Working with tert-butyllithium. 

This one is a quite useful and well known chemical. It spontaneously ignites on air. tert-Butyllithium is a chemical compound with the formula (CH3)3CLi. As an organolithium compound, it has applications in organic synthesis since it is a strong base, capable of deprotonating many carbon acids, including benzene. tert-Butyllithium is available commercially as hydrocarbon solutions; it is not usually prepared in the laboratory.

tert-Butyllithium is a pyrophoric substance, meaning that it easily catches fire on exposure to air. While it is possible to work with this compound using cannula transfer, traces of tert-butyllithium at the tip of the needle or cannula may catch fire and clog the cannula with lithium salts. Here we transferred it with a plastic syringe under N2 atmosphere. 

Why do we have a beer opener in the lab? 

Well, sometimes larger amounts of butyllithium is needed and it would take too much time to get out everything from a “Aldrich sure seal” bottle through the concrete hard septa with a syringe and needle...

n-Butyllithium, abbreviated BuLi or nBuLi is an organolithium reagent used as a strong base (pKa ≈ 50) in organic chemistry and as a initiator for the anionic polymerization of dienes in polymerchemistry. Due to the large difference between the electronegativities of carbon (2.55) and lithium (0.98), the C-Li bond is highly polarized and the BuLi is highly reactive.