Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Methanol from denatured spirit ?

metalresearcher - 3-5-2020 at 11:44

Recently I distilled the blue household spirit for testing my newly obtained 30cm Vigreux column.
I noticed that after ten minutes some liquid was dripping in the receiving flask and it stoppted almost after ten minutes while there was still plenty of blue liquid in the still flask. I measures the temperature on top of the Vigreux (with an infrared pyrometer, because I am unable to remove the top stopper from the condenser) and measured 64-66C and when it stopped dripping it raised to 70+ C, so I shut down the distillation.

Does this mean that a more methanol rich (azeotrope ?) is received ?

Note: I do NOT make or endorse making drinkable C2H5OH from denatured spirit which is ILLEGAL and DANGEROUS for your health !


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artemov - 4-5-2020 at 21:30

Quote: Originally posted by metalresearcher  
Recently I distilled the blue household spirit for testing my newly obtained 30cm Vigreux column.
I noticed that after ten minutes some liquid was dripping in the receiving flask and it stoppted almost after ten minutes while there was still plenty of blue liquid in the still flask. I measures the temperature on top of the Vigreux (with an infrared pyrometer, because I am unable to remove the top stopper from the condenser) and measured 64-66C and when it stopped dripping it raised to 70+ C, so I shut down the distillation.

Does this mean that a more methanol rich (azeotrope ?) is received ?

Note: I do NOT make or endorse making drinkable C2H5OH from denatured spirit which is ILLEGAL and DANGEROUS for your health !


According to this, ethanol and methanol do not form an azeotrope. But their boiling points are only 14 C apart, so you will need to do a very effective fractional distillation.
http://www.ddbst.com/en/EED/AZD/AZD%20Ethanol%3BMethanol.php

Refinery - 4-5-2020 at 21:56

Where I live, ethanol is never denatured with methanol because of it's toxicity. People tend to drink any surrogate alcohols they think gets then wasted, so people died in the dozens until they stopped this. Apart from this homemade moonshine has never proved to cause any poisonings, but all the methanol is sourced from artificial sources.

Separating methanol from ethanol requires you to get distillation head that you can control reflux ratio with. I used to distill potable alcohol with bokakob still.

http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=155286

[Edited on 5-5-2020 by Refinery]

draculic acid69 - 5-5-2020 at 03:14

My country also stopped letting methanol be used in denatured alcohol for the same reason. U can buy "specially methylated spirits" that's 2%methanol but it's rare and expensive. What country do you live in?

Refinery - 5-5-2020 at 03:31

Had to add that if your only goal is to get methanol for reagent use, you should consider purchasing it. It should be mostly OTC in most countries and google is your friend, and it could also be found as windshield solutions and other formulas with MSDS check.

At least where I live, pure technical grade methanol is sold in various sizes, ranging from 5L canisters to a full barrel.