schlenk line, decoded
so…condensed version:
found out that i was using the line improperly, and that there was a difference between which side of the knob was up (which makes sense since you can choose for either vacuum or nitrogen). so the snafu earlier this week which i thought involved crazy nitrogen pressure things actually involved me turning on the vacuum.
anyhow, yesterday…yesterday involved drying the redone first step, and moving both that and the thing i made last week (the bright yellow stuff) to the next step. it’s insanely titchy stuff, those addition funnels. couldn’t manage to get them to drip as slowly as i’d like. just when i’d get it nice, something would happen and it’d slow down and stop.
by the end of the day, the other two people in the lab headed off to dinner (the chamber had to repurge after we brought in some solvent), and i was left to continue the dripping. ended up staying after by two and a half hours, since i had to deal with the nitrogen tank running out (and the connected problem of finding the teflon tape, when all the rooms were closed up…i got lucky with some i found in the professor’s side laboratory). i felt accomplished, but tired. i think i’m gonna try to head out a bit early today to meet up with a friend i haven’t seen in a while. i think i’ll spend the day drying the products from yesterday.
How do you put together a schlenk line?
it depends on what kind of line you have. the kind we have is neat in that it can accommodate both vacuum and nitrogen at once (though on different stopcocks), but this isn’t always the case. i recommend this website, as it has a lot of useful information.
thanks for share the information and experiences.