Detailed Product Description:

A colorless non-flammable liquid with a sweet, chloroform-like odor. 

Miscible in most oils and slightly soluble in water.  It is a chlorinated

hydrocarbon commonly used as an industrial solvent.  Commonly used

as a degreasing solvent for precision metal parts.

Grade/Purity:

This is electronics grade material with minimum purity of 99.5%.

Background:

Trichloroethylene, also referred to as TCE, or trichlor, has been sold

under a variety of trade names.  

Pioneered by Imperial Chemical Industries in Britain, its development

was hailed as an anesthetic revolution until it was discovered to have

several undesirable side effects.  The introduction of halothane in 1956

greatly diminished the use of TCE as a general anesthetic until its

abandonment in the 1980s. 

Applications:

Trichloroethylene is an effective solvent for a variety of organic materials.

When it was first widely produced in the 1920s, trichloroethylene's major

commercial use was to extract vegetable oils from plant materials such as

soy, coconut, and palm.  Other uses in the food industry included coffee

decaffeination and the preparation of flavoring extracts from hops and spices.

It has also been used for drying out the last bit of water for production of

anhydrous ethanol.

It has also been used as a dry cleaning solvent, although replaced in the 1950s

by tetrachloroethylene (also known as perchloroethylene).

Perhaps the greatest use of TCE has been as a degreaser for metal parts. The

demand for TCE as a degreaser began to decline in the 1950s in favor of the

less toxic 1,1,1-trichloroethane.  However, 1,1,1-trichloroethane production

has been phased out in most of the world under the terms of the Montreal

Protocol, and as a result trichloroethylene has experienced some resurgence

in use as a degreaser.

Chemical Instability:

Despite its widespread use as a metal degreaser, trichloroethylene itself is

unstable in the presence of metal over prolonged exposure.  As early as 1961

this phenomenon was recognized by the manufacturing industry, when

stabilizing additives were added into the commercial formulation.  Since the

reactive instability is accentuated by higher temperatures, the search for

stabilizing additives was conducted by heating trichloroethylene to its boiling

point in a reflux condenser and observing decomposition.  The first widely used

stabilizing additive was dioxane; however, its use was patented by Dow

Chemical Company and could not be used by other manufacturers.  Considerable

research took place in the 1960s to develop alternative stabilizers.  Other chemical

stabilizers include ketones such as methyl ethyl ketone.

Precautions:

Toxic by inhalation with a TLV = 50 ppm

Click here to download MSDS (Material Safety Data Sheet)

Packaging:

Comes packed in 250ml amber glass bottle.  Also available in 500ml size.