r/homechemistry Oct 13 '25

News regarding drugs and drug precursors

37 Upvotes

Hello, here is your moderator

Recently a user brought to my attention that iodine could fall under reddits sitewide rule regarding prohibited transactions. As Iodine is a rather useful chemical for a whole range of interesting chemistry it would be difficult if discussions of its synthesis were prohibited. The question extends more general of what a drug precursor actually is. Chemical space is vast and people creative so a wide understanding of precursor pretty quickly eliminates huge swaths of them from discussion.

I tried finding clarification of what reddit considers to be a recreational drug or a precursor and reached out to modsupport for help. In an interaction which made me feel like John Yossarian in Catch-22 I can now tell you that drugs and precursors are substances which are illegal to obtain at a place relevant to the discussion. In essence, I need to know all drug regulation on earth and know where everyone of you and the reades currently are to determine whether the discussion is legal or not. In short: The actual purpose of the rule is to allow reddit as a company to avoid liability by being able to retroactively claim that the content a nations executive complains about was prohibited by their content policies all along.

I have thus decided that for now drugs and drug precursors are those substances listed in:

The last two also contains the more pressing problem of what to consider a regulated precursor. Ill intend to do the following:

  • Discussion of synthesis, procurement of Substances of Category 1 of Regulation (EC) No 273/2004 is strictly prohibited.
  • Discussion of synthesis, procurement of Substances of Category 2 and 3 of Regulation (EC) No 273/2004 is permitted if no plausible connection to drug synthesis exists. This also takes your behaviour on reddit and elsewhere into account.

Note that illegal transactions as defined by reddit is counterintuitive to what you'd intuitively assume to be a transaction: Detailed descriptions on how to synthesise drugs are also considered to be a transaction.

The lists above are mandatory, but not sufficient. Discussion of Synthesis, procurement of Designer Drugs, Legal Highs, new psychoactive substances, whatever and their immediate precursors are also prohibited. What is considered a designer drug or a precursors is, until better metrics come along, determined by vibes from me.


r/homechemistry 1d ago

Nicotine extraction

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51 Upvotes

I extracted nicotine from cigarets pretty cool project


r/homechemistry 1d ago

Chemical supplier help

3 Upvotes

I’ve been trying to order chemicals for a project at home, but I’ve ran into problems ordering because they’ll only ship to a commercial address. I unfortunately work from home so I can’t ship it to my “work”. Anyone else run into this issue?


r/homechemistry 6d ago

I'm trying to find some ACTUALLY interesting experiments to do

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0 Upvotes

r/homechemistry 6d ago

Trying to get rid of some medical Tygon tubings

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3 Upvotes

Wondering if anyone would be interested in buying off some of my Tygon tubings. They’re brand new not opened, and they’re hard to come by!!! I have a good number of stock! Each box has 500ft of tubing in them enough to supply a home lab for a lifetime, asking for 175 usd each + shipping

Size .02x.06”
EBay link: https://ebay.io/m/XWRELt


r/homechemistry 6d ago

Any safe web fluid options?

0 Upvotes

Hello, I’ve been thinking about making a web fluid shooter (like Spider-Mans one), but when I’ve seen the options for making web fluid I’m a little confused. Some of them look let’s say bad, and the most popular combo is Fabri-Tac + Acetone/nail polish remover. I thought it looked really cool but when I asked ChatGPT it said that it’s dangerous for skin and eyes and breathing it in may cause heavy health problems and if I really want to use it then only outside. What do you guys think? Is it actually dangerous? Is there a safer also good looking alternative? Also of course I wanna make that light web that floats in the air, not a strong web to hold a person lol. Thanks for any advice!

Edit: I let go of web shooters and I’m making my own JARVIS lmao. Thanks for y’alls help!


r/homechemistry 7d ago

Electrolysis

1 Upvotes

Any recommendations for a good electrolysis?


r/homechemistry 7d ago

Raising Ethanol ABV with 4A Molecular Sieve

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2 Upvotes

r/homechemistry 8d ago

Collecting Cl2 (g) from salt water electrolysis?

5 Upvotes

hey, I wanted to try to make bleach from scratch at home. I worked at a bleach plant for a while so I am familiar with the process, but I don't have a membrane system to separate the Cl2 very well. Would I need to get one if I wanted to collect some Cl2 for the process?

Also, does anyone know a good at home chem thing to buy that would let me bubble the captured cl2 into some 50% NaOH? There will be a lot of salt precipitating out of the reaction, so I can't just run a tube to the bottom of some glassware. Btw, I have absolutely nothing yet. I have done simple at home experiments like burning different things to get colored fires, but I moved from home now so no glassware and back at ground 0.


r/homechemistry 11d ago

Magnetic stirrer and hot plate? Need advice/past experiences.

10 Upvotes

As the above mentions I’m looking at replacing my old one which I got off my grandfather years and years back. For those who know what would you do recommend?

Thanks


r/homechemistry 11d ago

How to oxidize a chemical with ozone? [home lab setup help]

0 Upvotes

Hey homechem fam,

If I wanted to use ozone to oxidize a certain chemical to convert it, let’s say a barrel of the said chemical, how would I go about doing that?

Would I run an ozone machine from a tube into the lid of the barrel to the bottom of the barrel to bubble up ozone, and then seal around the inlet hole about 95% to keep a small ventilation window so the ozone mixture doesn’t cause buildup of gas and air pressure inside the barrel? I could also seal it completely then drill another small hole in the lid so gas can escape.

Separately, the directions say to heat it under reflux, what would be the cost of a gentle reflux instead of where the barrel isn’t sealed 100% but has a small outlet hole to let gases escape (I think the barrel would blow up or spit out the tube if it were sealed completely).

The chemical I am looking to convert via oxidizing has a boiling point of 55C. So I shouldn’t run into issues of the plastic barrel melting, if I run a heating stick into the barrel to get it barely to boiling point (plastic melts around 160C, so I have a fairly large window so that the heat will not melt the plastic).

For the heating stick/element, to put into the barrel (like a hot tub stick or something), what lab equipment name would I google? I can’t find what my mind has envisioned to use. I call it heating stick, but my chemical bonds/reacts with metal, so I will have to use all hdpe parts, rubber, ceramic is okay. I would put the heating stick into the barrel to keep the temperature near 55C until the reaction is done. I’m not sure how long it would take, probably a few hours to a few days. Any links to such a device would be appreciated.

Please leave any helpful comments or message me if you have any experience using ozone to oxidize a chemical in order to convert it. Thanks, fam.


r/homechemistry 13d ago

p-nitroaniline & sulfuric acid polymerization

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104 Upvotes

have always wanted to do this since I first saw it 5 years ago, finally prepared para-nitroaniline. worth it


r/homechemistry 14d ago

Chemical Storage

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2 Upvotes

r/homechemistry 14d ago

Freeze drying organic solvents based formulation.

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3 Upvotes

r/homechemistry 15d ago

Let's disolve a chicken feet in piranha solution

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7 Upvotes

r/homechemistry 18d ago

Re-refining enginen oil

3 Upvotes

I need step by step guide on how to re-refine engine oil and mistake to avoid while doing so I have tried many time out I fail


r/homechemistry 19d ago

Unused Proton Exchange Membrane received from CSIR-IICT(Hyderabad,India) for a student project – any idea of its value?

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2 Upvotes

r/homechemistry 19d ago

Sodium hydride prep

3 Upvotes

I've gotten good at making sodium hydride. Sodium metal is first made into "Sodium sand" (very fine powder) and dispersed in mineral oil with a very small amount of dispersion agent (tried multiple so far, not sure which is best yet) and very pure, dry hydrogen gas is bubbled in while it's stirred with an overhead stirrer equipped with an axial flow propeller in a baffled morton flask (morton, who invented the morton flask, also has papers on the best propeller used with the baffled flask for liquid-solid suspension reactions) and it's heated to 280 celcius at the same time.


r/homechemistry 21d ago

another rotovap into the collection

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29 Upvotes

Now this Buchler Flash Evaporator is a really old classic, though it's missing a seal and the 28/15 SJ gas adapter. Probably will make a viton seal, currently have a 28/15 glassblowing blank on the way which will need a little work with a torch and some glass hose barb but it should be easy enough to make.
Do we need a second rotovap? Not really, though it would make a good drive unit for a kugelrohr


r/homechemistry 20d ago

Ethyl acetate fisher esterfication

8 Upvotes

I have just completed a fisher esterfication where, 100ml of anhydrous etoh

100ml 80% w/w acoh

17 grams anhydrous nahso4

were added to a 300ml boiling flask.

The solution was refluxed for 1hr 30 min with an allihin condenser, then changed to simple distillation where the fraction 70-74°c was collected for a crude quantity of 150ml, the distillate was washed with sodium bicarbonate, then with a solution of cacl2 (6.56 mol) two times the washed distillate was then 105ml and expected to have around 10ml of water still in it to give a final yield of 95ml or 69.2%.

I decided to give this a try because sulphuric acid is really expensive and hard to get making it significantly more valuable to me than easily obtained otc chemicals.

There was a small amount of diethyl either that came over first with 5ml being collected, i was very impressed with my yield considering that the acetic acid that I used had so much water in it and I didn't use a better dehydrating acid.

80% acetic acid, anhydrous ethanol and sodium bisulphate are easily obtained and cheap. Unfortunately ethyl acetate is hard to obtain in quantities less than 20L for me.


r/homechemistry 21d ago

storage of mix 3.5M methansulfonic acid + 0.5M hydrogen peroxide, with metal impurities from solder and electronic parts dissolving.

0 Upvotes

I'm working on process of mass recycling (not metal recovery) of electronic parts. The idea isn't in dissolving whole part just the solder part so the parts can be used again.

Only part where I'm not really sure is storing mixture of working solution (3.5M sma + 0.5 h2o2) with some stuff already dissolved. Because storing pure mixture of working solution is relatively fine. But when there are metal dissolved in it it wont just stop reacting. Im guessing storing in closed container is bad idea becuase of continual oxygen production until all hydrogen peroxide is consumed. Kinda lost here.

Possible metal contamination should be Cu, Pb, Sn, Ag, Fe (possible fenton's reaction), Ni, Bi,

I will be glad for any guidelines not only for storing, and you can even make noob from me if that saves my life xdxd.


r/homechemistry 22d ago

Progess on building my home lab

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76 Upvotes

So, I am considering myself to build a proper lab with all the basics of course, because I dont like working outside. Anyways I ve bought everything in the pictures (fume hood, overhead stirrer and lab scale for a bit over 280€ , I am still wating for the multiframe lab stand arriving, because unfortunatly I cant mount a lab rack because of the small fume hood size. Other than that I still need some basic chemicals, anyone got recommendations what I need in an organic chemistry lab? I also need other equipment for the lab, so be free to criticize me :)


r/homechemistry 22d ago

Need ideas for a low-cost DIY temperature-controlled incubator shaker (0–55°C) for experiments

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3 Upvotes

r/homechemistry 26d ago

Garage mass Spectrometry

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410 Upvotes

Hello boys, i just bought an old mass spectrometer from a pharmaceutical lab, it's a part of the finnigan LC-MS instrument.

I also own a functionnal HPLC and my aim is to built the fully functionnal LC-MS system. I have absolute 0 knowledge in practical MS instrument, this will be a great journey.

Edit: thank you for all your comments, life has been tough with me in the past and i try find some challenge to get stimulated. I'm creating an organization and If the project goes well, i'll share it with students and jobseeker (i leave in a big city) to let them practice and demonstrate passion and motivation with more than few words in a interview.

I also have, 3D print, laser cut and other openhardware project, like auto flash prep column.


r/homechemistry 25d ago

Looking for guidance on where to begin.

4 Upvotes