Shop for science gear here: theactionlab.com/ I show you how salt can separate water and alcohol See the full video here: • How To Separate Alcoho... Subscribe to my other channel here: / theactionlab #shorts
@@moonliteX you do know sugar doesn't provide the energy in an energy drink that is provided by the caffeine possibly the other vitamins and amino acids present but mostly the caffeine. Contrary to popular belief sugar doesn't actually make you hyper
@@ZakkandtheJ no i'm talking about energy. as in fuel. as in carbohydrates. like the scientific definiton of "energy" those amino acids and caffeine don't have shit of pure "energy" thus an energy drink without energy is an oxymoron.
This is a somewhat lesser known practice in chemistry, it's commonly used for "drying" organic solvents from any water present. Though people would normally use something like molecular sieves or anhydrous chemical salts
Thats actually not what's happening here. In the case you described the water molecules actually physically bind to the Substance you add. For example Magnesiun sulfate really likes to be in the hydrated form, and so the anhydrous form attaches the water to itself and can that way be filtered off, leaving the organic solvent behind with less water in it...
@@nilswilling That I actually understand, I guess I didn't phrase it properly 😅. What I mean is that adding salt, NaCl, helps to separate out organic solvents which are miscible in water
@@tripplefives1402 So? In he comment he mentioned molekular sieves, and salting out (what you describe, and what's shown in the video) is something different. With molsieves you are not seperaring layers...
@@tripplefives1402 What does that have to do with any of the comments above?? With all respect I think you're the one missing the point. Wether this is drying or not was never the question. So thanks for answering questions no one asked, and thanks for instantly trying to insult me (poor job btw) as soon as I disagree, that says everything about you...
You have to specify which alcohol you are talking about. The experiment you did was with isopropyl alcohol, not with ethanol! If you try this with ethanol, the salt will precipitate instead. Ethanol is more polar than isopropyl and will not separate from water thar easily.
Very helpful, thanks 👍🏻 I'm currently training as a chemical laboratory assistant, I was given the task of separating them at school and didn't know the answer
I once tried to make limoncello in Ireland but I couldn't find 95% alcohol in the stores (which you can buy in grocery stores in Italy). Apparently in ROI the maximum legal alcohol is 40% or something like that. Had I known this trick....
@@harry2928 Still available in Oregon I bring bottles to my family in Washington every time I return for a visit. I was stoked when I moved down here and saw it was available.
@@docE3885 dude I just get 200 proof from my university. They make it on campus for the labs using the non benzene method. So it's totally safe to drink if diluted
You know where this might have relevance is seperating oil contaminated snow, ice or water. In States where it's a concern, they use a combination of heat and gravity to try to extract oil contamination, but this salt distillation process might work even better provided sufficient salt is available.
Heat and gravity sounds like a more efficient process. You would need to use immense amounts of salt and then dispose of the saltwater as a waste product.
hmm just spit balling here, but alcohol dehydrates pretty heavily and eating salt adds electrolytes to the body. The way we use "hydration" in our language is a bit annoying. When we're thirsty we don't just want water, we want electrolytes too. And we can get those with salt water, sports drinks will always contain salt and sugar to "quench your thirst" as they say. Not sure how this relates to hangovers, that's something to experiment with maybe? Our metabolisms are very complex.
@@Broockle well alcohol is a diuretic meaning it causes you to urinate more frequently which can lead to dehydration which is just part of the hangover. From what I’ve heard its the metabolite of alcohol, acetaldehyde, that causes some of the other symptoms of hangover. after further research i found that many of the other symptoms are associated with how quickly the alcohol is eliminated, because longer periods mean more alcohol crosses the blood-brain barrier. The source also claimed that oxidative stress is also significantly related to hangover severity. oxidative stress that occurs early in alcohol consumption is associated with reduced hangover severity, while oxidative stress in a later stage of alcohol consumption is associated with increased hangover severity.
@@Broockle It makes sense whst you say. You can also get thirsty (or higher osmotic pressure), if you drink/ eat too much salt/ sugar. Somehow I would never come to the idea of eating a spooful of pure salt, than rather eat something "normal". I would be too afraid of accidentally killing myself. 😅
My brother also would say to eat salty soft pretzels or vinegar-salt chips to prevent a hangover. Considering he ended up in AA after drunk-driving his truck off a cliff and nearly going paralyzed, I always assumed he knew what he was talking about when it came to pub lore.
Can this thechnique used to separate alchool from water instead of distilling them? (several chemical probs here, if I remember well... methanhole for example)
This worked for me once with equate isopropyl alcohol but I couldn’t get it to work with Win Co isopropyl alcohol, I’m not sure why but very cool experiment
Fun fact, you can do this much easier with Isopropyl alcohol. When I did this in college during some backyard chemistry separations, I added much less salt.
The two colours are also different densities. They're both lighter than water and heavier than alcohol. But the white ones are lighter than the water-alcohol mixture and the blue ones are heavier than the mixture.
But this only works with Isopropyl or Methanol alcohol?!? (Or I'm wrong?) As far as I know, it is not possible to separate ethanol from water with the help of salt. I mention this because the video thumbnail shows drinks that contain ethanol...
maybe it's helpful to put numbers on it. remember that things float in a liquid that is denser than they are. let's say that, before mixing, the salt water solution is 120% the density of water, and the alcohol is 80%. If they are combined in equal volumes then the mixture has a combined density of 100% the density of water Lets say the white beads have a density of 90% and the blue bead of 110%. When the liquid is mixed then the white bead will float to the top as (90 is less than 100), and blue will sink (110 is more than 100) as the alcohol and salt water separate, the salt water at the bottom becomes 120% and the alcohol at the top 80%. The white 90% beads sink in the 80% solution and the blue 110% beads float int the 120% solution One thing that made this a bit confusing was that the guy in the video descried the white beads as floating in alcohol - i guess he meant sinking in alcohol (but floating in the alcohol/salt mixture) otherwise it doesn't quite make sense :)
They're likely made out of two different kinds of plastic which would make one want to go to the alcohol layer and the other want to go to the water layer
They both float on water and sink in alcohol so they come together when the liquids separate. However, the blue ones are slightly heavier than the two liquids mixed and the white ones are slightly lighter, so when shaken, they separate.
So, what's the composition either side of the phase boundary? You're gonna have salt, water and alcohol on either side, but what are the concentrations?
You can't do this with alcohol meant for drinking. You have to use something like rubbing alcohol that has been distilled to the point of purity. You might get a few more proof out of a beer if you added a crap ton of salt to it but it really wouldn't be worth it.
If you want a product for consumption, don't use rubbing alcohol. It has orally-toxic additives which are difficult to separate, mixed in with it. It's "denatured".
Joke's on them. It's denatured with small but significant amounts of methanol or other substance, just enough to make it toxic for consumption but safe for topical use.
I thought they denature alcohol by adding something like denatonium benzoate (the most bitter chemical known). I would think even separating the alcohol with this method would leave enough DB in the alcohol layer to make it completely undrinkable.
@@olmostgudinaf8100 Salt does dissolve in ethanol in ~0.65 g/L. However I just tried this with 40% ethanol and NaCl and it does not work at all. Some other salt is needed to salt out ethanol. Maybe CaCl2 would work.
Anhydrous ethanol (100% alcohol) is made with a similar method using molecular sieves. You actually can't get 100% via distillation alone. I assume these could be used to lower energy usage in commercial/industrial alcohol production however it would be much more expensive to purchase and dry these sieves for reuse and also take much longer. The 95-97% achievable from distillation is easily enough for any practical uses.
The salt could be reused but it’d have to be dried first. The energy needed for drying would cancel out most of the savings you could get from avoiding distillation. Maybe all the saving or maybe it’d even cost more to use the salt method.
@@neirenoir depends if you’re worried about it being food safe or not. Gonna have random unsafe things getting into it out in the open for solar evaporation. If it’s an industrial environment worried about cost, you’d have to have so much salt in various levels of dryness to keep the process running that it’d wash out your savings due to working capital and the interest expense that entails. If you aren’t worried about it being food safe and are doing it as random batches or just personal use, sure maybe just letting it dry in the sun might work. PS I’m a chemical engineer so I default to looking at these things from an industrial and continuous perspective.
@@arya6085 Nope, I know how to get it to 98.65 and I know a guy died recently who had contracts with nascar to not tell anyone how it's done. Yes, the world has been tricked, look at nascar for the truth. You can get it to 99.9999 through vacuum distillation. I said his name they would swallow air and run because they kept it this secret this long. But my guess is a few kids with a know-how of computers could get in and release this truth to the world.
Is it PURE alcohol on top ? Like if (just an example) we put enough salt in some cheap medical solutions or house cleaning etc. that are highly concentrated in alcohol, we can get pure alcohol that we could get and put in some drinks ? Because that could be dangerous if some teens watch this video and try it and get poisoned :/
I got it pure enough to like 90 to 95 percent and it indeed did not taste very good. It did get us drunk with ease though. High percentage alcohol never tastes good anyway.
This is how inmates in prison get alcohol from hand sanitizer. I doubt it settles the other contaminates (fragrances and other Ingredients) but people will drink it anyways. Crazy lol.
If it phase-separates, sure, the top phase will be stronger than the original vodka. However, there will be salt in that phase too, and not all the alcohol will be in tbat phase.
Wait maybe I'm dumb...he said "the white ones float in alcohol and the blue ones float in water", so why does the white beads sink to the middle when the mixture separates? Isn't the top layer alcohol and bottom layer water?
I think he was a little imprecise in the explanation. My understanding is that both the blue and white beads are heavier than alcohol but lighter than water. However, when they are vigorously mixed, the water-alcohol mixture is at an intermediate density. The white beads are lighter than that mixture and the blue beads are heavier, so initially the white beads float and the blue ones sink. As the alcohol and water separate however, the top layer becomes less dense and the bottom layer becomes more dense, which pushes the beads to the center.