people are still buying sass oil by the gallon and you're worried about h2 cylinders? Just think up a legit use, research the industry and then play the part... play it so well you are almost convinced..
its kind of like when you were a kid and buying booze with a fake id, they could see the hesitation in your eyes and busted your nuts.. the second you turn 21 your mindset changes and you no longer get carded because of your aura of confidence. appearing brimming with confidence is a good technique to learn in general...
Maybe in your part of the world people can still walk in and buy sassy OTC without hassle.....not mine. Here, any sassy whatsoever is heavily watched and intensely scrutinized, needing a good diversion operation to let it slip out the back door. Safrole is two steps away from completely unwatched OTC, so why take the risk?
Over here, I've heard tales of people having license plates recorded for things as innocuous as acetone or NaOH. Many a bust has started when corporate LP acted as wanna-be cops, using rooftop cams to capture plates from anyone deemed suspicious. The culture is a culture of fear in which everyone could be a potential suspected terrorist biker drug cooking cartel zombie.
My concern is the lack of any generally accepted consumer use for pressurized H2. The pressurized H2 is almost entirely specialty industrial.
The closest use would be for hydrogen vehicles, but the generally applicable product there is a hydride cylinder, which won't have the necessary pressure, and wouldn't be filled at the local gas company.
There are a few hydrogen filling stations in my area dispensing H2 at 5k and 10k psi. The problem there is the receptable.
The total lack of any reasonable justification for a walk up sale of a pressurized cylinder or a fill is what concerns me. The only way to pull this off is if no questions are generally asked, hence the thread.
No amount of confidence will overcome something being watched closely if individuals aren't supposed to be buying it in the first place. The right attitude for buying booze only works because individuals regularly buy booze, subject only to the restriction on an arbitrary age cutoff. That is quite different from insisting these tanks be loaded into a commercial vehicle and invoiced net-30 to an established business account.
Damn.....thats an impressive load of H2 cylinders....is it just me, or would anybody else have somewhat of a temptation to lift a few of those, and leave a bunch of thermite charges behind......
Messy, but that would be a sweet firework show to watch (from a bloody long way off mind you)
For preparation for home lab use, what about using an emptied fire extinguisher, not for very high pressure, but cooled externally using a dry ice/'tone bath, or big ass peltier stack, gases become less dense as they cool, could be generated in another pressure resistant tank, led through another to act as a wash bottle, generation using NaOH and Al, modified to include a regulator etc, bit of brazing and drilling should do it.
Not ultrahigh pressure, but I just bet once it comes back to room temperature (could be immersed prior to use in a hot water bath) it should be high enough for reductions.
How safe should this prove? hydrogen embrittlement of the metal cylinders would be my primary concern. Could perhaps be combated by covering the inside of it in sodium silicate solution, then pyrolyzing it to give a silicagel covering, almost like a glass layer (in fact perhaps the silicate solution could be doped with finely powdered glass, and the EMPTY tanks heated to fuze the silicagel/glass mixture to provide a protective layer, like a thermos flask, hopefully impermeable to H2.
I'm not that comfortable with the safety profile of such an apparatus. Improvised hydrogenators are concerning enough.
In the meantime I've been toying with the idea of a two carboy closed system, in which one holds the reactants to be hydrogenated, and the other contains the reactants which will evolve the necessary H2, both connected by flexible tubing. As the gas pressure must be replenished during the hydrogenation, and can't be fully charged at the start for safety concerns, I would have to find a way to control the generation during the course of the reaction.
I'm thinking that by suspending a packet of Al pieces wrapped in Al foil above the NaOH, held to the wall of the carboy by a pair of magnets (one inside, one out), additional aluminum can be added at certain intervals.
As the hydrogen source can sit on flat ground, with the reaction vessel on the shaker, there should be no concern about a failure of the magnetic holding apparatus.
With glass/plastic carboys (or even champagne bottles) there would be no concern about embrittlement. Also, the nature of the Al rxn would allow the operator to assume a safer distance while H2 pressure continues to build, as compared to a sudden and immediate catastrophe from an improvised tank or pressurizer.
It's an unfortunate kludge either way. The commercial H2 tank solves all these problems.
Any other ideas on a simpler and safer improvised apparatus suitable for catalytic hydrogenation under pressure would be appreciated.
I don't see much leeway, though. It either must be produced under pressure in a sealed system or piped in from the questionable H2 cylinder.
