Report on leeching of plastics into ethanol

[HookLine]

Thanks for that, seravitae. It is not just new materials that we need to be careful about, sometimes old established materials can turn out to have problems. Safety is always an ongoing concern.

Tried and true means exactly what it says, the materials we use that are related to the rule of thumb, tried and true have been used for hundreds of years with next to no problems,

That we know of.

[seravitae]

With regards to "Tried and True" i've seen lots of things globally tried, but i havent really seen anything globally "true". Gotta be careful about that word...

[stillvodka]

With regards to "Tried and True" i've seen lots of things globally tried, but i havent really seen anything globally "true". Gotta be careful about that word...

OK , after this one, I am not going to post anymore on this subject, recon it could go the same way as the rest of the plastic discussions, I had enough of that on the other forums, common sense went out the window forum members dug out the chemistry books quoting all sorts of stuff, just to get one up on me, I didnt need that copper , stainless steel, Brass without the lead, leadfree solder , I agree it's more expensive than nasty plastic (all grades) but some things cannot be done on the cheap.

[stillvodka]

Sorry, I know I said my last post would be my last, But please have alook at the link, please dont get bored with it , read it all the way through

http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Plasti ... 5nov03.htm

Thanks

[muckanic]

Sorry, I know I said my last post would be my last, But please have alook at the link, please dont get bored with it , read it all the way through

My attention was lost at about the point when the author was going on about the dangers of microwaved food. Microwaved plastic yes, microwaved food no.

To put things into a bit of perspective here, hands up anyone who has a problem with plastic in stills but no problem with chlorinated swimming pools? with self-service petrol (aka gas for you yanks)? with driving on freeways with the windows down? with smoking? with painting your house unprotected? with spraying pesticides around the house unprotected?

There is a fair bit of evidence around that the western world's fertility has declined in the last 100 years or so, although there is no conclusive proof of the cause. However, halogenated organic substances are top of the suspect list, and in some ways are a lot more insidious than the more familiar heavy-metal pollutants.

[Fourway]

To put things into a bit of perspective here, hands up anyone who has a problem with plastic in stills but no problem with chlorinated swimming pools? with self-service petrol (aka gas for you yanks)? with driving on freeways with the windows down? with smoking? with painting your house unprotected? with spraying pesticides around the house unprotected?

And now we're back to the "tried and true" tired old warhorse folks always wheel out in the synthetics in stills holy war... and the reason the topic has been mostly banned in the past.

This is not a pool maintenance forum.
This is not an environmental hazards forum.
This is not a pulmonary health forum.
This is not a home improvement forum.
This is not a gardening forum.

This is a forum about the hobby distillation of spirit libations
A hobby with a terrible and mostly undeserved reputation for being unsafe.
A hobby which is unfairly outlawed in almost every country in the world.

We cannot and should not concern ourselves with the comparative safety of swimming, pumping gas, highway travel, smoking, using paint or exterminating bugs.
Why not?
Because none of those things have anything to do with this hobby.

The argument of comparative hazard is fallacious.
It's not any different from refusing to wear a safety belt because there might be a swine flu epidemic or not wearing the lead apron during an x-ray because there's a %4 chance that the earth will be hit by a giant meteor in the next 20 years.

The smart money is on copper, stainless, glass et al because it's a sensible guideline. but it is just a guideline... you can make your still out of vinyl hoses, lead truck radiators, galvanized steel pails and spackled cat crap for all I or anyone else here cares... what's important to the forum (and to the hobby in general) is that when your social services caseworker is interviewing you to evaluate your need for a home health aid or meals on wheels or a rascal mobility scooter after your brain aneurism that you don't try to tell them (once you regain the ability to speak) that the folks at homedistiller forum told you it was safe.
And since... if you are stupid enough to use unsafe materials in a still against lots of advice not to do so... you might also be the type of person who needs to find someone else to blame when you ruin your own life... the forum has gone way way out of its way to state over and over in no uncertain terms that using materials that are not solvent inert in not recommended.

Just because we are opening a limited discussion to allow the subject of non traditional materials to be discussed does not mean we are throwing the doors open to the "why worry about plastics in stills when you use toothpaste with aluminum in it" line of benighted reasoning.

[LWTCS]

We cannot and should not concern ourselves with the comparative safety of swimming, pumping gas, highway travel, smoking, using paint or exterminating bugs.
Why not?
Because none of those things have anything to do with this hobby.

Well grounded.

[muckanic]

Just because we are opening a limited discussion to allow the subject of non traditional materials to be discussed does not mean we are throwing the doors open to the "why worry about plastics in stills when you use toothpaste with aluminum in it" line of benighted reasoning.

Wasn't aware you are a mod. But apart from that, you are reading way, way, way too much into my remarks. I get the feeling I'm substituting for everyone you may have tangled with in the past.

Regards

[blanikdog]

There's something about the use of plastic that I just don't understand. Maybe it's just that I'm an old bastard and fixed in my ways - I'll happily accept that.

I think that to open this on the forum is an excellent idea. Let's bring it out in the open! What I don't understand is why anyone would even think of using plastic in a still. The way I see it is that it just isn't necessary so why not use copper or stainless or glass if there is the slightest doubt? And clearly there is more than 'the slightest doubt'. I'll admit that I have used plastic to hold 40% or under in an emergency when I've run out of gallon glass jars, but wasn't all that happy about it and it was only a very temporary measure. I knew what I was doing and don't expect to get confirmation that it's OK. It's my decision and I wear it.

Every word that fourway says makes sense, IMHO.

blanik

[kiwistiller]

There's something about the use of plastic that I just don't understand. Maybe it's just that I'm an old bastard and fixed in my ways - I'll happily accept that.

I think that to open this on the forum is an excellent idea. Let's bring it out in the open! What I don't understand is why anyone would even think of using plastic in a still. The way I see it is that it just isn't necessary so why not use copper or stainless or glass if there is the slightest doubt? And clearly there is more than 'the slightest doubt'. I'll admit that I have used plastic to hold 40% or under in an emergency when I've run out of gallon glass jars, but wasn't all that happy about it and it was only a very temporary measure. I knew what I was doing and don't expect to get confirmation that it's OK. It's my decision and I wear it.

Every word that fourway says makes sense, IMHO.

blanik

I might take a crack at this... I use ptfe gaskets in the tri-clamp flanges of my still (there are three). I use ptfe because it has been established to my standard of comfort (won't go into details but it was the chemists work) that this is ok with high proof ethanol. To address what you don't get, that is why I do it, you're probably not going to like the reason, but it is because its easy and I'm lazy. exactly the same reason (and I'm not comparing risks, just stating other applications of the same reasoning in my life) that I have a microwave in my kitchen, drive a car, occasionally drink red bull or its likes... None of those things are necessary to my daily life, I could get away without all of them and many other risky activities, but I'm comfortable with the risks, they make my life easier, and to use other solutions would take up time that I find myself in short supply of.

Not condoning this reasoning, just trying to explain the actions of us rash young folk to blanik

And after saying all of that, I'll add that I don't use silicone, PET, HDPP, HDPE or anything like that because while they are still easy time savers, they haven't been proved safe to my level of comfort (that I've read yet anyway, haven't gone out of my way to establish it though). For me, its all about a tradeoff between a level of risk you recognise and the time it would take to establish and implement other methods. My economic-psych background is showing. oh dear. I'll sit in the corner now...

kiwi

[Fourway]

you are reading way, way, way too much into my remarks. I get the feeling I'm substituting for everyone you may have tangled with in the past.

Oh no not at all... in fact I saw that the overall context of your post was not argumentative and you were not by any means sticking up for use of synthetics, it was clear that you were not trolling or trying to pick a fight.
You appeared to be musing...
And in the context of musing, tossing out a sort of throwaway appeal to comparative hazard isn't really worthy of a heated smacking down.

In this particular case though... when that very argument (weak though it may be) was very nearly the core fallback position of a seeming inexhaustible parade of trolls, shit disturbers and other intensely disruptive characters around here, and for so long that we finally banned discussion of the topic (a decision that has brought the forum quite a lot of heat, and for which this experimental area is hopefully a rectification)... to see the terrible, scurrilous, stinking corpse of that very same argument trotted out essentially hours after the subject is reintroduced... innocent as your bringing it up may have been I couldn't let it go.

So nothing personal at all... you just happened to say something that required jumping on. (and repeated stomping on... and cremation)

[the decline]

Hi all,

I basically just registered here because I want to share the results of my curiousity about using plastics in food-grade liquids that we home scientists are working with. I did some digging around on the matter when I realized that my liquids would be passing through some sort of plastic tubing in order to do the all-important siphoning. Most flexible plastics contain plasticizers, which are not exactly food-grade.

I figured I'd side on safety and find a tubing that is free of these concerns. I found this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tygon_Tubing

Several varieties of Tygon tubing is plasticizer-free with low-absorption rates meant for chemistry and healthcare applications. I found some on ebay and amazon, because I'm a bit paranoid about health concerns. Hope this hasn't been posted before, and I hope this information can be useful. Cheers!