grandyOse
October 19th, 2003, 01:36 AM
I had a mixture of water, denatured ethanol, sulfuric acid, isopropanol, and a little sucrose with a trace of a slightly soluable inorganic salt and an even smaller amount of various organic solids, neither of which will melt at the temperatures described. I used a retort with a mercury kitchen thermometer and distilled over alcohols between 70 and 85 degrees. Then I distilled over some water at 95 (damned cheap thermometers) which was slightly acidic. At the end of this distillation, the only reaction in the vessel was when some liquids refluxed back into the mixture. Can I be reasonably sure that I was able to remove at least 98% of the alcohol? It's important that I get rid of most of the alcohol, but I really don't want to raise the mixture much above 100, and would prefer to leave a little water in the solution. Using cheap papers, the ph is about 2. I should have paid closer attention to the volumes, but I didn't really know the concentration of acid anyway (about 60%, I'd guess).