money doing mutageneses for other people, so I looked into that.
ENU can be inactivated after use by adding NaOH and Sodium thosulfate and then dumped down the drain after a day.
At this time I got along very well with the environmental health and safety department which I had worked closely with for several years, so I went to them to find out the limits of what was legally possible. I was surprised! For example, you could (at the time) have a liter of ether in a residential location in a pretty poorly described (lock it up) manner.

I had basically installed a fume hood in my garage and would have been able to most anything involved. The major hangup would probably have been actually purchasing the ENU from a chemical company (like Sigma). There is a process they go through to decide if you qualify to reasonably have the chemical. (I had a company involved with zebrafish research at the time.)

The wife pretty quickly shut this intriguing project saying she was concerned about the neighbor's reactions.

An environmental health and safety department of local university would be a good place to start in finding what is legal. On the other hand, they probably would not do this for anyone because it toook a fair amount of time for them to go back and forth between several phone-book sized references they had to figure out what was possible.
It was not something normal civilians could do by themselves.

 

[Rive]

i still feel nervous keeping the things under my roof. I dont have a ventilated chemical-cabinet and in general, the only well ventilated place is my balcony.

Since you know you are ill-equipped for this, maybe you should limit your activities to a fitting level till you finish your preparations?

 

[Nik_2213]

May I suggest looking at the storage compartment ventilation of LPG bottles in RV or similar ?

Now take it up a rung or three...
You need a robust, secure sheet-steel enclosure set in shade, but insulated to mitigate temperature swings.
You need to ground it against static accumulation.
You need top and bottom vents, with weather-cowled metal-mesh grills to vent fumes, thwart flash-over and vermin.
You need a sufficiently deep non-reactive bund inside against mishaps such as bottles splitting.
You need a bunch of hazard warnings on the enclosure.
You need to reconsider hobby location: does a local college offer 'Maker' facilities ??