- Never heat organic liquids with a Bunsen burner. A fire will
always result. Use a Bunsen burner for aqueous solutions only.
- Heating of organic liquids with a hot plate is also a fire danger.
Organic vapors are heavier than air; they drop down to near the heating coils
under the plate. Use a sand bath, or steam bath, or
heating mantle to heat organics.
- Steam baths are gentle ways of heating organics. Turn them on strongly,
until they get going (it often takes a while), then reduce the volume of the
steam. Then place your flask on the steam bath. You don't need huge volumes
of steam (in this illustration -- too much steam is being applied --
KEEP it DOWN!).
- DON'T plug heating mantles directly into the wall socket (110 V).
They will quickly burn out.
- DO plug heating mantles into the TRIAC (or transformer, if your
lab has one). Then, dial up the voltage you need (1 - 10 = approximately
10 V to 110 V).
- When heating reaction tubes in a sand bath, make sure never to point the
tube at a neighbor or at yourself. Something may splatter out.
Here is a better situation.
