Andy's Catalyst
Andy's Catalyst
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In this channel I'll be exploring experimental chemistry, beginning with the basics such as extracting substances or doing simple separation processes. However, in the future, I'll be venturing into more complicated endeavors. Please check it out when you have the time, and feel free to enlighten me with your feedback.
Warm regards,
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There is no such thing as cheap liquor in Britain, and it's illegal to distil alcohol here, unless you are either a licensed distillery distilling at least 1,800 litres at a time in your largest still, or else you are a rectifier. A rectifier is a business which buys liquor that has had the (very high rates of) taxes paid for it, and then distils it. In theory you can apply for a free rectifier's license, but in practice those licenses are rarely issued, and only to businesses after a long application and review period. Hobbyists are not welcome.
woww! I had no idea, I understand the reasons why, but can't help feeling sad for any chemists over there.
Nice
El segundo mejor uso del tio tony
Thumbnail says: "How to turn a bottle into a bong".
You can make anhydrous ethanol using copper sulfate. Copper sulfate usually exists as a hydrate (blue), but if you heat it in an oven, it will turn white (with a slight tint of blue), i.e. anhydrous. Then, as soon as the copper sulfate has cooled, immediately throw it into the ethanol and stir well - copper sulfate, even in hydrate form, is insoluble in ethanol. Close the lid and let it sit - you will end up with a blue precipitate because the anhydrous copper sulfate has "taken away" the water from the water/ethanol mixture. You can then save this portion of ethanol for further dehydration. Typically the cycle is repeated until the cycle when a new portion of anhydrous copper sulfate, added to the ethanol, remains white.
Great video and really great tip using the aquarium media for boiling chips. Looks like that works really well.
A VERY interesting video ... but .... you can get 95% alcohol in some DIY stores ( for trendy house stoves ) .... and .... you do not have to waste a nice ( expensive ? & drinkable ? ) liquor ..... ( tried - n - tested ) ................ DAVE™🛑
Huh, every chem lab I've ever been to has a stock of pure high grade ethanol.
This a really well made and explained video! Interesting from start to finish :))
I did wonder what happened when you pay for views, so like its these comments and accounts, sure is sad you can’t do it any other way.
Why not react the water with something more mundane like CaO.
I imagine it's hard to store without taking on water later during storage. 3A Sieves or glycerin, not bad routes to go. Yet, I still wonder about that ethanol in the freezer regarding condensation and such variables. Perhaps no total storage is absolute.
That's true, by now my 100% ethanol, should be 99 or 98%. It has to be stored with molecular sieves in the bottle, otherwise it will catch water from anywhere.
I’ve worked with glycerin as a humectant before, I never thought to use it in a distillation to hold onto water. Great video, where did you come up with the glycerin idea?
Hey! good question, the idea is not of my own. I found a thesis online talking about its possible use for drying ethanol in a continuous distillation column. So, I Try it with my batch lab equipment, and just worked!!
Might as well add myself to the list
You can buy 97% ethanol at the liquor store where I live. I generally stick to the methods that allow me to just add something.(Calcium, sieves, ect) I'm being time efficient, definitely not being lazy.
I just read where zeolite is being used in cat litter - maybe that's a cheap source of molecular sieves
Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for watching!
Get ethylene glycol instead, car's radiator fluid. For storage, you can use dried whiteboard chalk instead of the sieves, and to separate acetone from nail polish try mixing soy food oil and then distill the food oil. Theoretically you can dissolve the alcohol into some other oil (baby oil? idk) and do the same thing as i mentioned for acetone.
Nice!
Lol, I just came across your video on my home feed and we made a video on the exact same topic just 2 weeks apart! Although the method I used is drying with anhydrous magnesium sulfate.
What would have happened if you had added the glycerol directly to the liquor of the first batch? Would it help to have a +98% alcohol solution on just one batch?
It might not be possible to obtain dry ethanol from such lower concentration. However, if I had a fractional column long enough, the separation could be feasible from concentrations of ethanol lower than the azeotropic one.
Only 211 subscribers?!?!?. Sir Make that 212.
thank you!
You could get very close by just using salt. Soak the ethanol in A3 zeolite and then distill out the zeolite powder is probably the best method to get to 100%. It would be cool if somehow you could percolate the alcohol vapor through the glycerin. Essentially the process for dehydrating natural gas. It’s not exactly glycerol, but TEG, triethylene glycol. Easiest method is put ample NaCl in the first two distillations, then dry with zeolite, and do a final distillation to clean it up, and don’t allow air to touch the product.
Radiator fluid, ethylene glycol is lightyears better than glycerine. Dried whiteboard chalk for the storage.
Why does chemistry always involve pain and tears? (:
anhydrous copper sulfate can absorb water
Could you recover the glycerine by evaporation? It boils at 290 c so leaving it in the sun on a tray should not cause much loss.
I tried, but the glycerin degraded and turned yellow. You would need a vacuum distillation to do that.
Might want to take the Teflon tape off the glass ground fittings..
I see. Change flask to A New One Flask. Where I pray can we purchase these "A New One Flasks"? >_>
este video me suena a luis horas jajajaja
Very cool. looking forward to more content :)
I once obtained high concentration of ethanol by dehydrating it with K3PO4, that was obtained by adding KOH to the aqueous solution of KH2PO4 and then drying it on a plate. The only problem was that drying slurry of K3PO4 was bumping and sputtering as crazy... It proved to be quite strong dehydrating agent, and the ethanol I obtained was miscible with hydrocarbons, though I did not measure its exact concentration.
Long time ago, I was told to add Sodium Hydroxide to the Water Ethanol azeotrope in order to get anhydrous ethanol. Personally, I don't see any reason that Potassium Hydroxide wouldn't do the same.
Do you guys have Everclear there? That stuff is like 95% alcohol and only around $20 for a 750 mil bottle.
Nice, I didn't know glycerin broke the water / ethanol azeotrope. This is cool cuz clycerin is cheap a.f. I tend to use A3 sieves. They are very cheap on a very well known generalist Chinese site, contrary to chemistry shops.
Use radiator fluid and whiteboard chalk, and to separate acetone from nail polish you mix it with oil then separate and distill the oil, 100% guaranteed to be anhydrous as the water and oil don't mix. It would be great if i could find an oil to dissolve ethanol.
@@fss1704 I'm fortunate to still have acetone OTC where I am, but this is a good idea. Never heard of any solvent you could use to pull ethanol out of water though, but who knows.
4:45 This scares me too lol, no offense I'm not trying to be an ass here, it's just that the last time I used that kind of force to plug a PTFE-wrapped "male" joint into its counterpart the outside ("female") part of the joint broke. I think this creates a lot of pressure, same principle as the wedges used to split wood. Go easy on the PTFE and be gentle with the glassware ;)
That happened to me too. Only once, but it taught me to be very gentle with PTFE wrapped joints. I still prefer PTFE tape than joint grease.
@@davidestabrook5367 me too - almost nothing to clean, won't react with your reagents (99% of the time), better seal in many cases, and only realistic solution for H2SO4 distillation. And if I'm doing something that isn't too nasty (as in this video for instance), I just don't use anything on the joints. Never got one stuck so far 🤞.
No offense taken! Thanks for the comment and the advice. I have never broken anything, but you're right, I might be putting those joints under more pressure than needed. I will continue using PTFE tape, but I'll be more gentle. Thank you again.
@@fmdjYou can use sulfuric acid itself as joint grease for distillation of sulfuric acid. But in general I prefer PTFE too as ordinary grease is a pain to properly remove unless you waste a lot of useful apolar solvent.
@@lagrangiankid378 thx, yes I know that people do that, but firstly this requires already having concentrated H2SO4 so you have kind of an egg and chicken problem here (sure, you could use drain cleaner H2SO4 on the joints but I would fear it contaminates the product), and secondly - but maybe it's me doing it wrong somehow - every time I've tried that I have had significant H2SO4 vapours leaks, and that's very unpleasant to say the least. But when I use PTFE, I don't even need a fume hood (this is the result of a lot of experimentation and tuning of the setup, don't try it at home - I mean potential inexperienced people reading this, not you specifically ; not that I am very experienced either lol).
Can ethanol be concentrated from ~98% to 100% by adding shavings of metallic calcium to the solution. The calcium reacts with the remaining water to produce a precipitate of insoluble calcium hydroxide, which can be filtered out. A bottle of absolute ethanol can also be maintained in this state by keeping some shavings of metallic calcium in the bottle.
would the ethanol react with the calcium metal?
3:00 Maybe I'm not seeing the setup well enough, but your condenser seems dangerously unsupported to me, I'd be scared of the joint on the side of the fractionating column snapping off. I'd suggest adding another clamp close to the other end of the condenser.
Good catch! Yeah, I mentioned it in the video. I'm missing another stand there. I had to be very careful not to cause an accident. I was distilling ethanol with a Jenga tower made out of glass.
I thoroughly enjoyed your creativity, explanations, and decent procedural approach to a welcome and (very unwelcome, one day at a time) often desired substance. ❤❤
Thank you!!
@@AndysCatalyst you are very welcome.
I don't know if it would go all the way to anhydrous alcohol, but I've heard that adding table salt to an water-alcohol mix will make the alcohol drop out of solution whilst the salt takes its place dissolved in the water. Maybe an idea for another video? 😅 Cheers from Brazil
I have added table salt to 70% isopropanol, it made 90% isopropanol float on top of the aqueous salt layer. For distilling home brew, I always add salt to the first distillation, because it reduces foaming. To the second distillation, I add washing soda (sodium carbonate), because it converts the acetic acid contaminant into sodium acetate, which stays behind in the boiling flask, so giving purer ethanol. This video made me think that adding glycerine and a drying tube would be best for the third distillation.
Well done.
Im so glad you found a use for trash like that. Mezcal in a plastic bottle would probably have led to regret anyways.
Indeed. there's no better use for those bottles.
Can be dried with calcium oxide, too. Just by vacuum filtratation on a sintered glass funnel afterwards. Here in Germany of course only with denatured alcohol... 🙄
A few years ago, I tried drying Everclear 190-proof (95%) ethanol by adding CORN STARCH. The theory's valid, I THINK it worked, but didn't have the means to quantify the result then. 🤦🏻♂️🧪⚗️👨🏻🔬
For a moment I thought he's going to separate water and ethanol by freezing (because, duh, ethanol doesn't freezes at zero C°) but then... I never heard of that particular method.
You're forgetting an annoying physical property called FREEZING POINT DEPRESSION! Yeah. Good luck trying to wring EtOH from water by freezing that mixture! 😂🤣
@@schautamatic yeah, I know that water-alcohol mixture doesn't freezes per se, it forms a frozen gel where you need to squeeze remaining liquid from gelled mixture, but separation by that principle is possible.
Freezing to increase purity only works up to about 15%. The freezing point rapidly gets too cold for a normal freezer. If you use dry ice or liquid nitrogen of course you can do better.
Whats that RBF heating setup? Is that just aluminium foil in a pot??
hahahaha yes, it's exactly that!
Start with 190 proof PGA or some clearanced hand sanitizer. The hand sanitizer usually have IPA and N butanol, but both can be removed by holding the temperature to get the IPA to come off and ending the distillation early to avoid the butanol. Its OK to leave them in if making ether as they will actually catalyze the reaction. If going for pure ethanol. Distil once from magnesium sulfate alcohol mix then add molecular sieves to grab the rest of the water. Leave them in when storing it.❤
thanks for the advice!!
Only do this if you want to drink butanol
А без проточного холодильника сможете?
I don't think that you can perform this without cold water flowing through the condenser. Just natural convection with the air in the room is not enough to condense all the ethanol. It could even be dangerous, as a cloud of flammable ethanol would form in the room.
I think you could also use sulfuric acid on the ethanol to produce ethylene gas which can be bubbled in excess into water to make pure ethanol. its not economical because of the sulfuric acid though
Ethene doesn't react with water under normal conditions
Glycerin is an interesting approach. And storing anhydrous ethanol with calcium chloride is smart. I wonder, if you have azeotropic ethanol, could you add sufficient drying agent (e.g., calcium chloride, sodium sulfate, magnesium sulfate) to soak up the remaining water, and end up with anhydrous ethanol? Also, could you try anhydrous methanol? It seems that methanol does NOT form an azeotrope, neither with water nor ethanol. That's interesting.
Calcium chloride seems to react with ethanol, making it unsuitable to use as a drying agent. However, you could use magnesium metal, which would react with the water, thus drying the ethanol. If you ask me, I would say that molecular sieves, and glycerine are the best methods to obtain anhydrous ethanol.
@@AndysCatalyst What would be the reaction between CaCl2 and ethanol? I'm quite sure Mg is more likely to react with ethanol to form the ethoxide.
@@user255 You're absolutely right, ethanol reacts with Mg. Sorry I wasn't clear. Mg reacts with water and produces MgO and hydrogen gas. At the same time, it produces the ethoxide you mentioned by reacting with ethanol. However, that ethoxide reacts with more water, producing the original ethanol and more MgO. In the end, the result is Mg plus water producing MgO and H2 gas. Now, regarding the CaCl2, some people in the internet say it reacts with ethanol, producing a complex, but in other places, they say that it could be used with no issue. I haven't tried it, so I cannot speak for myself, but I will sustain my point. Molecular sieves or glycerine are, in my opinion, the more straightforward methods to get 100% ethanol. Thank you so much for your answer!, btw. Regards!!
@@AndysCatalyst I see. I would be interesting to see even more low tech approach and try to use NaCl, etc to concentrate ethanol.
@@user255 I'm sure there are a bunch of substances that can break the azeotrope as glycerine and CaCl2 do. So, yeah, I might try that in the future, thank you so much for the suggestion!
The azeotrope of a true water + ethanol solution is 97.2% alcohol by VOLUME and 95.6% alcohol by WEIGHT. Yeah, I was surprised too when I found out! I enjoyed your video, thank you.
Depending on where you read it, people say that the azeotrope is at 96% to 97% by volume. I just ignore it and took creative license by calling my 96% ethanol "azeotropic". I'm really glad you enjoyed the video!
I feel like it's cheaper to just buy near "100%" pure food-grade (if it's 100% then why does it need to be food grade???) ethanol from a lab. I paid something like $45 per gallon + $30 in shipping. That's about 5.5 (40% 1.75L) bottles.
It could be cheaper and easier. But, would it be more fun?
@@AndysCatalyst I think so. I enjoyed my experiments with ethanol a lot more than distilling. But, point taken.
Not available for everyone.
Don't drink non food grade ethanol. It is a 'waste' side product from another chemical reaction or petrochemical. It will have trace amounts of other chemicals or toluene in it. Same goes for naoh from hardware stores. Yes it is 100% but it will be contaminated with some metals. Will it make you sick? I dont know but is it worth it?
If time isn't a factor for you, you can brew your own, for the price of sugar. Just a bit of fruit, or bakers yeast, and sugar.
Awesome to see more reasonable home lab solutions! The big chemistry channels can get a bit wrapped up in high investment technology that no one here can reasonably recreate. I'd love to see more interesting techniques for obtaining things on a bit of a budget
Absolutely!!, it's incredible how much can be done affordably with hardware and grocery store supplies. Thank you for watching and for your comment.
Exactly, that's what clandestine chemistry is all about isn't it, simple setups, easily obtainable chemicals or ways to make precursors or solvents etc(like the distillation of Sassafras albidum oil to get safrole) and producing high quality/purity substances
@@sinenomine7405 What is your unmet need that makes your ruin at home chemistry for everyone else?
@@AndysCatalystI mean crackheads have knowing this for a long time, yawl just figuring it out?