Safety
Diethyl ether is susceptible to peroxide formation, and can form explosive diethyl ether peroxide. Ether peroxides are higher boiling and are contact explosives when dry. Diethyl ether is typically supplied with trace amounts of the antioxidant butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT), which reduces the formation of peroxides. Storage over sodium hydroxide precipitates the intermediate ether hydroperoxides. Water and peroxides can be removed by either distillation from sodium and benzophenone, or by passing through a column of activated alumina.
Diethyl ether is extremely flammable. The autoignition temperature of diethyl ether is 160 °C (320 °F), therefore it can be ignited by a hot surface without a flame or spark. A common practice in chemical labs is to use steam (thus limiting the temperature to 100 °C (212 °F) when ether must be heated or distilled). The diffusion of diethyl ether in air is 0.918·10−5 m2/s (298K, 101.325 kPa).
Read more about this topic: Diethyl Ether
Famous quotes containing the word safety:
“Perhaps having built a barricade when you’re sixteen provides you with a sort of safety rail. If you’ve once taken part in building one, even inadvertently, doesn’t its usually latent image reappear like a warning signal whenever you’re tempted to join the police, or support any manifestation of Law and Order?”
—Jean Genet (1910–1986)
“Can we not teach children, even as we protect them from victimization, that for them to become victimizers constitutes the greatest peril of all, specifically the sacrifice—physical or psychological—of the well-being of other people? And that destroying the life or safety of other people, through teasing, bullying, hitting or otherwise, “putting them down,” is as destructive to themselves as to their victims.”
—Lewis P. Lipsitt (20th century)
“For hours, in fall days, I watched the ducks cunningly tack and veer and hold the middle of the pond, far from the sportsman;... but what beside safety they got by sailing in the middle of Walden I do not know, unless they love its water for the same reason that I do.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)