Source of Heavy Water Needed

[Jim Kovalchick]

I apologize if information is posted somewhere in past forum posts, but I'm running into some road blocks.

I am trying to find a source of about 100 ml of deuterium oxide and the same amount of deuterium depleted water. My daughter wants to use it for a project to investigate biological impacts.

I ran into all kinds of trouble trying to find deuterium gas for Mike's fusor project, and I assumed that those issues were related to purchase of a compressed flammable gas. While I'm still working on getting him some deuterium gas, I thought that by getting some water for my daughter's project I would be helping her and creating a electrolysis source for Mike as a backup.

Well, now my inquiries to supply houses are being shot down even for heavy water too. I'm being told that the issue is not the specific chemical but a general philosophy of not sending anything to a private residence.

Does anyone have the name of a supplier that they have successfully ordered from recently?

Thanks for the help.

Jim K

[Tyler Christensen]

United Nuclear will sell to just about anybody, and does stock heavy water. For deuterium depleted water, I would suggest the sink unless you are doing extremely precise experimentation (I don't think it's possible to monitor biological impacts to a degree where tap water would be any different from specifically depleted water, then again I'm no biology expert).

[Jim Kovalchick]

Thanks Tyler. I will try United Nuclear.

Tap water is going to have about 160 ppm D in it. Some previous research shows that some cells are impacted by even that quantity.

[Carl Willis]

I bought a liter of the heavy drink from Cambridge Isotopes at a great price last year, but had to do it through my company as they don't sell to individuals. If you want some ordered for you, I would be happy to do it. The downside is that it would have to be shipped to me first.

-Carl

[Chris Bradley]

For deuterium-reduced water, use rain water and distill it. If you have a still, or can fabricate one, re-distill rain or tap water a few times, boiling off only a fraction of the water each time.

There is a propensity for deuterium oxide to get left behind during distillation and electrolysis. What actually gets shifted off therefore tends to have less D in it.

I guess this is why you often hear the 'press-speak' of 'so-and-so-much sea-water' contains enough deuterium for whatever fusion-related thing they are trying to peddle - because rain water contains less D, by an amount I am not sure I have ever seen quantified - I guess it is variable.

[Richard Hull]

Carl tells it right...again. The secret is to order from your company, have it sent there but pay with your credit card over the phone. I tend to...
1. set up an account for my company with the entity I need to order from. This gets you a customer number with logged in shipping address.
2. Know the name of your salesperson and chat 'em up. (log it for future calls and reference)
3. Call, give your customer number and place the order.
4. Tell them your purchasing agent is out sick today and you need the gas, heavy water, whatever, immediately and will just give them your master card number to get the stuff on order and you will get re-imbursed later by turning in your receipt.

All the above has worked for me for many years.

Most companies want the sale and anyone's money, but only feel warm and fuzzy shipping to a business address that is a registered buyer from them.

Regading D2 gas......if you live in a big metro area, go to the largest welding gas supply place and they can order D2 for you in a small 50 liter lecture bottle and outfit you with the proper brass adapters for your pressure gauge set while there.

I have, in the past, purchased my gas using both methods described above. If asked for what you intend to use it, tell them... spectral lamp assembly and testing as you need the H beta line for spectrum doppler shift work in plasmas. Most will be somewhat nonplussed at this and let it go, but be prepared to discuss accelerating ion doppler shifting of the H beta line if you get a smarty pants who pushes back.

Regulations are , indeed, tightening up and needlessly so, but workarounds always seem possible.

Richard Hull

[Frank Sanns]

Since we only drink rainwater does that mean that our bodies have a lower isotopic ratio?

[Richard Hull]

I think you can only get depleted water with the taint of non-simple protium nuclear isotopes removed at the special hippy type organic "natural" food stores. Ask for Willow. She's the one with the earth shoes and granny dress. It is normally sold in 4 oz. bottles located between the vegie-burger and tofu counters.

Richard Hull

[Jim Kovalchick]

Richard,
I had already briefly thought about your approach, but when you work where I do its problematic. I work in a secure area and all material comes through with a documented and process driven approach. Your approach seems logical but maybe just not for my situation.

As an alternative, I am hoping a friendly relationship I have with a small scale science equipment business in the area will be a more practical solution. I am currently working on an agreement to work through them. They seem agreeable so far, but it hasn't happened yet.

I actually considered the idea of incorporating a non-profit science education business to act as a business. There is a couple hundred dollar filling fee, but I am afraid that even after I represent a business they will come up with another excuse like not wanting to ship to a private residence.

As far as walking into the local welding supply, I tried that. Because they don't keep deuterium stocked, they referred me to a regional sales person who nixed me.

I don't think any of the supplier reps get hung up on the purpose as an excuse for why they won't sell to me. They have said it is purely a policy of not selling to a non-business with delivery to a private residence. I'm pretty sure that if they sold H2O, they wouldn't send it to me.

I have asked a couple suppliers about sending deuterium to my son's school. They have nixed that idea and said that a high school was not good enough. They did say they would send it to a university. Local universities are not going to accept delivery of goods like that unless they were for university sponsored research.

[Tyler Christensen]

Do you have a specialty gas headquarters location within driving distance? I was striking out for months getting deuterium gas, then I walked in and there were no questions, handed them a credit card and came back in two weeks and picked it up. Didn't even have to give them my name or sign anything about resale, safety, etc. So it seems they are impossible to work with over the phone or email, but in person they don't really care.

[Chris Bradley]

Frank S. wrote:
> Since we only drink rainwater does that mean that our bodies have a lower isotopic ratio?

see; viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1108#p4015

[Doug Coulter]

It is SO easy to "have your own company". I've had several starting from age 16 or thereabouts.
All it takes is opening another checking account at your bank "DBA CompanyName" and have your company name printed on the checks. Most banks can do this for you in a few minutes at most if you have other accounts there already, and will give you a debit card with the company name on it.

This has no tax implications other than normal - the company is just legally you, using a more official sounding name and address (your home address). If it makes money, it adds to your income, if it loses, usually you can deduct that if you itemize.

As Richard said, they just want to feel they have themselves "covered" if questions are asked later. I've never had anyone check further -- and this is how I got my D.

Now, if you want to do real business with your new "company" - it's still you personally but your tax filings get more complex, since the reality is more complex. But it's still all the same old 1040 etc, and now a bunch more stuff is deductible in the bargain. You can only run a paper loss for so long, or the IRS will declare it a hobby, so just don't abuse it.

In this case, you're a sole proprietor, and your "tax number" is your SS number. There's really nothing to this, and it really helps with a lot of things at a lot of places. It's dirt cheap to set up, and pays for itself in about one trans-shipping cost.

[Richard Hull]

Workarounds....workarounds...... there are as many as the mind of man can conceive. It is good that Jim is trying to hit on other workaround solutions. One will hit, I am sure. Try the local welding gas supplier as I have noted. My weld gas supplier place didn't even know what deuterium was!!! But, they opened their giant 1 meter long rack of catalogs on their sales desk and as a Matheson dealer/supplier, found it, got me a quote and ordered it. No problem.

Richard Hull

[Jim Kovalchick]

A friend who owns a local scientific equipment supply has been making some valiant attempts to get gas delivered to him for Mike's use. Sigma Aldrich said no way to him but they suggested that Spectra Gases is better. I just called Spectra Gases myself. Their compliance engineer insisted that deuterium is a 'dual use' material controlled by the NRC and absolutely would not sell any. She quoted 10CFR110.24 as preventing her from doing it. That section simply requires her to have a license if she wants to export deuterium outside the country. She said that she would be stunned if anyone sold me any deuterium gas or heavy water anywhere in the country. I didn't tell her that United Nuclear took my order for some D2O yesterday.

The local welding supply (affiliated with GTS Welco) referred me to their regional sales person. He was all gung-ho to sell me some, but he later got back to me and said he was shot down when he placed the order through his boss.

There are some friends out there standing by to help us if my gas search stops short, but I'm trying to do as much as I can myself before imposing too much. I appreciate all the ideas you all have had for both the gas and the heavy water. I'll let you all know if any one path works.

[mej33]

The problem isn't having a company. It is the new ability of sales people to immediately look-up all sorts of things about your company. Most importantly that it is a residential address. Sales people want somebody to sign-off that the item was delivered. They also want LARGE repeat orders. So the big companies have done cost benefit analysis and decided that residential addresses are a waste of time. Ordering non consumer products is difficult. It usually means finding a smaller supplier and eating a large mark-up. There are companies that specialize in suppling hard to find parts like smallparts.com.
I am finding that as more suppliers provide online shopping that they don't care who they are selling to. I was looking for a 50 Durometer 12 inch o-ring last week. Most of the prices were in the $55 range for the wrong Durometer. I finally found a URL with online shopping that had the right thing for $3.50.

[jrbpyro101]

If it is desperately needed I can get deuterium depleted water from Sigma Aldrich.

https://www.sigmaaldrich.com/catalog/Lo ... N25=0&F=PR

(^ Sorry if posting links is against the Forum rules. Forgive me if so)

Anyways I can buy at a slightly increased cost of the list price from Aldrich. Again like with the Deuterium from Carl, the problem is that it would have to go through me before you, which adds time to a possibly time sensitive project. If I can be of help just send me an email and we can continue from there.

Best regards,
Josh

[Chris Bradley]

..[redundant text removed]

[Mike Kovalchick]

My daughter's project, which she completed last week, could have used the deuterium depleted water as a control. Because regular water has the small amount of D in it, she could not claim her control was without question.

Joshua Baptist, thanks for offering to act as a go between with Sigma. They have what appears to be great research products. My daughter made do with D2O we got from United Nuclear. I still laugh about companies like Sigma not selling us even protium water.

Just in case anyone is curious, her project showed that Chlorella vulgaris algae is not killed in heavy water, but is significantly slowed in growth. After 60 days, populations grown in 75 to 25 % D almost caught up with normal water but took a while doing it. Also, especially with large concentrations of D, the cells were at least twice the size.

[Jim Kovalchick]

I noticed that the last post came through with Mike's id not mine. He must have been the last one logged on the forum on the home computer. So, to be clear, the last post was mine, not Mike's sorry.

Jim K

[jrbpyro101]

@Chris Bradley

Thank you for trying to clear things up about the deuterium depleted water, but I do know that deuterium depleted water is in fact depleted of deuterium. In Jim's initial post he stated that he needed a source for Deuterium depleted water as a control for his daughters experiment, so I figured if there was still time I would try and help.

@Jim Kovalchick

Glad to hear the project went well, it is actually quite interesting to see how higher concentrations of Deuterium oxide effect organisms growth first hand. I saw that the original post was posted close to three months ago, but I figured I would try to see if I could help anyways.

-Josh

[Chris Bradley]

Joshua Baptist wrote:
> @Chris Bradley ... In Jim's initial post he stated that he needed a source for Deuterium depleted water as a control for his daughters experiment
(sorry - I joined up the wrong bits of the thread in my mind there. text of redundant post deleted.)