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Hazard to Others
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Registered: 22-10-2015
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Separate pentane from ether?
Trying to get my ether from starting gas bottles, but all seems to pack pentane together with the diethyl ether. They have almost identical boiling
points. So how would one go about separating them?
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Mabus
Wiki Master
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I too have been thinking of a way to separate the two solvents from some starter fluids, as they're both very useful.
I noticed that methanol and pentane are listed as immiscible with another, and I was wondering if mixing the starter fluid with anhydrous methanol
would allow to separate the pentane from diethyl ether and then fractionally distill the decanted methanol-diethyl ether solution to separate the two
components. Unfortunately I can't find any information about the miscibility of methanol-pentane mixtures, nor if the two form an azeotrope (or all
three).
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AvBaeyer
National Hazard
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Ether is soluble in conc H2SO4 whereas pentane is not so that provides a possible though dicey separation method. Dilution of the acid and heating the
diluted mixture will drive off the ether. Unfortunately, I do not have at hand the solubility of ether in sulfuric acid so no comment on true
practicality can be made.
AvB
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UC235
National Hazard
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Don't bother? As extraction solvents, they're similar enough to work well. I've also run grignards in starting fluid ether that clearly contained some
slightly higher boiling hydrocarbons and they went smoothly and in high yield.
If you need truly pure ether for something, make it from ethanol.
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