Making Something Stinkier Than Thioacetone: Selenoacetone, Selenols, and My Experience With Selenium

Back in the summer of 2022, I became the first person on YouTube to post a video showing actual thioacetone. Most sources claim that this chemical is the stinkiest substance on Earth...so in this video, I decided to disprove that notion by making something far worse: thioacetone's evil twin, SELENOACETONE! Not only that, but I also made two other smelly selenium compounds called "selenols", which proved to be even worse! Was it risky? Yes. Was it worth it? To me, definitely.

Want to support LabCoatz? Then feel free to donate or join my Patreon page! It literally costs less that a cup of coffee (however, all selenol giveaways are finished as of July 2023):

A special thanks to @BackYardScience2000 for donating some of his chemicals to my channel! If you ever need specialty reagents, like acetic anhydride or phosphorus pentoxide, be sure to check out his eBay store:

Official BYS2K inventory list:

NOTE ON THE SALE OF SELENIUM-BASED ODORANTS:
I am only selling "safe quantities" of the 1,4-butanediselenol, not multi-gram amounts. A drop of dilute solution is applied to a substrate, which is bottled up in a 0.5mL polypropylene vial, double bagged, and sent on its way in a bubble mailer. For safety and legal reasons, the compound is kept at trace levels: more than enough to smell, but not enough to cause serious harm. Remember, organoselenium compounds are considered to be toxic, which is why measurable amounts cannot be sent through the mail to unregistered individuals.

A WORD ON SAFETY:
I realize that some of you may be tempted to make the compounds I showed for yourself. If your intent is to purposefully expose another human to this compound (i.e. as a prank), think again. As I mentioned before, ORGANOSELENIUM COMPOUNDS ARE POISONOUS. At most, your body can only tolerate a few milligrams of selenium at once. Any more, and you might develop selenosis. Smelling these compounds is fairly safe, since only a few nanograms are actually inhaled at a time, but direct exposure (ingestion of the liquid, skin contact, etc.) can be harmful.

0:00 Intro sequence
0:43 Inciting events
1:50 How to beat thioacetone?
2:29 Selenoacetone
3:11 Getting around hydrogen selenide
4:08 Making aluminum selenide
5:43 ...too easy?
5:55 Selenols
7:20 Warning!
7:31 Making selenoacetone (dimer)
8:00 Making isopropaneselenol
9:48 Making 1,4-butanediselenol
10:27 Selenoacetone smell test
12:01 Isopropaneselenol smell test
13:29 1,4-butanediselenol smell test
16:44 Distance test
17:31 Final thoughts on selenium
18:16 Do you want to buy my stink?
19:47 Conclusion and outro

[breadman]

Maybe mail some to Nilered as a final test to see if he actually has a sense of smell.

[Quake]

If LabCoatz and NileRed ever did a collab for smelly chemistry, I think they would make a smell that is actually sentient and travels around on its own accord causing havoc.

[dustin]

I worked as a flavor chemist and some of the worst things I've smelled were mercaptans. Some were stong enough that they'd make my coworkers puke if I opened them in the lab. Fun stuff

[percent]

i love how all of the chemistry youtubers refer to each other occasionally, and i especially love your reference to E&F

[Nighthawkinlight]

I've done some stuff for video that would look pretty sketchy to a passing observer, but you've set a new bar here: 9:00

I salute you.

[Dharleth]

You're a pioneer man, can't wait for the finale! Just be careful with the tellurium, I've heard some horror stories. You don't want "tellurium breath" it sounds genuinely awful.

[koussayyahyaoui]

Soon enough, you'll gain an immunity to bad smells just like a certain YouTuber.

[stinooke]

I honestly wondered about selenoacetone when ywatching the thioacetone video. A while back, when tributyl phosphine sulfide and selenide became commercially available again, he sent an email to the entire group to warn us against buying the selenide saying "I do not recommend buying the selenium analog because of the very bad smell of selenium compounds." As it turns out, a lab where he spent some time as a postdoc had a "stinky room" where, some 20 years prior, an incident involving some Se(-II) compound had occurred, and the room still reeked!

[quantrox]

NIce video. Just a note, for your future safety. Whenever you want or must use the respirator always do the following: wear in and after it is sealed exhale all the air in your lungs. That will push all contaminated air from the space between your face and the respirator. If you wear it and getting a deep breath without it you basically take a deep breath with all that nasty stuff you want to be protected of. It may be not so important here but if you ever come to work with larger quantities then the little wrong breath may cost you life

[alexhamon]

Epic. Here's to Nile's peer review sending you to 50k subscribers and beyond. Also have you considered working with Ordnance Lab for your flux compression generator project? They'd be all about featuring such an exotic shape charge, have their own range, licensing, HE, etc.

[BackMacSci]

Man this was fun. I was worried for your safety, but it was fun😂. Time to make some telluroketone 😀

[tonyquark]

I have been into electronics since I was a child, and I can remember the old selenium rectifiers would absolutely STINK when they went bad or shorted out.

[markiangooley]

When selenium semiconductor devices burn out the smell is pretty intense and vile. They’re getting less common but I had at least one selenium photocell as a boy nearly 50 years ago.

Big Clive has spoken feelingly about the stench in some videos and I think has burned out at least one or two in them.

[justinbanks]

Your dad is a freaking trooper!

Going out with you doing these tests, handling and smelling the toxic and smelly chemicals without PPE.

Your parents allowing you to do these experiments in the garage. (Most would see it as mad science and try and either stop completely, or gently try and persuade you to do other pursuits)

I salute you and both your parents sir! Thanks for sharing with us

[kaboom]

Captain Mercaptan, Earl of Stench !
Lots of old electronics had selenium rectifiers in them and when they blew the stench was incredible .
You could build an electronic stink bomb from old selenium rectifiers .
Long years ago one of my talents was successfully making and deploying such things .
Not an easy task, as it is very difficult to avoid getting caught, just like deploying a suicide vest .
Anyway, I will await the Tellurium Chronicles .
You might also check out some phosphorus chemistry and also consider concoctions of multiple substances, such as butyric acid, and cadaverine or whatever you care to combine .
Sometimes the whole is greater than the sum of its parts .

[labrat]

Thioacetone is the best Valentine's Day gift a woman could ever want! :D

[nonsequitor]

It's always nice to see wonderful nutcases standing on the shoulders of other wonderful nutcases and sometimes even doing a kind of insane human pyramid of chemistry ;-) :-) :-)

[adamfarhadi]

Great video! Watching such interesting chemistry videos from channels like yours and NileRed’s always makes me wish I studied chemistry in university 🙂.

[Nebuchadwicknezzar]

The worst smell I've ever experienced was after leaving sprouted garlic in a jar of water for a long time without changing it. I wonder if I was smelling organoselenium compounds since it seems to be a similar smell to what you're describing, and selenium compounds are found in garlic!

[nomcopterlabs]

Great video! Really cool watching your channel grow this fast - you deserve it. The most terrifying part is it revealed that I already have the reagents and equipment to make this and that is dangerously tempting.