Is it a Good Idea to Sterilize a Bottle of Ether by Autoclaving it?

[Fanghur]

I was just wondering if it would be a good idea to autoclave a bottle of ether; I need it sterile for a Virology experiment. Would it work or would the autoclave cause the ether to evaporate since it is volatile?

 

I need to know soon because I don't want to autoclave the bottle of ether only to come back and find that it all evaporated; of course I could just have the lid on tightly to prevent evaporation.

 

Can someone give me advice on how I should proceed?

[CharonY]

Do not, I repeat, do not autoclave volatile compounds and do not close the bottle tightly. Think for a sec what is going to happen. Evaporation is the smallest of your probs.

Also, how likely is contamination of ether?

[Hypercube]

Fanghur is there something wrong with you, have you had a lobotomy or were you just born suicidal? If you autoclave a sealed air-tight bottle full of ether then the entire building will probably hear the aftermath; to put that in words you can understand...THE BOTTLE (AND BY EXTENSION THE AUTOCLAVE) WILL EXPLODE LIKE A BOMB!!! People will likely be killed, yourself included. I don't know how the heck you got into a lab setting; but I feel sorry for whoever you work with if you seriously considered autoclaving ether.

[Mr Skeptic]

Yeah, I think that you can count on the ether being sterile. You can count on potentially causing an explosion and/or a fire if you autoclave it (bonus points: the fumes can knock you unconscious while the place burns down).

 

If you really think it's contaminated, you can distill the ether.

[CharonY]

Now, now. At no need to get personal. At the very least he did not do it (hopefully) before asking. Although a forum is a VERY weird to ask as opposed to, say, the supervisor or other (senior) students. In addition it appears that there was either a very bad safety instruction, or (another common occurence) a sudden loss of common sense when entering a lab. Cooking gasoline at home is probably something that hardly anyone could come up with.

However, most autoclaves won't blow up. The most likely scenario is that you will have a room full of ether and an autoclave with a shattered bottle. If there is some fire starter nearby it could get worse from there, though.

It is also bad if it does not explode within the autoclave, though. If you pull out the bottle while it is still under pressure from the ether and it did not explode until then, it may well very happen shortly after you open the autoclave (and release the pressure) .

In that scenario you have all the above plus a face full of shards.

[StringJunky]

Fanghur is there something wrong with you, have you had a lobotomy or were you just born suicidal? If you autoclave a sealed air-tight bottle full of ether then the entire building will probably hear the aftermath; to put that in words you can understand...THE BOTTLE (AND BY EXTENSION THE AUTOCLAVE) WILL EXPLODE LIKE A BOMB!!! People will likely be killed, yourself included. I don't know how the heck you got into a lab setting; but I feel sorry for whoever you work with if you seriously considered autoclaving ether.

 

You can correct somebody's misconception without the need to ridicule them....it's unhelpful and unnecessary.

 

Your response is equally as bad as his idea.

[Icefire]

No.

autoclaving volatile elements such as Ether is not recommended because doing so will cause the Ether to destabilize, which will end up damaging the structural integrity of surrounding matter due to the rate of dispersion.

[John Cuthber]

I doubt that there could be any active viruses in ether but, if you want to prove the point, shaking the ether with bleach then washing it carefully with water would destroy anything with proteins in it.

This approach would be pointless, but not lethal.

[CharonY]

Heh? Why use bleach if ether denatures proteins perfectly?

[Mr Skeptic]

What if the ether were contaminated with DNA?

[CharonY]

Depends on what you are doing. It is rare to have significant amount of contamination there as DNA does not partition well into ether. You would have to work very dirty to get significant contaminations. If you want to use it e.g. to isolate DNA for a very sensitive assays you should buy pristine bottles and keep them clean, anyhow. Point is that you won't be getting microbial or viral contamination in ether.

[John Cuthber]

Heh? Why use bleach if ether denatures proteins perfectly?

 

Fair point, but there's still the distinction between "denatures" and "destroys".

The bleach not only kills bugs, it kills any argument about "contamination" from the ether.

[ally7890]

Classic question. Classic.........