Chromatography Forum

Hi all! Are we experiencing another acetonitrile shortage like the one in 2008? I'm asking because my supplier doesn't have any, and there is no estimate to when we will get it.

I think that 2008 "shortage" was significantly caused by fear and hoarding, such as demonstrated by my pointy-haired boss. I was in R&D, and many of our cGMP/FDA company-developed and validated procedures for our over the counter drug products used ACN. We had about 10 gallons of ACN, and our production facilities QC had a decent supply for a few months. Of course, he made it MY problem because 2 decades earlier I had used ACN instead of methanol in method development.

So I found some ACN already containing acetic acid available commercially, and we bought some and just reduced the acetic acid in the aqueous portion accordingly. Suppliers were limiting customers in cGMP functions to levels used in the past, and I'd guess larger pharmaceutical customers were not running out.

However, boss insisted that we modify the methods to use methanol and then validate those "just in case". A lot of man hours was wasted doing this, and the modified methods were never used; may be a good learning experience.

In the last few years I was there, the same pointy-haired boss was hoarding helium cylinders (paying rentals on each cylinder) because he felt the world was running out of helium. I told him I wouldn't worry as long as the dollar stores still had cylinders and were filling $1 balloons ! Of course me saying that made him mad....

A similar thing occurred in the area where I lived. Because of the shortage of commodities, the acid material in the solution is greatly lowered. This had a significant impact on my research.
geometry dash world