Re: pinhole freeing stuck glass stopper

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From: Geoff Ruth (gruth@leadershiphigh.org)
Date: Fri Apr 15 2005 - 05:50:49 PDT 

Message-Id: <p06110407be85689b0cbb@[192.168.2.104]>
Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 05:50:49 -0700
From: Geoff Ruth <gruth@leadershiphigh.org>
Subject: Re: pinhole freeing stuck glass stopper

Thanks to all who responded. I had never heard about bases reacting
with glass before.

So a followup question: my school has a big jug of 12M aqueous
ammonia, that came from the distributor in glass. I know the outside
is plastic-coated, and it has a plastic screw cap. Do I have to be
worried about the hydroxide ions reacting with the glass enough to
compromise the glass container walls' integrity?

Thanks again,
Geoff

>Hi Geoff,
>Throw the bottle away--carefully. The NaOH has welded the stopper to the
>bottle and there is no way to free it. Never store strong alkaline
>solutions in
>glass containers. Always use polyethylene or polypropylene containers to store
>even dilute soutions of strong bases such as NaOH and KOH. Never
>store alkaline
>solutions in volumetric flasks. The basic solution will dissolve the glass
>around the hash mark rendering it invisible and will most like
>freeze the glass
>stopper to the flask.
>Neil Fetter
>
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