Laboratory Chemicals

Chemical name: Borax

IUPAC name: Sodium tetraborate decahydrate

Formula: Na₂B₄O₇·10H₂O or Na₂[B₄O₅(OH)₄]·8H₂O

Appearance: white solid

Uses:

• Borax is used in various household laundry and cleaning products, including the “20 Mule Team Borax” laundry booster, “Boraxo” powdered hand soap, and some tooth bleaching formulas.
• Borax alone does not have a high affinity for the hardness cations, although it has been used for water-softening.
• Anti-fungal foot soak
• Treatment for thrush in horses’ hoofs

Chemical name: Boric acid

IUPAC name: Boric acid

Formula: BH₃O₃

Appearance: White crystalline solid

Uses:

• The primary industrial use of boric acid is in the manufacture of monofilament fiberglass usually referred to as textile fiberglass. Textile fiberglass is used to reinforce plastics in applications that range from boats, to industrial piping to computer circuit boards.
• In the jewelry industry, boric acid is often used in combination with denatured alcohol to reduce surface oxidation and firescale from forming on metals during annealing and soldering operations.
• Boric acid is used in the production of the glass in LCD flat panel displays.

Chemical name: Benzene

IUPAC name: Benzene

Formula: C₆H₆

Appearance: Colorless liquid

Uses:

• Benzene is used mainly as an intermediate to make other chemicals, above all ethylbenzene, cumene, cyclohexane, nitrobenzene, and alkylbenzene.
• More than half of the entire benzene production is processed into ethylbenzene, a precursor to styrene, which is used to make polymers and plastics like polystyrene and EPS.
• Some 20% of the benzene production is used to manufacture cumene, which is needed to produce phenol and acetone for resins and adhesives.

Chemical name: Acetone

IUPAC name: Acetone

Formula: C₃H₆O

Appearance: Colourless liquid

Uses:

• About a third of the world’s acetone is used as a solvent, and a quarter is consumed as acetone cyanohydrin, a precursor to methyl methacrylate.
• Acetone is a good solvent for many plastics and some synthetic fibers. It is used for thinning polyester resin, cleaning tools used with it, and dissolving two-part epoxies and superglue before they harden.
• It is used as one of the volatile components of some paints and varnishes.