How to Make Anhydrous Ethanol from Cheap Liquor 

Indeed. there's no better use for those bottles.

Absolutely!!, it's incredible how much can be done affordably with hardware and grocery store supplies. Thank you for watching and for your comment.

Exactly, that's what clandestine chemistry is all about isn't it, simple setups, easily obtainable chemicals or ways to make precursors or solvents etc(like the distillation of Sassafras albidum oil to get safrole) and producing high quality/purity substances

@@sinenomine7405 What is your unmet need that makes your ruin at home chemistry for everyone else?

@@AndysCatalystI mean crackheads have knowing this for a long time, yawl just figuring it out?

Hahahahah, it added authenticity to the video

felt it so hard haha! that said im stealing that trick, beats using broken glassware

Use radiator fluid and whiteboard chalk, and to separate acetone from nail polish you mix it with oil then separate and distill the oil, 100% guaranteed to be anhydrous as the water and oil don't mix. It would be great if i could find an oil to dissolve ethanol.

@@fss1704 I'm fortunate to still have acetone OTC where I am, but this is a good idea. Never heard of any solvent you could use to pull ethanol out of water though, but who knows.

Depending on where you read it, people say that the azeotrope is at 96% to 97% by volume. I just ignore it and took creative license by calling my 96% ethanol "azeotropic". I'm really glad you enjoyed the video!

thanks for the advice!!

Only do this if you want to drink butanol

would the ethanol react with the calcium metal?

Thank you!!

@@AndysCatalyst you are very welcome.

Radiator fluid, ethylene glycol is lightyears better than glycerine. Dried whiteboard chalk for the storage.

I have added table salt to 70% isopropanol, it made 90% isopropanol float on top of the aqueous salt layer. For distilling home brew, I always add salt to the first distillation, because it reduces foaming. To the second distillation, I add washing soda (sodium carbonate), because it converts the acetic acid contaminant into sodium acetate, which stays behind in the boiling flask, so giving purer ethanol. This video made me think that adding glycerine and a drying tube would be best for the third distillation.

I did wonder what happened when you pay for views, so like its these comments and accounts, sure is sad you can’t do it any other way.

Long time ago, I was told to add Sodium Hydroxide to the Water Ethanol azeotrope in order to get anhydrous ethanol. Personally, I don't see any reason that Potassium Hydroxide wouldn't do the same.

That happened to me too. Only once, but it taught me to be very gentle with PTFE wrapped joints. I still prefer PTFE tape than joint grease.

@@davidestabrook5367 me too - almost nothing to clean, won't react with your reagents (99% of the time), better seal in many cases, and only realistic solution for H2SO4 distillation. And if I'm doing something that isn't too nasty (as in this video for instance), I just don't use anything on the joints. Never got one stuck so far 🤞.

No offense taken! Thanks for the comment and the advice. I have never broken anything, but you're right, I might be putting those joints under more pressure than needed. I will continue using PTFE tape, but I'll be more gentle. Thank you again.

​@@fmdjYou can use sulfuric acid itself as joint grease for distillation of sulfuric acid. But in general I prefer PTFE too as ordinary grease is a pain to properly remove unless you waste a lot of useful apolar solvent.

@@lagrangiankid378 thx, yes I know that people do that, but firstly this requires already having concentrated H2SO4 so you have kind of an egg and chicken problem here (sure, you could use drain cleaner H2SO4 on the joints but I would fear it contaminates the product), and secondly - but maybe it's me doing it wrong somehow - every time I've tried that I have had significant H2SO4 vapours leaks, and that's very unpleasant to say the least. But when I use PTFE, I don't even need a fume hood (this is the result of a lot of experimentation and tuning of the setup, don't try it at home - I mean potential inexperienced people reading this, not you specifically ; not that I am very experienced either lol).

Hey! good question, the idea is not of my own. I found a thesis online talking about its possible use for drying ethanol in a continuous distillation column. So, I Try it with my batch lab equipment, and just worked!!

Good catch! Yeah, I mentioned it in the video. I'm missing another stand there. I had to be very careful not to cause an accident. I was distilling ethanol with a Jenga tower made out of glass.

That's true, by now my 100% ethanol, should be 99 or 98%. It has to be stored with molecular sieves in the bottle, otherwise it will catch water from anywhere.

It might not be possible to obtain dry ethanol from such lower concentration. However, if I had a fractional column long enough, the separation could be feasible from concentrations of ethanol lower than the azeotropic one.

woww! I had no idea, I understand the reasons why, but can't help feeling sad for any chemists over there.

I don't think that you can perform this without cold water flowing through the condenser. Just natural convection with the air in the room is not enough to condense all the ethanol. It could even be dangerous, as a cloud of flammable ethanol would form in the room.

hahahaha yes, it's exactly that!

You're forgetting an annoying physical property called FREEZING POINT DEPRESSION! Yeah. Good luck trying to wring EtOH from water by freezing that mixture! 😂🤣

@@schautamatic yeah, I know that water-alcohol mixture doesn't freezes per se, it forms a frozen gel where you need to squeeze remaining liquid from gelled mixture, but separation by that principle is possible.

Freezing to increase purity only works up to about 15%. The freezing point rapidly gets too cold for a normal freezer. If you use dry ice or liquid nitrogen of course you can do better.

Ethene doesn't react with water under normal conditions

I tried, but the glycerin degraded and turned yellow. You would need a vacuum distillation to do that.

It could be cheaper and easier. But, would it be more fun?

@@AndysCatalyst I think so. I enjoyed my experiments with ethanol a lot more than distilling. But, point taken.

Not available for everyone.

Don't drink non food grade ethanol. It is a 'waste' side product from another chemical reaction or petrochemical. It will have trace amounts of other chemicals or toluene in it. Same goes for naoh from hardware stores. Yes it is 100% but it will be contaminated with some metals. Will it make you sick? I dont know but is it worth it?

If time isn't a factor for you, you can brew your own, for the price of sugar. Just a bit of fruit, or bakers yeast, and sugar.

Calcium chloride seems to react with ethanol, making it unsuitable to use as a drying agent. However, you could use magnesium metal, which would react with the water, thus drying the ethanol. If you ask me, I would say that molecular sieves, and glycerine are the best methods to obtain anhydrous ethanol.

@@AndysCatalyst What would be the reaction between CaCl2 and ethanol? I'm quite sure Mg is more likely to react with ethanol to form the ethoxide.

​@@user255 You're absolutely right, ethanol reacts with Mg. Sorry I wasn't clear. Mg reacts with water and produces MgO and hydrogen gas. At the same time, it produces the ethoxide you mentioned by reacting with ethanol. However, that ethoxide reacts with more water, producing the original ethanol and more MgO. In the end, the result is Mg plus water producing MgO and H2 gas. Now, regarding the CaCl2, some people in the internet say it reacts with ethanol, producing a complex, but in other places, they say that it could be used with no issue. I haven't tried it, so I cannot speak for myself, but I will sustain my point. Molecular sieves or glycerine are, in my opinion, the more straightforward methods to get 100% ethanol. Thank you so much for your answer!, btw. Regards!!

@@AndysCatalyst I see. I would be interesting to see even more low tech approach and try to use NaCl, etc to concentrate ethanol.

@@user255 I'm sure there are a bunch of substances that can break the azeotrope as glycerine and CaCl2 do. So, yeah, I might try that in the future, thank you so much for the suggestion!

thank you!