In this video, I purify ethanol from hardware-store denatured alcohol by hydrolyzing its ethyl acetate component with sodium hydroxide. Patreon link: / dougslab
Hope not, and i really hope that, even though the first statement may bring laughter to the alcoholism-naive person, that people dont take that any further into cruelty. It is a blessing not to have a disease. Thats what alcoholism aka addiction is, a disease.
I fully agree with your last statement: fully INDUCED. So consciously and purposefully a 'man takes a drink. Eventually the drink takes a drink Then eventually the drink can take the 'man. I wouldnt agree with it if it were a notion either.
So glad to see you back, I know it's been awhile, and it takes a lot of work to make this stuff. I followed you off Nile Red, and so far, don't regret it. Good content, keep up the good work, really enjoyed the video and the process.
If you plumbed both condensers in cascade, you could keep the flask hot, drain the reflux condenser, and distill without interruption after refluxing. The reflux condenser would serve as a fractionating column to get rid of some of the methanol (discard the "heads").
It might be effective to drop in a little bit of sodium followed by distillation after drying with magnesium sulfate Great video. Glad to see that you're back.
MrItsthething you would end up making some sodium ethoxide, and lots of hydrogen whilst doing so. That reaction is very exothermic, and the increased temperature would also increase the evaporation of the ethanol, making a very flammable mix of ethanol vapor and hydrogen. Hydrogen by itself is flammable too, but i have never had any problems with hydrogen burning, since it dissipates quickly as it rises towards the ceiling. The only times I have had hydrogen burn were when I wanted it to burn, and used a match on a stick to ignite it.
Fun fact, that brand has something called MEK substitute, which is only ethyl acetate! I would still distill it for purity maybe, but it's a huge head start
That makes no sense, why not call it ethyl acetate then rather then methyl ethyl ketone substitute, maybe there almost identical not sure, sometimes people make things more complicated then they are
@@robertguenther6710 because these are sold not to chemists, but largely folks like painters. If they've used MEK as a solvent it would mean more to them to know "This is a less toxic substitute for what you've already been using" rather than a chemical name that may not mean nearly as much.
I'm a little bit late but nonetheless very happy to see you back on YT, especially when considering the emerging censorship/strike-politics concerning chemistry vids (mostly pyrotechnics for now, but we all know that is just the tip of the iceberg). Looking forward to more awesome stuff, the quality of your videos is unequaled imho. One small (extremely unnecessary) side note: The Liebig condenser (made popular through German chemist Justus Liebig) is pronounced "Lee-big" rather than "Lie-big". Pretty unnecessary, but I cringe every time ;)
Some brands of denatured alcohol are 5% hexane, some are only 85% ethanol and 15% contaminant ["denaturant"]. Currently 99% methanol is about 40% cheaper than contaminated ethanol when purchased in large containers [5 to 55 gallon sizes]
After mixing about 10gr sodium carbonate per liter of raw distillate of homebrewn alcohol and leaving it sealed up in a sunny spot for a week, with occasional shaking and venting, all traces of the distinct smell of ethyl acetate were gone. I'm making my own alcohol from sugar and so called "turbo" yeast. You always end up with a bit of acetate in the distilate, especially if you opt for speed over technique and cleanliness. But, it's really easy to get rid of it... Yet another way to convert the ethyl acetate back to ethanol would be to distill through a column filled with copper mesh.
So if you could distill everclear and get 94% ethanol with no methanol contamination, since you'll have to dry it anyway...I'm just having difficulties understanding what the advantage is in your approach.
Damn it I couldn't find any ethanol in any stores / pharmamicies and I wasn't aware denatured alcohol is ethanol. I have been fermenting sugar with yeast for a few days now and am waiting for it to finish. I knew it'd take a multiple runs to distill and yield would be low but I didn't realize I could get my hands on ethanol that easily as denatured alcohol.
Heard of freeze distillation? That will get you a good start on concentrating your alcohol. But, be aware that it also concentrates methanol. You could remove the heads from a a smaller evaporative distillation after a freeze distillation.
You said that the drinking alcohol just didn't have the best ROI due to the amount of H2O inside the alcohol, what alcohol did you try? I would think something like _Everclear_ would have a decent return... You can easily find it in 190 proof, which is 95% ethanol (and no methanol!).
Agreed. Freeze distill to get the worst of the water out then distill properly. I get mine from turbo yeast fermentation, freeze, fractionally distill (to be sure to get rid of the methanol) then dry with desiccant. The freezing and ice removal makes a big difference.
So I have 8 liters of ethyl acetate in a drum in my house (99.9%) If I were to hydrolyze it via base hydrolysis with say KOH or NaOH and then fractionally distill the ethanol from the acetic acid would this be drinkanle? I'm assuming sodium or potassium acetate would be formed so maybe fractional distillation wouldn't be necessary, unless I added aq. HCL to form NaCl in situ.
Im surprised u didnt distill off the meoh after hydrolysis. Its the "heads" of your distillation, the first to come over. I believe it has a marked difference in boiling points, so ita easy to fractionally distill off. Then use small amount of magmesium turnjngs in your alcohol, to remove water. Well, the salt u use takes it right to 99 or so, then use magnesium turnings to take to absolute etoh
There is also nowadays "rather anhydrous" ethanol for that indoor-fire-gadgets that claims it is 99,98% ethanol with only MEK to denaturize it. In my experience you can use that directly for most reactions without the drying and purifying step.
Can't methanol be distilled away by discarding the "heads" of the still? (That's what the brewers do as methanol is produced in fermentation). They monitor the temperature at the still head. When it jumps up to the proscribed temperature, they start collecting the "hearts".
Took me a bit to realize as I didn’t find the reaction clearly explained, but the reason that Fischer esterification can’t just happen again is that the acetic acid is converted mostly into sodium acetate
Doug you should check somewhere like cvs or dollar general. They sell ethanol at 70 percent. May be contaminated but Im not sure. It is used as an antiseptic so surely no methanol. I imagine it is cheaper than your denatured alcohol from the hardware store. Maybe not by much though. Just another way to get ethanol
because that is not how it works, the methanol will be slightly more concentrated at the start but as it has a boiling point close to ethanol it will trail into the ethanol for quite awhile unless you have A LOT of plates in your still. its a common misconception that the methanol will come out first before the ethanol.
distilling the clean burning lamp fuel with bitterant the boiling points of BITR and ethanol are really far apart and theres no methanol in it pretty cheap also for what you get
Question: Methanol is poisonous no question, but ethanol is the antidote so the denatured alcohol maybe could be drinkable. Should never be done but in theory? Here in Germany Ethanol is denatured by adding denatonium benzoate :D
your liver has an affinity for ethanol so it will process the ethanol first and then the methanol. ethanol is only an antidote after the consumption of methanol or ethylene glycol.
it's a delay tactic/ band-aid to the problem at best, you would have to get and stay considerably drunk so the methanol can be excreted unchanged, so that your body doesn't metabolize the methanol because the ethanol will get metabolized first. However some methanol will continually be metabolized the entire time. And if the only alcohol you have has methanol in it your constantly going to be administering the poison. So in theory it's still a terrible idea.
The 95% isn't available in all states. I can only get the 75% where I live. Still, it's an expensive source of ethanol compares to just working up the denatured versions.
Even denatured alcohol is expensive. I think the price went up BC all the ethanol being made for fuel. Brewing a sugar wash and distilling that several times is the cheapest way to get ethanol. It's just time consuming.
How to breakdown the ethylene glycol? I have engine coolant based on that chemical and need to dispose it properly, We dont have a recycler agent here so just wondering If i can do the disposal myself with the help of chemical expert? Can you please advise.
You could or you can now check the density of the alcohol so it would be possible to say what is the exact concentration of this alkohol, i don't think methanol will do hudge difrence.
Is it possible to separate the product of your hydrolysis (95% ethanol and 5% methanol) in a rather simple procedure? The boiling points of the two compounds differ by about 14 degrees celsius (methanol 64,7 and ethanol 78.37 degrees). But good that you are back - I missed your videos. Already feared your lab exploded :-)
so two questions [3 really], one how long do you think this batch will last and do you really do this every time you run out? and where do you get your beakers and stuff?
No they don't. It requires a lot of theoretical plates if you are trying to get a really sharp separation, but you can definitely remove MeOH from the mix. Fairly easily if it's low concentration. I still use a column to minimize ethanol loss, but yeah, it's zeotropic. www.ddbst.com/en/EED/VLE/VLE%20Ethanol%3BMethanol.php
It is much easier to but 190 or 200 proof grain alcohol, on ebay. Or to buy a 1 liter bottle of cheap 100 Proof vodka, and distill it, and then use molecular sieves. My favorite is a simple fractional distillation of ethanol rubbing alcohol, from the pharmacy - No methanol, whatsoever!
Not in Michigan. This still might be cheaper if running the hydrolysis and distillation isn't a hassle for you though as the denatured alcohol is not taxed like drinking alcohol.
Denatured ethanol around here is denatured with denatonium benzoate and MEK. The salt can be removed by distillation, but what about the MEK? It's only 1% but I still wanna get rid of it.
Colin Ries unfortunately no, MEK forms an azeotrope with ethanol that is 60%MEK,40%ethanol. The boiling point of MEK is 79.6, ethanol has a BP of 78.4, and the azeotrope boils at 74.8°. So as you can see separation by boiling points would be impossible without very expensive industrial equipment able to resolve temperature differences of 4 degrees.
Where I live you can get ethanol in a pharmacy or even the local store pretty cheap. But you cannot get methanol in any way without a serious permit. All because some dudes kept putting it into schnapps and wine to increase their strength at a lower cost, since it was significantly cheaper than ethanol. People went blind and died.
that happen in the us when the methanol was doubled as a denaturing agent. The guy who pushed this during prohibition was unremorseful for those that died.
Hey Doug can you please try to make liquid chlorine and maybe do some experiments with it, like throwing a piece of sodium in it. Keep up the good work!
I did like the video. I'm an old dude, and with you I sometimes use "slow playback" on my bootleg hardcopy of your video. I do wonder why you didn't just add all the potassium carbonate upfront, but as shown with the watch glass test,, none of it seemed to be dissolved in your "ethanol". The watch glass also showed that no water was left around either. I'll look for the "green" (kind of oxymoronish) Klean Strip denatured alcohol. And just mention (talking green here) how I recirculate a small insulated tank of cooling will with a "cold pack" in it. Rather than leave the water running for three hours
This is likely substantially cheaper as denatured alcohol isn't taxed as drinking alcohol; potassium carbonate and NaOH are cheap as anything. Plus, everclear 190 proof is illegal in Michigan where Doug lives so he would have to get 151 and do a distillation to remove most of the 25% water anyway before drying it with sieves. If the methanol contamination is no problem then this is most likely the most accessible, cheap and easy option
Being condescending to Doug as if your smarter than the people that performs the chemistry. You’ll be surprised while also choking on your own words, if you took the effort to research.
Went out to find some ethanol for a urea recrystallization I'm going to try, and found out that it's cheaper to buy gas and separate it (about the same price, but you end up with gasoline after the fact). Would it be more difficult to purify ethanol separated from gasoline?
Add water to gasoline ethanol mix. The water will pull ethanol out of the gasoline. Water ethanol mix will settle at bottom while sasoline will float. Separate the two. Now you can distill the ethanol to its azatrope concentration. I forget 96% ethanol maybe? Salting out the remainder of the water can get it to virtually 100% ethanol. I'm not sure about other impurities or if methanol is added to gasoline. In theory methanol will distill over first, before ethanol, composing the heads of a distillation, and could be disposed of. The tails of a distillation will progressively be diluted with more water.
@@petevenuti7355 it's a pretty strange smell right? I think it's just 100%, but it's made with ethanol and acetic acid so it can hydrolyze a little and smell like those too, but it should actually be a pretty pleasant smell for a solvent haha! The MSDS says 100% anyway, but it should just smell mostly like canned pears with a touch of ethyl alcohol
I like to live in this country. 3$ for a liter bottle of 97% ethanol with some bitrex in it. You can get rid of that by one single distillation :D Though it has 1% MEK and that's a pain in the ass
going by the azeotropes, using a fractional column for the first 50mL per litre of denatured EtOH and tossing that should get rid of 70 - 80% of that MEK, and by that point it's pretty much drinkable, theoretically at least. But .25% MEK doesn't seem like it'd be a problem for any solvent uses.
You shouldn't need to worry about water. Normally, denatured alcohol is used for paints, etc. which are big time affected by water, so the supplier eliminates water in the first place.
You tested the product for dissolved solids but you did not test it for water, you assumed it was dry without verification. Demonstrating a test for dryness would have been edifying.
