Acetaminophen/Paracetamol developer
sreenath
----------------------------------------------------
Hi,
Recently I developed film and paper using Acetaminophen tablets. I
would like to share my experiences here.
It is qite well known that para-aminophenol(pAP) and Acetaminophen are
close relatives.
Actually there is a "Rodinal like" formula that uses Acetaminophen
tablets as the main ingredient. Acetaminophen can be obtained by
adding an acetyl group to the amino part of the pAP. Acetaminophen is
called Paracetamol in several parts of the world.
It is also widely known that it is possible to remove the acetyl group
by means of hydrolysis. A strong solution of sodium hydroxide removes
the acetyl group. This results in formation of Sodium Acetate and
p-aminophenol in solution.
Here is the procedure for making the developer using Acetaminophen:
1. Crush about 6 acetaminophen (500 mG) tablets and dissolve the
powder in a small quantity of water. There will be some precipitate
left.
2. Add some sodium sulfite to the above solution and dissolve it.
4. Now slowly add a few flakes of Sodium Hydroxide while stirring. You
will notice that the
undissolved acetaminophen powder will now dissolve. Sodium Hydroxide
is very caustic, so be very careful with this stuff.
5. Close the bottle and shake a few times, and leave it for a few
hours. I leave it for a day.
6. The liquid turns pinkish after a few hours(or a day). This
indicates formation of pAP. A small quantity of pAP might have
oxidised as well. The sulfite reduces this.
7. Dilute with water to get working strength solution (750ml to 1
liter)
8. Add a few drops of saturated solution of Potassium Bromide
solution. Without this, there will be some fogging.
This can now be used as a good warm tone paper developer.
I got very nice warm tones on Ilford MG Warm tone fiber paper.
This also works very well as a film developer when diluted quite a
bit.I have developed 35mm as well as 120 rolls.
Additional notes:
1. One can use a strong solution of sodium hydroxide instead of using
flakes directly. I had a 15-20 percent solution that was easier to
handle. Sodium carbonate did not work. Alkali hydroxide seems to be
necessary.
2. Adding some Hydroquinone makes this into something like Kodak's pAP
developer, giving nice warm tones.(Kodak DK-93?)
3. If, instead of alkali, strong hydrochloric acid is used, perhaps we
can get pAP- hydrochloride. However, I have not tried it.
4. The molecular weights are as follows:
pAP 109
pAP hydrochloride (approx) 145
Acetaminophen 151
5. Other "Rodinal like" preparations have 20 grams of pAP-hcl in 400
mL of stock solution. That is, 0.05 grams of pAP-hcl per millileter.
400 ml of working strength developer at 1+40 dilution will have 0.5
grams of pAP-hcl. Since the molecular weights are very close, one
500mG tablet of acetaminophen can be comfortably used for one roll of
film.
6. pAP oxidizes easily. Storing the solution in small bottles to
exclude air.
7. The print developer is perfect as a one-session developer. I have
stored the diluted developer in a bottle and used it after a few days.
When I do this, I add some sodium sulfite to prevent it from
oxidation.
8. Approx 2-3 grams of Acetaminophen is required in print developer
per liter.
9. It still needs to be fine tuned so that the least necessary amount
of Hydroxide is used so that the pH is kept as low as possible.
Perhaps a Rodinal like "titration" can be carried out. I have not
tried this.
10. The tablets contain some other material(starch, etc) in addition
to the main ingredient, acetaminophen. This did not seem to make any
difference in the developer. I did not filter the solution to remove
it.
11. I used tablets that were lying around in a bottle - bought 8 years
ago. They worked perfectly well. It appears Acetaminophen does not get
oxidised as easily as pAP.
Please post your experiences if you try this developer.
Any other suggestions/comments welcome.
Credits: Wilco Oelen of Netherlands, who has greater knowledge of
chemistry than I do, did lot of the experimentation that resulted in
this. My sincere thanks to him.
Also thanks to several others who had answered some of my old posts
regarding Acetaminophen based developers.
-Sreenath
Donald Qualls
> Put those expired Acetaminophen tablets to good use!
> ----------------------------------------------------
>
> Hi,
>
> Recently I developed film and paper using Acetaminophen tablets. I
> would like to share my experiences here.
Wow! First coffee, and now aspirin substitute! Heck, I've got a bottle
of acetaminophen tablets (generic, cost me about US$0.01 per tablet)
sitting right by my monitor; I take some morning and evening, with
aspirin, to keep my hands from stiffening with the beginnings of arthritis.
I've saved your post; it seems to me that one could, indeed, use a
titration like that used in making up Rodinal, and one could, as well,
take the tack of ensuring that some undissolved crystals (presumably,
after titration, crystals of para-aminophenol) remain in the solution as
a means of preserving it -- it's said Rodinal won't keep at all without
these excess crystals, but keeps almost forever with them.
I might also have to experiment with using household ammonia (ammonium
hydroxide) to convert the acetaminophen, rather than the relatively
hazardous sodium hydroxide; if that works, it might require more bromide
to prevent dichroic fog (which is said to be a consequence of ammonium
based chemistry), but would be both cheaper and safer to make than the
lye based version.
--
The challenge to the photographer is to command the medium, to use
whatever current equipment and technology furthers his creative
objectives, without sacrificing the ability to make his own decisions.
-- Ansel Adams
Donald Qualls, aka The Silent Observer http://silent1.home.netcom.com
Opinions expressed are my own -- take them for what they're worth
and don't expect them to be perfect.
John
<sil...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>I take some morning and evening, with
>aspirin, to keep my hands from stiffening with the beginnings of arthritis.
Try this. Works better for me.
http://www.arthritis.org/conditions/alttherapies/Glucosamine.asp
Regards,
John S. Douglas, Photographer - http://www.puresilver.org
Vote "No! for the status quo. Vote 3rd party !!
Robert Vervoordt
wrote:
I saw that Donald has Type2 diabetes. So do I, along with some
Arthritic complications that started a long time ago. I had and have
no medical coverage. Over the years, I tried out a lot of alternative
substances and strategies. Some worked very well. While there are
too many to describe, I would like to suggest this link:
http://www.mercola.com/index.htm
And this:
http://www.mercola.com/2004/index.htm
where he makes available, for free, his whole archive.
Low carbing in general helped both the Diabetes and Arthritis. I also
used Cayenne raw as well as the Glucosamine, as John suggested. I
also continue the use of a Chinses tonic, Shou Wu Chih, as a general
adjunct to all my efforts.
Don't ignore multivitamins and minerals, as they provide a base for ny
efforts you make.
That's all I'm going to say here, as the tendency to go on is shared
by me along with a lot of NG members and this is really off topic.
Best wishes.
Robert Vervoordt, MFA
Robert Vervoordt
wrote:
Wow, I'm relly impressed. The next candidate should be hair dyes.
There is some literature around, if I recall rightly. I have no
specific links.
BTW, how did your pursuit of divided color negative developers turn
out? I'll be using that as my standard when I ever get to set up a
darkroom.
Kind regards
Robert Vervoordt, MFA
Donald Qualls
> On Tue, 19 Oct 2004 22:42:04 GMT, Donald Qualls
> <sil...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>
>
>>I take some morning and evening, with
>>aspirin, to keep my hands from stiffening with the beginnin gsofarthritis.
>
>
> Try this. Works better for me.
>
>
> http://www.arthritis.org/conditions/alttherapies/Glucosamine.asp
But will it develop my TMY? ;)
sreenath
Actually some chemistry gurus suggested usage of ammonium hydroxide as
a better option than sodium hydroxide for this purpose.
Search for a post on deja with this string "aminophenol from
acetaminophen". You will find the thread in sci.chem. There were also
suggestions about how to prevent oxidation of aminophenol once formed
by the hydroxide.
-Sreenath
stefano bramato
> Put those expired Acetaminophen tablets to good use!
> ----------------------------------------------------
>
> Hi,
>
> Recently I developed film and paper using Acetaminophen tablets. I
> would like to share my experiences here.
>
really impressive!!
I saved your post for the future!!
thanks alot and GReAT JOB mate!!
--
Non è bello cio che è bello figuriamoci cio che è brutto!
Alessandro Serrao
Great thread.
One question: do you have the exact recipe, I mean the exact measures of
the various components?
Thanks.
sreenath
> sreenath wrote:
> > Put those expired Acetaminophen tablets to good use!
> > ----------------------------------------------------
> >
>
> Great thread.
> One question: do you have the exact recipe, I mean the exact measures of
> the various components?
> Thanks.
The amount of sodium hydroxide is not very critical, as long as it is
not too tiny. Going by molecular weights, the following should work:
Water 50 ml
acetaminophen tablets (500 mG) 6 nos
(8-9 if 350 mg tablets are used)
sodium sulfite 10 grams
sodium hydroxide 4 grams
For paper developer :
dilute with 1 liter of water. This will be close to Rodinal at 1:20
dilution.
For film :
take 10 ml of above concentrate and dilute with water to get total of
400 mL.
If you actualy try this, please report the results you get.
-Sreenath
John
<sil...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>> Try this. Works better for me.
>>
>> http://www.arthritis.org/conditions/alttherapies/Glucosamine.asp
>
>But will it develop my TMY? ;)
Does help with the agitation !