I’m sorry to witness the slow demise of diethyl ether.  A wonderful solvent it is.  Or perhaps the past tense is more in order.  Righteous organizations are fleeing from this magnificent ethereal fluid.  It will dissolve a Grignard reagent, mighty LAH, or bovine lipids from hamburger.  It’s low melting point and low boiling point has helped to solve ten thousand problems.  Yet despite its advantages, ethers dark side is its undoing.

Ethers “spirited” volatility, that very property that allows for its facile removal, is largely to blame for its doom.  It’s celebrated aptitude for finding ignition sources far from its point of origin has sealed its fate.  Ethers broad explosability window, its distant lower and upper explosion limits, will cause strong men to tremble openly at its supersonic possibilities.  Space explosion, they’ll say in hushed voice.  Poor-mans nuke.  And in the hands of the clumsy, the uncaring, or the plain unlucky, they’re probably right. 

So if you need an extra tanker of ether soon, you may not get it.  It may be on allocation. Serious executives in corner offices with furrowed foreheads and great fuzzy caterpillar eyebrows will anxiously lean forward to explain that it’s really not their fault.  They’ll plead that market demand has shifted its attention to other commodity solvents and that they feel the radiant heat of potential liability for all of the ether product that is out there in plants and on the road. Yes, on the road.  Yet one more reason not to swerve in front of an 18-wheeler.

So, young turks of R&D, consider the multitude of splendid possibilities before you and be not attached to the ether diethyl. For it has gone the way of the buggy whip and cathode ray tube. And above all, take heed the advice of the blessed sage of Stanford, the Cardinal d’efficacité d’atome, Professor Trost and his divine doctrine of atom efficiency.  Verily, he hath cast his pearls before the swine. Blessed is he who substitutes nickel for platinum and chloride for iodide.  And blessed is he who raiseth his space yields, for his pot shall not runneth over.  And exalted is he who spares his rupture disc, for many shall be his days before the Pfaudler.