Acetonitrile Shortage

[jorry]

Dear all,
We are distributer of acetonitrile in China.We can arrange 36-40 MT actonitrile per month.Our purity is 99.95% min.My email is jorry@hnharvest.com.
You can contact me for specification and COA.
Best regards,
Jorry Zhang

[steve@labhut]

The consumption of acetonitrile and other mobile phase solvents can be dramatically reduced using a good mobile phase recycler system like the SolventTrak...

As I said above

[Bruce Hamilton]

Dear all,
We are distributer of acetonitrile in China.We can arrange 36-40 MT actonitrile per month...

Cool, given that one instrument working 24/7 at 1 ml/min will use 35kg/month, and assuming MT=metric tonnes, not Million Tonnes ,
that should keep 1000 analytical HPLCs going, provided the product specification is suitable for HPLC use.

Sadly, because of association with illicit drug manufacture, acetonitrile is regulated here ( declaration required for every end use ), I'd better not try to import that quantity . I'd probably be quickly rich and dead.

Bruce Hamilton

[Kostas Petritis]

Probably quickly rich but shortly after in prison... I think it would be best for you to contact the US (or other country distributors) than posting here. I do not think any lab will be able to order such enormous quantities of ACN anyways; which makes me wonder why is there any shortage if such quantities of ACN are available?

[Bruce Hamilton]

I do not think any lab will be able to order such enormous quantities of ACN anyways; which makes me wonder why is there any shortage if such quantities of ACN are available?

From a site I posted early in the thread.
" A tight supply of the material is expected globally beginning 2010, with Asahi and the Ineos group as the only producers. Global demand, climbing at 5%/y, is presently at around 70,000 tonnes/y. "

The current economic problems, especially in the auto industry, will have dramatically curtailed projected demand, and I suspect the above poster was not manufacturer, but a bulk chemical supplier ( volume cited could have been a couple of shipping containers worth).

The current price margin may take a while to drop, as buyers will take a while to go hunting for value, instead being grateful to procure sufficient stock.

Please keep having fun,

Bruce Hamilton

[Noser222]

I wonder at what point it might be economical to have a facility that produces acetonitrile from an alternate source, like acetic acid.

[Consumer Products Guy]

Anybody here if FDA is willing to consider allowing labs to temporarily substitute methanol without full validation, like just assaying to see if results agree?

[Aussiemosis]

Hello in Australia I found Merck is only taking back orders, Sigma wants around $100/L for theirs and the other smaller companies are rationing it to send only a percentage of past order history, but only if we have an existing account with them.

So guys in Australia how are you dealing with this ACN shortage?

[steve@labhut]

From a site I posted early in the thread.
" A tight supply of the material is expected globally beginning 2010, with Asahi and the Ineos group as the only producers. Global demand, climbing at 5%/y, is presently at around 70,000 tonnes/y. "

Of course the best option in that case would be to curtail demand for acetonitrile, surely? If that's the path you want to go down then your choices are getting a new UPLC system or a solvent recycler. It seams odd to me that more people aren't recycling anyway.

Just out of interest, how many people on here are actually recycling there acetonitrile?

[remsol]

Given the current situation, we're establishing a 'pooling' system for HPLC users of Acetonitrile in the UK in order to submit their collective wastestreams for small-scale toll recovery which should mean we can re-supply contributors with high quality recovered ACN (99.95%, 0.05% water) within the next couple of months. It will only work though if a sufficient number of users commit to the scheme - otherwise, the volumes will simply be too low. So, if you're UK based and want to join forces to stave off a shortage of ACN, get in touch! Visit http://www.remsol.co.uk/12/section.aspx/13 for more details and then use our Contact page to register your interest

[steve@labhut]

we're establishing a 'pooling' system for HPLC users of Acetonitrile in the UK in order to submit their collective wastestreams for small-scale toll recovery

So, do you recycle or are you just re-bottling? I suppose you could 're-distill' from the waste product.

How would that work if you had already recycled your ACN? Would you be able to handle what was left over?

[remsol]

We're looking to recover the solvent by fractional distillation and drying to reduce water content. So far, based on the waste we already manage for our many pharma clients plus details of the HPLC solvent wastes submitted to us in the last week from others, the majority of the inputs we expect to receive will be a mixture of ACN and Methanol with water and other impurities, possibly small amounts of Ethanol. Right now, the format for returns has not been decided on - establishing a bottling line could be tricky and add to the overall costs, pushing up supply costs, so we're minded to return in 25 litre drums which will make the process speedier and less costly. Watch this space!

[Chris]

How are people getting on now, has anyone run completely dry?

I know stocks are restricted but in some places it is non existent unless all the large greedy pharma companies are stock piling at high prices.

[jorry]

Yes,we are not manufacturer,just bulk supplier.In fact we can supply 36MT industrial grade acetonitrile.As for HPLC grade,we can only supply 12MT with packaging 4L glass bottle or 20L steel bottle.

[Bryan Evans]

Imtakt has new data on this issue:

Reducing organic solvent consumption:
http://www.imtakt.com/TecInfo/TI475E.pdf

Substitution of organic solvent:
http://www.imtakt.com/TecInfo/TI476E.pdf

It's important to know that column back pressure varies
greatly from vendor to vendor. So, if MeOH, IPA, ect. are
to be substituted - one needs to take this into consideration.