Triethanolamine (cannot ship internationally)

Large water impurity

Posted by Earlz/grainy.vision on 15th Jun 2020

Despite what the MSDS and the sigma product code listed in it says, this is not 99% grade triethanolamine. Specifically, I suspect this to contain a relatively large amount of water. Water-free developer solutions that I've mixed using this TEA have decayed much quicker than expected. Still not terrible, but 6 months shelf life instead of what should be "forever". The solution I recently received and kept in its full bottle and never opened did not freeze even when refrigerated to 45F. If the impurity was DEA or MEA (common impurity in lesser grades of TEA) the solution would actually freeze at a higher temperature than 99% TEA. The amount of water purity to cause the freezing point to be so low is significant and makes this a completely unreasonable grade of TEA for any water-free developer formulation purposes, and likely requires some adjustment if using a water-containing developer formula which expects 99% grade TEA (ie, to account for difference in pH and buffer capacity). I have to completely retest and reformulate a developer due to this discovery and I feel like Photographer's Formulary should include some disclaimer about this since many people buy this product to formulate water free developers such as PC-TEA etc. I expect that this is why Photographer's Formulary does not sell developer kits which rely on the TEA to be water-free. To be fair though, this is the first purity/grade issue I've had with anything on this site.