Customer Reviews

Purification of Laboratory Chemicals, Fifth Edition

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2 star:		(1)
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Like Carey & Sundberg, Jerry March, the Aldrich catalog, and the Merck Index, (etc.), this book should be a benchmate for the Organic Chemist. It is very good when one requires the purification of reagents, or the drying/purification of solvents. The protocols for purification are usually pretreatment followed by distillation or recrystallization, and can be carried out to give anywhere from moderately pure material, to giving the pure, pure substance.

Excellent for the research organic chemistry graduate student or the pharmaceutical industrial research chemist who likes to start with the purest materials, so as to leave only the investigative variables open to question.

However, in industry, although FedEx-ing new and pure reagents (and disposal of the old questionable ones!) is the easiest and encouraged method for research, it is often found that purification is totally appropriate--in these instances, Purification of Laboratory Chemicals (D.D. Perrin & W.L.F. Armarego) is highly recommended.

As a chemist, I am often in need of techniques for purification of various chemicals. Often time is a constraint and the "best" technique may be too time consuming, if one even knows what it is. This text offers several alternatives to the purificatin of most common compounds (especially solvents), including the best way to make the compound pure as well as other known techniques. One can then choose, based on the reaction one is doing whether one needs to use the best techniques or the fastest technique to get mostly pure material or somewhere inbetween. Unfortunately, often the text does not list the actual percent purity that each technique can yield (though it is often easy enough to guess which methodology will yield the best results.) An invaluable resource for any chemist, but especially for graduate students.

This is an indispensible resource for any synthetic chemist, either organic or inorganic (not sure about the biochemical section). This book has concise, informative entries on the purification of a vast number of common solvents and reagents. I don't know how any chemist can survive without having this on his/her bookshelf!

That's a must for laboratoty workers!
Just remember, you find back an old chemical bottle in the storage room...
So many hours chemists can lose when searching for purification/drying procedure(s).
This book directly gives you this information for thousand of chemicals!

The authors have obviously spent years purifying various compounds, and have reviewed material others have used regarding purification. They have listed their work and research in the book. The vast majority of this book, pages 80-577, is dedicated to purification of specific compounds. Out of the millions of compounds that may need purification, the one you need to purify may be listed. Then again. . .

What this book does not have much of are details regarding techniques. Pages 1-79 cover physical and chemical purification methods. This may at first seem thorough, until you realize there are dozens of techniques and these pages include many charts and tables. So, many techniques receive a paragraph or two of treatment and not much more; this same level of detail is usually gleaned from a textbook. There is not a single picture or diagram to amplify techniques. If you are very experienced in purification, the table and charts may be of help; then again, you probably don't need this book. If you're a novice at purification, such as me, the book is of little value to gain basic purification skills.

As with most text books, the general concept behind a purification technique is identified. Simple things, such as preparation of a sample for loading into a column, are not covered. It's assumed you know what you're doing, and that no problems arise when doing basic steps. So, you cannot pick up this book and learn how coax compounds into crystallizing when they will not readily do so.

In sum, a decent book for experienced chemists; of little utility for the novice.