When chemical substances are carelessly saved, combined collectively or even disposed of, fires, explosions and accidents may result. In accordance to Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention in 2019, it is estimated that not less than 4,500 accidents a 12 months occur not in a lab however at residence when folks combine the unsuitable swimming pool chemical substances collectively. 

However a brand new open-source pc program referred to as ChemStor may forestall these harmful conditions from taking place — in labs, places of work, colleges and houses — by warning customers whether or not sure chemical substances are unsafe to combine or store collectively.

Developed by engineers on the College of California at Riverside, the brand new program makes use of a database from the US Environmental Safety Company of 9,800 chemical substances which can be labeled into completely different reactive teams. This system then units the chemical substances aside utilizing completely different colours. 

The colourful chemical interplay graph shows customers if particular chemical substances can safely be combined or saved collectively with out making a harmful response. 

Chemical substances with the identical colour will be saved collectively, whereas chemical substances with completely different colours can not.

At the moment, ChemStor software is proscribed to a command-line interface, that means customers should manually enter the kind of chemical substances and quantity of cupboard space into a pc. 

Nonetheless, there are plans to make ChemStor extra user-friendly, together with a smartphone app that may entry a consumer’s digicam to document details about chemical substances and storage areas, in accordance to a press release from UC Riverside.  

The UC Riverside engineers’ work seems within the Journal of Chemical Info and Modeling.