Types of Chemistry Flasks: A

Complete Guide
March 5, 2020 By C. Hall Leave a Comment

An important concern within any chemistry laboratory is the handling and storage
of chemical substances regardless of the physical state in which they are. We are
going to help you identify the most common (or not so common) types of
chemistry flasks out there!

Through chemistry history, different materials have been employed to build these
containers, although it is generally acknowledged that glass is the material of
choice for most applications. From simple test tubes to the more complex micro-
Kjeldahl distillation units, glass is used in most, if not all for some fields, chemical
experiments performed in a laboratory.

Whether you are an experienced researcher or a curious student trying to unveil the
fascinating world of chemistry, I am sure you will find in this article several
interesting details that you could have missed and could be very useful once you
are in front of you laboratory bench. Remember, small details make big
differences!, particularly in experimental Chemistry.

Considering this, in the following paragraphs, you will find a description and
useful information about the most common laboratory glassware found in any
laboratory. All of them come with pictures so you can esily identify those weird
pieces of glassware sitting around in the lab.

Enjoy!

• Erlenmeyer flask: It has a cone shape and a cylindrical neck, being also flat by
the base. It serves to contain substances or heat them, although the shape of this
flask also helps to prevent liquid spillage and facilitates swirling motion to perform
titrations, or other procedures. The narrow opening of this flask also prevents dust
contamination and minimizes losses by evaporation.
 Erlenmeyer Flask
• Volumetric flask: A flat bottom glass container with an elongated and narrow
neck that presents a line that exactly defines the volume of any liquid substance. It
is generally employed to prepare solutions.

Volumetric Flask
• Beaker: A cylindrical container with a flat bottom and a wide opening. It consists
of presents graduations that can often be used as a measurement reference. It is
commonly used to contain substances as well as to heat them.
 Glass Beaker
• Measuring cylinder: It is a cylindrical and graduated glass tube that is employed
to measure precisely the volume of liquid substances.

Glass Measuring Cylinder

• Test Tube: These are a small cylindrical glass tube with one end open and the
other closed and rounded. It is used to prepare small reactions or tests in it. They
are also commonly used to collect fractions in column chromatography.

Glass Test Tubes

• Büchner flask: Volumetrically graduated glass container. It has a small side tube
coming out of the neck which can be connected to other equipment, generally a
vacuum pump. Widely employed to perform vacuum filtrations along with a
Büchner funnel.

Büchner flask with a funnel and vacuum system.

• Round-Bottom Flask: This is probably one of the most common types of
chemistry flasks. Ball-like container with a wide base and narrow neck that has a
stopper. It is used when the substances contained must be stirred, avoiding spillage
and evaporation of gases. It can possess one, two, or three necks. They are the
bread and butter for setting up chemical reactions.

Glass Round-Bottom Flasks sitting on cork rings.

• Burette: Graduated container, usually made of glass. It is a long tube of small
diameter with a stopcock that allows the liquid to drip. It is used to transfer exact
amounts of liquids. The most common application of this are titrations.
 Glass Burette
• Desiccator: Not really a reaction container, but you do store chemicals in it. It is
a glass container with a lid that allows a tight seal. It is used to remove moisture
from solid substances. Silica gel (desiccant) is placed at the bottom, while the
substance to be dried is placed on a plate a few centimeters above.

Glass Desiccators
• Crystallizer: A low container with a flat base. It is used in the laboratory to
crystallize the solute from a solution by evaporating the solvent.
 Glass Crystallizer
• Fleaker flask: Sometimes used to heat liquids, not a very common piece of
material. It resembles an Erlenmeyer flask and a beaker. Its body is cylindrical and
culminates in a neck that curves before opening into a rounded opening.

Fleaker flasks
• Two-necked flasks. These are round bottom flasks with multiple (2-3) necks or
entrances. One is usually employed to take chemicals in or out for the reaction. The
others can have multiple uses. They can be connected to a condenser to perform
reactions under reflux conditions. You can attach a dropping funnel. You can also
attach a connection with a source of an inert gas to work in a closed system under
argon or nitrogen, for air-sensitive reactions.

Two-necked flasks
• Kohlrausch volumetric flask: They are used for sugar determination, according
to the Kohlrausch method.
 Kohlrausch volumetric flask
• Kjeldahl flask: It is used for the determination of organic nitrogen. Guess how:
the Kjedahl method.

Kjeldahl flask
• Iodine flask: It is used to make iodine determinations in quantitative analysis of
substances by electron exchange (oxidization-reduction) titrations that involve the
use of iodine (or any other volatile chemical, for that matter). It’s quite similar to
an Erlenmeyer flask (but significantly more expensive!), but is equipped with a
stopper joint in order to avoid partial losses of iodine through evaporation, which
would lead to errors on the quantifications.
 Iodine flask
• Saybolt flask: Used for viscosity determination.

Saybolt flask
• Fernbach flask: It is a narrow neck flask. Its shape provides a large cultivation
area suitable for growing microorganisms, in liquid nutrient media. It allows faster
growth, due to better ventilation.

Fernbach flask
• Mojonnier flask: It is used in fat determination, which is extracted with a
mixture of ethyl ether and petroleum ether in a Mojonnier flask, the extracted fat is
placed at a constant weight and expressed as a percentage of fat by weight.

Fernbach flask
• Le Chatelier flask: It is used to determine the density of things. Generally applied
to determining density of stuff such as hydraulic cement, granulated blast furnace
slag and fly ash for concrete, filler aggregates, and lime.

Le Chatelier flask
• Schlenk flask: The corner stone of working under strictly anhydrous conditions.
This flask is a reaction vessel designed to perform chemical reactions which are
sensitive to air. There are many variations for this, but usually it has two different
necks or connections, one designed to put in the chemical reagents, and another
one that is simply a connection to a Schlenk line, or source of an inert gas such as
argon or nitrogen.
 Schlenk flask
• Straus flask: They differ mainly from other Schlenk flasks by their neck
structure. Two necks emerge from a round bottom flask, one larger than the other.
The largest neck ends in a frosted glass joint and is permanently distributed by the
blown glass with direct access to the flask. The smaller neck includes the thread
required for a Teflon cap to be screwed perpendicular to the flask. The two necks
are joined through a glass tube. The frosted glass gasket can be connected to a
manifold directly or through an adapter and a hose. A typical use for these is
storing anhydrous solvents with molecular sieves.

Straus flask
• Collector or Receiver Flask: It is a glass jar, with a very short neck, spherical
body, and frosted mouth. It is designed as a piece of glass in rotary evaporators, to
collect distillations of reactions with reflux. It is usually made of borosilicate glass.
 Collector flask used on a rotary evaporator.
• Florentine Flask: It is a glass flask, with a long neck and spherical body. It is
designed for uniform heating and is produced with different thicknesses of glass
for different uses. It is usually made of borosilicate glass.

Florentine Flask
• Pear-shaped flask: It is designed for uniform heating and is produced with
different thicknesses of glass for different uses. It is usually made of glass.
 Pear-shaped flask
The biggest advantage of classic round bottomed flasks, is that its rounded base
makes it easy to stir or remove its contents without being able to spill any
substance out of its container as a precaution.

Pear-shaped flasks are used for evaporating solutions to dryness post-synthesis

using a rotary evaporator, the ’rounded V’ shape of the flasks enables solid
materials to be scraped out more efficiently than from a round-bottomed flask.
Also, collecting liquids using a syringe, it’s easier with the pear-shape!

• Laboratory bottles: Made of borosilicate glass, they can withstand high

temperatures and are of high chemical resistance. They are used basically to store
chemicals and solutions, such as brine or ammonium chloride solutions for
aqueous reaction work-ups.

Glass lab bottle

• Dropper bottles with pipette: Contains substances. It has a dropper and for that
reason, it allows dosing substances, such as organic solvents, in small quantities.
 Glass dropper bottle with s pipette
• Winkler oxygen bottles: It is made of clear glass, has a frosted cap and the exact
volume is engraved on the bottle. It is used for the determination of dissolvable
oxygen in the water.

Winkler oxygen bottles

• Big reaction vessels resistant to high temperatures or pressures. These
reactors usually consist of two parts: a cylinder where the reaction mixture has to
be introduced and a cap or head where there are usually different valves or
connections necessary to carry out the reaction, to be able to control or monitor
safety elements. In some cases, it has a heating jacket that plays the role of keeping
the fluid at a constant temperature, either high or low.
 Big glass reactor resistant to high temperatures
• Microwave vials: Reaction vials that can be sealed with a cap, snd can resist high
pressures. They are used to heat up reactions at temperatures higher than the
boiling point of the employed solvent. This happens usually when heating using a
microwave reactor.

Microwave vials
• HPLC vials: These vial have a cap with a septum that can be pierced by needles,
such as the ones from an HPLC or GCMS autosampler, so they are used to inject
samples on instruments such as those. You can also set up small-scale chemical
reactions on those if you have a stirring bar small enough!

HPLC vials
As you can see, the list is long, and there is virtually a flask for every task you can
possibly imagine. By the way, thanks to wikimedia for some of the pictures here.

Of course, you don’t really need everything if you want to set up of own home
chemistry lab, but it is always good to know about them all!