Here in my home town most stores that sell materials for fire places will carry a fuel for an Alcohol based stove called Bio-flame, it is a
Ethanol/Isopropyl Alcohol blend
Both this and the Canadian version upthread are made by Recochem. One assumes that they are the same or almost the same product.
Where did you see that the Canadian version contains isopropyl alcohol? I have not been able to ascertain what the other 1% is in the aussie version.
[Edited on 13-1-2016 by j_sum1]
Separation of ethanol from isopropanol by extractive distillation
Detonationology - 13-1-2016 at 15:44
Patent# US 5445716 A
ABSTRACT
Ethanol is difficult to separate from isopropanol by conventional distillation or rectification because of the proximity of their boiling points.
Ethanol can be readily separated from isopropanol by extractive distillation. Effective agents are dipentene, anisole and ethyl
benzene.
A closer look reveals that the common name for dipentene is limonene
But the list of effective agents for this process is pretty broad and includes:
The problem is that now you have to separate ethanol from limonene, which may not be trivial. If you are going to the trouble of setting up a
distillation, it seems much simpler to just make and distill ethanol from sugar and yeast. Or just buy a specially denatured ethanol that is
compatible with your needs, they have dozens of them. Praxichys - 15-1-2016 at 06:21
I find SDA-40b particularly interesting. It is often used in perfumery, and is available in 4-gallon lots from places where DIY perfume supplies are
sold.
It's 99.88% ethanol, 0.12% t-Butanol, and 0.0006% denatonium benzoate, which can be removed by distillation. A group buy might do well.
No actually, the bitrex, as it is called, is not removed by simple distillation . . .
Why not? The only
places I can find accounts to the contrary are people who are trying to make denatured alcohol drinkable. The problem is that humans can detect the
stuff by taste as low as 0.05ppm.
If it starts at 6ppm and you remove 99% of it, you'll still be able to taste it easily! Naturally, just about everything will co-distill to some
degree. Even 6ppm wouldn't hurt the majority of reactions using ethanol, but a quick distillation would certainly remove the vast majority of it.
Think about it... its melting point is something like 165°C, compared to 78°C boiling ethanol. The separation should be pretty efficient,
unless I'm totally missing something fundamental here...hissingnoise - 15-1-2016 at 10:52
Quote:
The only places I can find accounts to the contrary are people who are trying to make denatured alcohol drinkable
If it were possible, there'd be a long-standing, clandestine industry around it producing cheap, potable ethanol, I'd imagine!
[Edited on 16-1-2016 by hissingnoise]XeonTheMGPony - 15-1-2016 at 12:33
usual I just make it when needed in a fast n dirty method, it is low efficiency production wise, 5L sugar water with bread yeast tossed in, once the
air lock stops bubbling I distill it under precise temp control.
But it is energy and labor intensive, but you end up with fairly pure clean alcohol that can be used for cooking and medicine as well as a reagent
Eventually I desire to make fulminated mercury and this ideally will do the job for much less hassle! But some point I need to fabricate a proper
reflux still for my self.hissingnoise - 15-1-2016 at 12:41
Quote:
I desire to make fulminated mercury and this ideally will do the job for much less hassle!
I can tell you that the bitrex in biofires ethanol seems not to interfere in MF synthesis, in any way.
