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