1,3-Propane Sultone — 1,3-PS for short — is a three-membered cyclic sulfonate ester supplied as a reactive chemical intermediate rather than a finished additive. It is C3H6O3S, and we ship it at ≥99.5% concentration with acid value held at ≤2.0 and moisture at ≤0.1%. Those three numbers are what most buyers are actually shopping for: the ring has to open cleanly in the intended reaction, and water or acid left in the drum will consume part of the charge before it ever reaches your process.
Formulators use it to build sulfonate and sulfobetaine surfactants and to make the wetting and dispersing additives that go into coating chemicals. Other routes lead to additives for lithium battery electrolytes and to intermediates for the brightening agents used in industrial metal plating, and pharmaceutical teams rely on the same reactivity further upstream.
The material is a colorless to yellowish liquid under 25 °C and leaves our warehouse in 25 kg drums. It is stored cool and dry, and it is handled as a reactive intermediate rather than a bulk solvent — closed, dry and away from anything that would open the ring before you want it opened.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Chemical name | 1,3-Propane Sultone (1,3-PS) |
| Alternative name | 1,3-Propane sultone; 1,3-PS |
| CAS No. | 1120-71-4 |
| Molecular formula | C3H6O3S |
| Molecular weight | 122.1 |
| Chemical type | Three-membered cyclic sulfonate ester |
| Sulfonate group after ring opening | Anionic |
| Concentration (%) | ≥99.5% |
| Acid value | ≤2.0 |
| Moisture | ≤0.1 |
| Physical form | Colorless to yellowish liquid (under 25 °C) |
| Packing | 25 kg/drum |
| Storage | Cool and dry place |
A strained three-membered ring. The molecule is a cyclic sulfonate ester: a three-membered ring of two carbons and one oxygen, with the sulfur carrying two further oxygens. The ring is strained, so it opens readily once a nucleophile is present, and the sulfur stays attached to the chain as a sulfonate group. Buying this material is essentially buying a controlled way to attach a propane sulfonate unit to an amine, a polymer or another nucleophile — often the first step in building a surface active agent.
Short chain, compact charge. The C3 backbone keeps the sulfonate close to the point of attachment, which is what most designs for industrial surfactants and additives are after; a longer homologue pushes the charged group further out and changes the balance of the finished molecule. If you are deciding between sultones, settle the ring size and chain length against the target structure first, and compare price second.
Where the specification comes from. The assay floor, the acid ceiling and the moisture ceiling are not commercial decoration. They describe how much of the drum will actually open the ring in your reactor. Water converts part of the sultone to a hydroxy sulfonate, and acidic species shift the pH that your nucleophile sees. Either one shows up later as lower substitution or a wider spread of by-products, which is why both are capped rather than simply measured when the material is used to make plating chemicals.
Surfactant synthesis. The most common route is ring opening onto an amine to build sulfonate or sulfobetaine surface active agents, where this molecule supplies the anionic sulfonate centre and a short propane bridge. Formulators value it because the sulfonate arrives as one defined unit rather than as a distribution of sulfonated oligomers.
Coating and additive development. Wetting agents, dispersing aids and flow modifiers for coating chemicals often start from a sulfonated intermediate, and this sultone is one of the shorter building blocks available for that step.
Electrolyte additives. Lithium battery electrolyte work uses the same ring-opening chemistry, and it is the application where the low moisture ceiling earns its keep — a trace of water in the drum competes directly with a water-sensitive formulation.
Brightening agent intermediates. Compounders preparing additives for industrial metal plating use sultones as a precursor step before the brightener chemistry is assembled, which is why you will find this material on the same shelf as our plating chemicals even though it is not itself a bath additive.
Pharmaceutical intermediates. Sulfonate groups appear in a wide range of active-ingredient routes, and this grade is bought upstream of the step where the sulfonated intermediate is built.
It is bought for the sulfonate, not for the surfactant. Our customers are usually one reaction upstream of the finished product: the sultone opens onto an amine or another nucleophile to give a sulfonated intermediate, and that intermediate is what goes into the surfactant or additive formulation. The quality question therefore is not how the sultone foams or wets, but how completely and reproducibly it reacts.
Why industrial surfactants teams keep a tight specification. In a design-of-experiments campaign the raw-material term has to stop moving. When the assay sits inside a narrow band and the acid and moisture ceilings hold, the differences you measure between trials come from your formulation, not from the drum.
Where the short chain shows up in performance. A propane bridge keeps the anionic sulfonate close to the hydrophobic part of the molecule, which suits sulfobetaine-type surface active agent designs and compact dispersing aids. Longer-chain homologues are a different design choice, not a better one.
Bring us the route. Order of addition, solvent and stoichiometry depend on what you are building, whether that is a surfactant, a coating additive or an industrial metal plating brightener. Send the reaction scheme with your enquiry and our technical team will confirm whether this grade suits the step, and what documentation you will need alongside it.
Upstream, not finished. In pharmaceutical work this sultone sits well before the active step: it introduces a sulfonate into an intermediate that is then carried through the rest of the route. That position is why the moisture and acid ceilings matter more than the colour of the drum — a sensitive downstream step does not tolerate a raw material that hydrolyses on the shelf.
Coatings that touch medical and bio-adjacent applications. Where a chemical coating has to deliver consistent wetting, spreading and film formation, a sulfonated additive prepared from a tightly specified sultone gives the formulator a reproducible starting point. The material contributes to the additive, not to the coating film directly.
A clear grade boundary. We supply this as an industrial-grade intermediate. It is not offered as a pharmacopoeial grade, and we do not describe it as one. If your process requires a named grade, a defined impurity profile or a specific documented test set, raise that with us before ordering so we can tell you exactly what we can document for the current batch.
Practical release into a regulated workflow. Ask for the batch record that accompanies the delivery, match it against your own specification, and keep it with the drum. That is the simplest way to keep a regulated or near-regulated process auditable.
One form, two ways to dose it. As a liquid, the material can be weighed by hand for a bench or pilot charge and fed through a closed transfer line for a production batch. Nothing about the grade changes between those two situations; only the equipment around it does.
Temperature is a handling question, not a quality question. The specification describes the appearance below 25 °C. A plant that runs cold in winter and a plant in a hot climate will not see the drum behave identically, so agree the handling arrangement with us before the first delivery rather than discovering it at the reactor.
Keep the transfer path dry. Pumps, hoses, funnels and jugs should be clean and dry before they touch the material. A wet transfer line puts back the moisture that the specification removed.
Size the container to the campaign. A 25 kg drum suits a pilot campaign and a small production charge; if your consumption pattern is different, say so when you enquire and we will confirm what can be arranged for your quantity.
Order quantity and lead time. The minimum order quantity varies by chemical and is confirmed with our sales team for each order. Production lead time is two weeks.
Packing. Standard packing for this product is a 25 kg drum. Across our range we also work with 10 kg/box, 25 kg or 50 kg/bag, 20 kg, 25 kg, 30 kg or 200 kg/drum and 1,000 kg/IBC drum, so confirm the format that suits your site when you place the order.
Payment and shipping. Payment is 100% T/T in advance. Shipping is arranged per the terms agreed in the current contract.
After delivery. We issue an inspection certificate stating the batch number and the warranty period for the lot you received.
Before you order. Send the quantity, destination and intended application in your enquiry, and ask your sales contact about sample availability and the delivery schedule for your destination so the terms are clear before the order is raised.
Choosing the right match is where most sourcing decisions stall. As a trading supplier, we keep one point of contact from first enquiry to after-sales: tell us what you are making and the conditions you work under, and we shortlist the closest matches from our supplier network, compare specifications and arrange samples before you commit to a bulk order. If something does not behave as expected, we work with the supplying partner on the cause and a practical fix, and stay with the case until it is settled. Email, WeChat or WhatsApp enquiries get a reply within 24 hours.
The guaranteed assay is ≥99.5%, and that is the floor we ship against. It is also why a charge calculated from the formula weight in the specification lands where you expect it to, without an allowance for inert material.
It is supplied as a liquid; the specification describes the appearance as colorless to yellowish liquid under 25 °C. If your plant or warehouse runs outside that temperature window, tell us before the drum ships and we will confirm the handling arrangement that suits your site.
Standard packing is a 25 kg drum, sealed and labelled with the product name and batch number so the contents can be traced to their production lot. The batch number on the label is the reference to quote if you later need the batch documentation, the safety data sheet or a technical answer for that specific lot, so note it down when the drum arrives rather than when the first batch comes off your line.
Each drum travels with its own closure and is meant to be resealed after dispensing. Keep the bung and any inner liner with the drum so it goes back the way it came, and if you decant smaller amounts for the reactor floor, label those containers with the product name, the batch number and the date of transfer and use them first. An unlabelled container of a moisture-sensitive intermediate is a real hazard, not a housekeeping detail.
Before signing for the delivery, look over the drums for dents, staining around the closure or any sign of leakage, and record what you find on the delivery document. A drum that has been lying on its side, or one with a loose bung, is worth treating as suspect until you have confirmed the contents still meet the specification.
For shipments moving by sea or air, the classification and transport paperwork follow the safety data sheet supplied with the goods. Check them against what your forwarder asks for before collection is arranged, because the documents a carrier wants differ by route and by destination.
If you need to know about pack sizes other than the standard drum, or about the paperwork a customs broker will request, raise it when you send the enquiry. Those details depend on destination and quantity, and we would rather confirm them with you than have you plan around an assumption.
Empty drums still hold residue. Do not reuse them for other materials; dispose of them through a licensed route in line with your local rules.
Yes. Keep drums in a cool, dry place and closed between dispensings. The material picks up atmospheric moisture, and moisture is precisely the impurity the specification is built to keep out of your reactor.
In daily practice that comes down to a few habits. Store drums upright on a pallet rather than directly on the floor, keep the store ventilated and out of direct sunlight, and leave the bung in place until you are ready to dispense, then close it again the same way. A drum standing open at the reactor floor across a shift is exactly how a low-moisture grade turns into an ordinary one.
Keep it away from the materials that open the ring. Amines, alkalis, acids and water-bearing reagents should not share a shelf or a bund with it, and dispensing equipment should be dry and kept for this product rather than shared with aqueous streams. If your site already blankets moisture-sensitive drums with dry gas, treat this one the same way.
Temperature matters more for handling than for the chemistry. The product is a liquid below 25 °C, so a drum kept in a cold store will be thicker and slower to pour; let it come back toward ambient slowly and roll or gently mix before sampling rather than applying direct heat to the drum.
Retest or shelf-life statements are set per batch and travel with the goods, so read the one that comes with your delivery instead of assuming a drum will keep indefinitely at the back of the store. If a drum has been open for a while or has sat through a humid season, have it checked before it goes into a charge, and if your site uses the material slowly, size your purchases to how quickly the drum will be worked through rather than to how much space you can fill.
Yes — it is used upstream in pharmaceutical synthesis, where the assay and the low moisture ceiling are the qualities that matter. We supply it as an industrial-grade intermediate rather than a pharmacopoeial grade; if your process needs a named grade or a defined impurity profile, raise it before ordering so we can confirm what the current documentation covers.
Ring size is the difference that matters. This product is the three-membered ring, the more strained of the two, so it opens more readily; the four-membered homologue trades some of that reactivity for a longer chain between the attachment point and the sulfonate. Choose by the structure you are building, not by which product is listed first.
