DIBALL
Harmless
Posts: 25
Registered: 4-1-2017
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
|
|
Diethyl Ether from Denatured alcohol?
Since pure ethanol is quite expensive and denatured alcohol is only 1/10th of the price, I wanted to know, if there are any problems with the other
added contents?
Where I live, MEK, methanol and/or denatonium are usually added to the ethanol.
I dried the alcohol with magnesium sulfate, but it looks like the product is already really pure since I didn´t need a lot.
Next I wanted to let it react with conc. sulfuric acid and then distill it. So if there are any side products, the distillation should get rid of
them, or do I miss anything important?
|
|
|
JJay
International Hazard
Posts: 3440
Registered: 15-10-2015
Member Is Offline
|
|
Removing the methanol is an enormous amount of work, although in my opinion it is legal if you're just making ether. If you can, get a variety that
doesn't contain methanol.
|
|
|
DIBALL
Harmless
Posts: 25
Registered: 4-1-2017
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
|
|
Is there an easy way to find out, if my product contains methanol? On the bottle is only written, that it is denatured ...
|
|
|
PirateDocBrown
National Hazard
Posts: 570
Registered: 27-11-2016
Location: Minnesota
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
|
|
If you etherate an ethanol-methanol mixture, and carry off the product by distillation, the side products will escape into the gas phase.
Product BP
Dimethyl ether -24
Methoxyethane 7
Diethyl ether 35
Do an inert gas sparge at RT, if what left might disturb you.
|
|
|
JJay
International Hazard
Posts: 3440
Registered: 15-10-2015
Member Is Offline
|
|
Some denatured alcohol is actually more than 50% methanol and will produce very little diethyl ether if used directly.
|
|
|
JJay
International Hazard
Posts: 3440
Registered: 15-10-2015
Member Is Offline
|
|
Quote: Originally posted by DIBALL  | | Is there an easy way to find out, if my product contains methanol? On the bottle is only written, that it is denatured ... |
It usually won't contain exact figures, but the SDS can give you some idea of what is in your denatured alcohol.
|
|
|
DIBALL
Harmless
Posts: 25
Registered: 4-1-2017
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
|
|
Okay I just found the safety sheet and it says that it contains 3 things: ethanol, MEK and water.
Ethanol is 95%
MEK 1%
and the rest is water
MEK shouldn´t react with the sulfuric acid or ethanol? Or could the sulfuric acid act as a catalyst for a reaction between ethanol and MEK?
Since MEK and Diethyl Ether have such different boiling points, it should be easy to separate them
|
|
|
clearly_not_atara
International Hazard
Posts: 2789
Registered: 3-11-2013
Member Is Offline
Mood: Big
|
|
| Quote: Originally posted by JJay | | Some denatured alcohol is actually more than 50% methanol and will produce very little diethyl ether if used directly. |
I think they stopped doing this most places because it kills people.
|
|
|
JJay
International Hazard
Posts: 3440
Registered: 15-10-2015
Member Is Offline
|
|
The Klean Strip "fuel" alcohol contains an outrageous amount of methanol: https://www.korellis.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/0...
I assume it tastes terrible, but I haven't tried any
|
|
|
anewsoul
Harmless
Posts: 32
Registered: 26-1-2017
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
|
|
And I've been using this Klean Strip alcohol thinking it was reasonably pure ethanol.... well forget that. Thanks for that information.
|
|
|
Morgan
International Hazard
Posts: 1694
Registered: 28-12-2010
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
|
|
Klean Strip Denatured Alcohol
Ethyl alcohol 30.0 -50.0 %
Methanol 40.0 -60.0 %
Additional Chemical Specific percentage of composition is being withheld as a trade secret.
If methanol was added at a possible 40%, wouldn't the ethanol content have to be 60% or are there other secret ingredients?
https://www.korellis.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/0...
Klean Strip Green Denatured Alcohol
Ethyl alcohol 80.0 -90.0 %
Methanol < 5.0 %
Acetic acid, ethyl ester {Ethyl acetate} 1.5 %
Specific percentage of composition is being withheld as a trade secret.
http://www.kleanstrip.com/uploads/documents/QKGA75003_SDS-16...
[Edited on 23-4-2017 by Morgan]
|
|
|
JJay
International Hazard
Posts: 3440
Registered: 15-10-2015
Member Is Offline
|
|
Though I don't suggest this, I've actually distilled it before. It contains a little water, as well as something that isn't miscible with water. I
think someone suggested it might be MIBK. But Klean Strip "fuel" denatured alcohol certainly contains a *lot* of methanol.
|
|
|
PirateDocBrown
National Hazard
Posts: 570
Registered: 27-11-2016
Location: Minnesota
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
|
|
Yes, if you are gonna make ether, use the "Green" stuff. I clean it up and use it for lab ethanol. Doug's Lab has a very good video doing just that.
Better still, for ether just purify starter fluid.
|
|
|
alking
Hazard to Others
Posts: 252
Registered: 11-3-2016
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
|
|
Ketones will tautomerize with strong acids, but that shouldn't really matter as it's no more or less of a contaminant than the ketone. If you cannot
fractionally distill out the ketone, or the ether from the ketone, you can react the alcohol with a base which will cause the ketone to polymerize.
From there you can distill off the alcohol to recover it, leaving the polyketone behind, or you can neutralize the base and form the ether directly as
I don't think there would be any side reactions, however you wouldn't be sure the ketone was fully polymerized that way.
I have tried to use that green stuff before and for me there did not seem to be close to what they claimed, it likely varies per locale even though
they share an sds. I refluxed it 3x in NaOH and distilled it and each time some of this foul smelling substance remained, I'm not sure what it could
have been. It was supposed to be 95% EtOH with a small amount of ethyl acetate, maybe MiBK, and <1% unlisted denaturents. However it seemed at
least 10% of it would polymerize to some almost black product and I gave up as after the third trial it still would keep occurring. After all that
work it's cheaper just to distill vodka or something or just buy some lab grade.
|
|
|
DrMethyl
Harmless
Posts: 34
Registered: 23-11-2015
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
|
|
| Quote: Originally posted by DIBALL | Okay I just found the safety sheet and it says that it contains 3 things: ethanol, MEK and water.
Ethanol is 95%
MEK 1%
and the rest is water
MEK shouldn´t react with the sulfuric acid or ethanol? Or could the sulfuric acid act as a catalyst for a reaction between ethanol and MEK?
Since MEK and Diethyl Ether have such different boiling points, it should be easy to separate them |
Hi, if there is 4% or more water, you can predry with MgSO4 or Na2SO4 anhydrous.
Its a good point there is only 1% MEK, it wont fuck up your reaction.
|
|
|
Booze
Hazard to Others
Posts: 121
Registered: 26-2-2017
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
|
|
There is denatonium in the stuff where I live too. Is it possible to boil it down completely to get denatonium benzoate? I wanna use it for pranks
|
|
|
Nicodem
|
Thread Moved
6-5-2017 at 12:15 |
![[*]](images/xpblue/default_icon.gif){kind=icon}
