Does all acetone now smell of cat pee?

You do realise that this thread will have rung alarm bells at GCHQ and NSA and we will all have our emails scrutinised minutely?
 
capetown said:
I'll soon need some more, so looking for it without the smell.

The last 5lt can made me smell like an old tom cat :D.

I wonder if it's something to do with bomb making?

Cheers
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I bought some earlier this year. It seems to smell like acetone always has.

Butanone ( MEK) smells similar although perhaps a little more unpleasant but I'd still not consider it "tom cat" like.
 
On the subject of acetone...where's the best place to buy it these days? Force 4 price is ridiculous. B&Q, Homebase and Halfords don't stock it. I'm down to my last 200ml...
 
laika said:
On the subject of acetone...where's the best place to buy it these days? Force 4 price is ridiculous. B&Q, Homebase and Halfords don't stock it. I'm down to my last 200ml...
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eBay I should think. Check the "Terrorist supplies" section. You should find it listed alongside hydrogen peroxide

Mine came from East Coast Fibreglass Supplies along with some resin and other materials and equipment I was buying. ( about £5 for a litre compared with £17 from Force 4)
 
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You don't say how long you'd had it, what might have contaminated it etc., etc.. Assuming you've discounted an old tomcat spraying on the container :), here's another thought. Under mildly acidic conditions, acetone can form phorone by self-condensation (http://www.tekniscience.com/documents/JTBaker_Acetone_Ultra-Resi_Analysed.pdf), and phorone smells of geraniums (strictly, pelargoniums) which some people find disgusting - are you perchance one of them? Cats are said to avoid geraniums (which are toxic to them) - do they perhaps detect the apparent odour of another cat? All idly amusing speculation - and doubtless some cat-loving, geranium-growing organic chemist will be along soon to expose it (very aptly) as a prime example of Kingsley Amis's "great inverted pyramid of p...".
 
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Recently I drained the dregs of a steel can of acetone I had owned for something like 15 years. It smelt of acetone. I have used acetone frequently throughout my working and retired life and never smelt any that was reminiscent of cats, tom or other. Sounds like it was seriously contaminated.
 
An Up-date.

Spoke to my supplier today, yes they did have a batch with the aforementioned odour.

Apparently it's recycled/recovered and depending on whatever it's been used on has left a trace.

Current stock is back to normal.
 
I was told drug users use acetone to wash the impurities out of heroine.
Hence the reason the chemist couldnt sell me anymore than 50ml at a time, ebay saved the day!


Lynall
 
lynall said:
I was told drug users use acetone to wash the impurities out of heroine.
Hence the reason the chemist couldnt sell me anymore than 50ml at a time...
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How very last century of the chemist. These days the health of substance abusers is more important than making like difficult for them, hence the easy availability of needles and syringes. Mind you, when I went to my doctor to get some (for self-administered B12 injections) I got some really dirty looks from the other patients.
 
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