Methyl isobutyl ketone (CAS 108-10-1): storage and disposal

Highly flammable vapour puts it in a ventilated fire-resistant cabinet with spill containment, away from ignition sources, oxidisers, oxidising acids and corrosive stock. Technicians often shelve it with acetone and treat it the same way, but acetone carries no such date concern, so give this bottle its own label marks: received, opened, and a review 12 months after opening. As a ketone solvent, it softens some plastics and rubbers over time, so look at cap liners when you check the date. Vapour can cause drowsiness or dizziness and irritate the airways, so a leaking bottle in a small prep room is a problem well before fire becomes one. Use only a spark-free refrigerator if any cold storage is needed.

Normal stock is clear and colourless, with little to show from one year to the next. That is the difficulty: it gives few visual signs while ageing, and a bottle can look perfect with an unknown opening date. A lower level than recorded, a softened or sticky cap liner, and a faded label are what you can actually observe. Yellowing or thickening would suggest age or contamination, and crystals around the cap would be a serious warning. If an opened bottle is old, undated or shows any of these, do not move it, do not open it, and get a specialist assessment. Date checks carry more weight than any look at the liquid, and peroxide testing is for competent staff only.

This can form peroxides as it ages, especially after opening. Age and the opened date matter more than appearance, so a container with no opened date should be treated as old.

Review after 12 months: Review interval after opening from the cited peroxide former lists, not an expiry date from a manufacturer. Class C and all other chemicals are left null.

We arrange this by specialist collection. We do not publish a drain or general waste route for any chemical. It is normally packed in a flammable laboratory pack with compatible chemicals.

Packing puts it among compatible non-halogenated flammable solvents, which is simple as long as it is listed under its proper name and not lumped in as "old ketone" or simply "solvent". Abbreviations on hand-written labels cause trouble, so copy down the full name where possible. Separate any opened and undated bottle on your list, as those need assessing before they can be grouped with the rest. Extraction residues hold whatever was extracted, so they are a different waste from neat stock. It must never go into a sink or drain, a general waste bin or a skip, and nobody should try to treat it first. Specialist collection is the route, and school stock usually falls under code 16 05 06*.

Usually held as: neat.

Tell us the container size and how many you hold. An estimate is enough to start with, and some items cannot be priced until someone has looked at them.