I recently appear to have lost my sole source of ethyl acetate, which was Target brand non-acetone nail polish remover. Where I live hardware stores
don't sell ethyl acetate as methyl ethyl ketone substitute, and the ethyl acetate nail polish remover has completely disappeared from Target's
website. Does anyone else have any OTC sources of ethyl acetate? I realize that it's a fairly easy compound to synthesize, but I tend to use it to
make ethanol and acetic acid as well as straight use as a solvent.Crowfjord - 2-8-2016 at 14:01
Same problem here. I haven't seen ethyl acetate nail polish remover in quite a while, and since Klean Strip discontinued MEK substitute, I've had to
resort to ordering from Ebay .
[Edited on 3-8-2016 by Crowfjord]RocksInHead - 2-8-2016 at 14:11
Sometimes it is cheaper to order it online from souces such as ebay, not that I don't like purchasing otc chems, but M.E.K substitute is only tech.
grade at best, when you can buy 1000ml of Reagent grade stuff from ebay for 15$.clearly_not_atara - 2-8-2016 at 15:10
Metaldehyde is OTC as a slug poison; you can distill acetaldehyde and react this with a catalytic amount of aluminium ethoxide to ethyl acetate.
Acetaldehyde is also an excellent starting material for the synthesis of acetonitrile, though this is a slightly more hazardous procedure (because
halogens are involved).Magpie - 2-8-2016 at 15:34
Metaldehyde is OTC as a slug poison; you can distill acetaldehyde ....
The liquid slug baits I see are 3.25-4% metaldehyde. Have you distilled this from a slug bait?
[Edited on 2-8-2016 by Magpie]beerwiz - 30-8-2016 at 19:22
You can get it from beauty supply stores as Non-acetone nail polish remover by the gallon. It has some dye in it and an alcohol, so distill it off, do
a water wash, then dry with K2CO3, P2O5, Na2SO4, calcium hydride, or Molecular sieve 0.4nm. Microwaved MgSO4 or CaCO3 (lime) should work as well to
remove the last bits of water.
[Edited on 31-8-2016 by beerwiz]Dr.Bob - 30-8-2016 at 19:32
I do like EtOAc as a solvent for chromatography, often with hexanes. For many purposes, some types of kerosene, white gas, rubber cement thinner,
etc will work as a hydrocarbon, but most gasoline is now a complex mix of 100's of compounds, including aromatics, aliphatics, alcohols, ethers, and
much more. Finding ethyl acetate is pricing, even for labs, much like acetonitrile has become. Butyl acetate is also used as nail polish remover,
and it might also work OK for chromatography, and some places used to pay to dispose of used nail polish remover as waste, maybe you can find a nail
place that will give you the waste to distill.
Might be possible to make your own from E85 and GAA, as the hydrocarbons are less of an issue there, and you should be able to distill the EtOAc from
the mixture to some sort of purity. Melgar - 30-8-2016 at 19:34
If you use acetone and MEK with any regularity, you can distill that mixture from many brands of lacquer thinner. IIRC, lacquer thinners won't ever
contain the dreaded "petroleum distillates", and the main other ingredient I've seen in it has been methanol. However, Kleen-Strip's "green" brand
seems to have the fewest ingredients. Not sure what percentage is ethyl acetate, but it does smell pretty strongly of it.Bert - 31-8-2016 at 03:37
