The factors contributing to the shortage of acetonitrile products are primarily related to the global economic downturn. Unlike the situation with other solvents such as methanol, there are no facilities dedicated to the manufacture of acetonitrile. Instead, raw acetonitrile is obtained as a co-product in the production of acrylonitrile, a plastic used in automobile components and other products. As a consequence of the collapse in the automotive industry and the associated overall reduction of demand for acrylonitrile, there has been a significant reduction in the supply of acetonitrile.

Acetonitrile Costs Soar

In the near to mid term, this supply will only deteriorate further as one major acrylonitrile manufacturer will be shutting down their plant in January and February for upgrades. As a result of this shutdown and the lack of supply from Asia, an extreme shortage of product is anticipated during the first quarter of 2009. The supply is not expected to return to normal levels until the second half of 2009 at the earliest.

Unsurprisingly, this shortage is affecting the price of acetonitrile, with sharp price increases now being experienced. Since the supply of acetonitrile has deteriorated, purchasers of bulk product have seen a dramatic rise in cost, in some cases as much as 6-8 times the price paid in summer of 2008. When supply does increase, it is anticipated that the price of acetonitrile could well remain high.

How Can I Minimize the Impact of This?

Reduce If you have a supply of acetonitrile and want to use less of this then there are a number of strategies that you can use. For Example, the use of shorter, narrower columns packed with small particles use less than 10% of the solvent compared with a conventional HPLC method. See our solvent saving and method devlopment tool to find out the cost savings of using smaller particles.

Replace Evaluate an alternative solvent such as methanol. When doing this, adopt a structured approach to your method development, to take account of the different eluent properties. You can check out our article on substituting acetonitrile for another solvent.

Recycle Consider recycling the eluent, particularly if using an isocratic solvent system. We now offer a means of recycling precious solvents in the form of the Thermo Scientific SRS Pro, providing economic, as well as environmental advantages.

How Do I Select a Column To Reduce My Solvent Usage?

Use the solvent saving and method devlopment tool to calulate which Hypersil GOLD 1.9um column you need, or see how we reduced solvent consumption with our worked examples using Hypersil GOLD 1.9um.

Contact Us for More Advice

If you need more help or advice on reducing, replacing or recycling acetonitrile in your separations then please email us or call +44 1928-588088 (UK) or +1 8143-532300 (USA).

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