Duster
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Registered: 19-7-2003
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Purity of toluene
I have been looking everywhere for toluene... I havent gone to Ace yet, though I will today... However, I did pick up a can of "Lacquer
Thinner" that contains toluene.
The catch is, after reading the entire back label, it said this:
"Contains: Petroleum Distillate, Methonol, Toluene, Acetone, Methyl Ethyl Ketone, Propylene Glycol, Monomethyl Ether Acetate, Ethyl Acetate and
Xylene"
So basically I have no idea the purity of this. In fact, I dont know if this is supposed to have any reasonable purity of anything! So any way I can
purify? Though I suppose I should just look for a can strictly labeled "Toluene" I suppose...
Duster
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Blackout
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mine contains just toluene and methyl alcohol!
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BromicAcid
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.... usually the ingredients listing is in order of the amount present. Your mixture is not something that I would want to attempt to purify, the
variability of azeotropes and closeness of boiling points of some of the chemicals would make it a pain in the butt. Carefull fractioning would be
the only possibility I see unless you can do large scale gas chromatography.
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Duster
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I think I'll just look around, or bu it online...
Duster
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12AX7
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When doing my first preflight (on a Piper Cherokee) I remarked to the instructor that the gasoline (100LL) smells a lot like lacquer thinner, he said
yep that's pretty much it, you could fill up the tank with it [lacquer thinner] but it would be a bit more expensive (despite 100LL being
$2.50/gallon at the time!).
Just get some Goof-off or something, IIRC that's pretty much toluene. AFAIK, most hardware or paint stores carry straight toluene in tins too,
right next to the acetone and denatured alcohol.
Tim
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prole
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OTC Toluene
I don't know where you are, but in my area (Motown), it is available at most any local hardware, sold as "100% pure". The 'big
orange' hardware store has stopped carrying it for some reason, but a check around various other smaller chains revealed an abundant supply.
Not knowing how pure it really was, I ran it through a simple distillation. I charged the flask with 600 ml Toluene, filtering it first, and
collected 500 mL toluene (bp 110-111 C). Remaining in the stillpot was about 100mL of a slightly golden-hued liquid and some undissolved particulate
matter. I've read that OTC solvents may contain a rust-inhibitor (perhaps the golden colour), but what are the particles? My glass was
pre-rinsed and dry prior to charging it, and the toluene was filtered (coffee filter), prior to charging the flask. But my collected toluene was
clear and colourless, with no particles. So now I always distill my OTC solvents to ensure optimum purity.
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ordenblitz
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--------quote----------------------------------
When doing my first preflight (on a Piper Cherokee) I remarked to the instructor that the gasoline (100LL) smells a lot like lacquer thinner
--------quote----------------------------------
100 low lead avgas used to be predominantly 2,2,4-Trimethylpentane (isooctane) directly distilled from certain crude stocks, with a little tetraethyl
lead.
Now days it is a reformed product by alkylation of a greater fraction of most any crude stock. Sometimes toluene is added as an antiknock additive but
in small amounts. I can’t imagine you could smell it over the butane or isopentane but anything is possible. I don’t think distilling avgas would
be a particularly good source of toluene.
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