Little_Ghost_again - 7-10-2014 at 06:27
Hi
On a deep deep garage forage I found some very old car windscreen wash concentrate 
, is blue in colour and smell's a bit like perfume.
Label just says contains ethanol. So I am gong to distil it as there is about 3 liters in the bottle.
My question is.........
Is it worth refluxing this mix for a bit first then a make shift fractionating column? OR
not worth the hassle and straight distill? All I am hoping for is to get rid of the colour and the smell, I can live with water in it and methanol (if
there is any). This will be used for plant extractions or if it goes really well TLC.
As a side note I went looking for sodium free dishwasher salt! dosnt look like this part of Scotland has any 
.
Little_Ghost_again - 7-10-2014 at 06:34
going to try a straight distil first (lazy day).
hyfalcon - 7-10-2014 at 10:34
Be lucky to get 300ml out of it.
Little_Ghost_again - 7-10-2014 at 11:05
300ml is not a bad reward for skill polishing (I wonder how long I can get away using that excuse lol).
This time my distilation is going ok! it is taking ages!!! But I have intentionally done everything very slowly, its more a simmer than full on boil
in the flask but I am getting something coming over at 79c with a oil bath at 104c.
hyfalcon - 7-10-2014 at 13:47
Sounds about right.
There will always be a differential between the heat source and the temp at the still head.
[Edited on 7-10-2014 by hyfalcon]
Little_Ghost_again - 7-10-2014 at 14:32
It went really well, I kept the oil dead steady at 104c raising slightly towards the end to 107c.
I got fractions at 74c slow drips but lasted 15 mins, then 79c slightly more drip rate lasted 60 mins ish, then jump to 84 c only lasted 15 mins
because I had to stop for the night.
I did it all really slow, the 74c stuff isnt much but has almost no smell! The flask was a long necked round bottom claisian flask, it refluxed pretty
good with loads of drips back into the flask and down the sides for a good hour before anything came over. I raised the oil temp very very slowly each
time.
There is still loads left in the flask I will finish this tomorrow, I also added salt at the start in the hope any ethanol and water azeotrope might
split. I dont think it did though. Was a change from my normal wack the plate on high get a boil going hard in ten mins kind of thing. It took much
longer than normal but all fractions smell very distinctly different.
I thought of adding some almond oil to a little of each then shaking, put this on a tlc plate and chloroform and IPA to develop. My thinking is if the
fractions really are that different then oil bands will move differently?? Or is this just bollox?