What do the different grades of chemicals mean?

Question

When purchasing chemicals from Sigma, Fisher, or wherever, there are often -grade's attached to their description like reagent-grade, technical-grade, analytical-grade, or more niche-sounding biotech-grade, HPLC-grade, DNA grade (DNase free perhaps?)

Is there some sort of standard for what these actually mean or are they arbitrary, differing from supplier to supplier or even chemical to chemical? Beyond the 'niche' grades, is there a common order of purity between the others or do they depend on the types of impurities?

Answer 1

Sigma-Aldrich gives a very useful table outlining what the different purity levels are and suggested applications. I was less successful at finding equal documentation from some of the other suppliers, but the analysis for the purity of the chemicals they sell is in the catalog and on the bottle.

In general, technical grade or laboratory grade are the lowest purity. ACS Reagent grade means that the chemical conforms to specifications defined by the Committee on Analytical Reagents of the American Chemical Society (but Aldrich "ReagentPlus" means >95% pure). So, "ACS Reagent grade" chemicals should be comparable from different suppliers. Analytical grade is generally the most pure.

For some of the other grades, such as HPLC grade solvents, the issue is less about overall purity than about being free of substances that would interfere with a particular application. I've reproduced a piece of the table below to give you an idea of the information available.