Methanol Vs. Ethanol.

[Driver5773]

As promised I do have a serious, well planned, and thought about question.

I know methanol is bad for you. I know it is produced whilst distilling. I know it’s BP is 64.7.degC
I also know ethanol is great for you, and hopefully it’s produced during distillation, and that it’s BP is 78.37degC.

I’ve been racking my brains to try and solve the separation of the two. Looking for an easy, foolproof, 100% certainty, that all methanol has been removed.

And I was thinking, a modified one of these.
I’m
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07D3V3BZN/ ... kBbEE5MK9N

It has an easy digital temperature selection, and to me it seemed like the perfect solution. But mayhap I’ve over looked something simple?
Please share your thoughts and enlighten me. I’d be ever so grateful.

Driver.

[Kareltje]

As promised I do have a serious, well planned, and thought about question.

I know methanol is bad for you. I know it is produced whilst distilling. I know it’s BP is 64.7.degC
I also know ethanol is great for you, and hopefully it’s produced during distillation, and that it’s BP is 78.37degC.

I’ve been racking my brains to try and solve the separation of the two. Looking for an easy, foolproof, 100% certainty, that all methanol has been removed.

And I was thinking, a modified one of these.
I’m
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07D3V3BZN/ ... kBbEE5MK9N

It has an easy digital temperature selection, and to me it seemed like the perfect solution. But mayhap I’ve over looked something simple?
Please share your thoughts and enlighten me. I’d be ever so grateful.

Driver.

Oo!There are several mistakes you make.

Methanol is bad for us. But it is NOT produced whilst distilling. It is produced (mainly) during the breakdown of pectin.
Ethanol is also bad for us. And it too is NOT produced whilst distilling. It is produced during fermentation of sugar.
Methanol is worse for us than ethanol. Funny enough: one of the treatments of methanol poisoning is an overdose of ethanol!
There seems to be a surprising relation between water, methanol and ethanol. So the boiling points are not the only important parameters.

According to a study for the EU it is not possible to completely remove methanol from alcoholic drinks. More precisely: it can be done, but it takes great effort and large installations.
On the other hand: in normal distilling there is no reason to be afraid of methanol. It is also present in wine. Of course you can add methanol on purpose. But I see no reason to do that.

There are several threads about methanol and surely one includes the link to the EU-study (sorry: I can not find it at the moment).

[Kareltje]

Oh, and I looked at your link.
I do not know about the use of this heater for a still. But using it or not has nothing to do with methanol.

[Pikey]

Yup, most of us go down that logic path when we first put a foot on the knowledge ladder.

It just doesn't work like that Driver - Sorry.

When you have heated your boiler up to 99 deg C, There will STILL be ethanol / methanol in the pot !

Just to dispell another of the myths,
1) it is not possible to change anything into anything in the still - As Kareltje says - all teh various alcohols and other stuff is produced in the ferment stage. You CANNOT change the ethanol to methanol, by some "Magic" of poor or good techniques - All is fixed and Cannot be changed by anything we can do to it.

2) There is not enough methanol in there to harm you - you would be dead from "alcohol poisoninng" long before the methanol had any effect.

3) You cannot run a pot still by temperature.

Oh and on a positive note - Tea urns make fine boilers for a first still - you may need to bypass a couple of safety features and addition of a power controller is a good idea - but they are easy to adapt.

[Kareltje]

Some reading: https://homedistiller.org/wiki/index.php/index.ph ... Impurities" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

Found the EU-study:

http://bookshop.europa.eu/en/a-study-on ... CGNA16864/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow
Adam, L. & G. Versini
A study on the possibilities to lower the content of methyl-alcohol in eau-de-vie from fruit.
European Commission, Directorate-General XII, EUR 16864 EN, 1996.

Discussion in: http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... 33&t=40606" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

[Saltbush Bill]

Looking for an easy, foolproof, 100% certainty, that all methanol has been removed.

Sorry but you wont find it. It doesn't exist as far as I know.

[thecroweater]

Methanol is highly unlikely to be a problem to you in normal fermentation and distillation. If you google wood alcohol or distructive distillation you will soon see it is a very dissimilar process. That is not to say there will be no methanol produced in normal fermentation but the amount shouldn't be anywhere close to an unsafe level, likely you will find higher levels in an average glass of orange juice.

[bilgriss]

Yep. Nothing to add except to assure you the advice you are getting is correct. Distillation is mostly a process of separation, and doesn't produce much in the way of any new products.

[badflash]

One of the reasons methanol is used to de-nature ethanol is that it is so hard to separate. Even though the BP is lower, it doesn't separate like you would think. You will find more methanol in the tails than the heads.

So little methanol is produced by fermentation, that you don't need to worry about it, especially if you make your cuts and don't drink the heads and tails.

[DuckofDeath]

Ethanol is the cure for methanol

[Fraser]

You'll never get 100% of the methanol out of a batch outside of a lab or industrial setup. It's just not possible. Some mashes produce more than others (ie washes made from fruits with a lot of pectin), but it's really not of any real concern. Cutting your foreshots is good enough, even though as others have mentioned there is also methanol found in tails. But the amounts are going to be below the threshold to harm you. You'd really have to collect jars of foreshots for awhile and chug liters of it to do yourself in.

[still_stirrin]

Ethanol and methanol form an azeotropic mixture and they cannot be separated by using a simple pot still.

To safely separate ethanol and methanol will require special equipment and good knowledge of unit operations in chemical engineering. It is possible, but NOT suggested unless you are a chemist or a chemical engineer. It is suggestable you read the McCabe-Smith-Harriott book “Unit Operations in Chemical Engineering”, and read it well.

The methanol-ethanol azeotrope contains some 91% of ethanol and 9% methanol according to this scheme. The molar fraction is 80% ethanol to 20% methanol.

People are known to try it despite warnings. This is the reason why denatured ethanol is rendered undrinkable in the European Union not by adding methanol or other poison in it, but adding emetics (vomit-inducing agents) and antabus on it, making it nauseating but not toxic. You are likely to get the hangover of your life and your mouth to taste like feline excrement for drinking denatured alcohol in Europe, but not get killed, blinded or damage your internal organs.

The easy way:
Distill the mixture as three-component distillation (methanol-ethanol-water) using demethylizer column. This system is based on the fact that ethanol forms azeotropic solution with water (spiritus fortis) but methanol doesn’t - water-methanol mixture is zeotropic (they boil as two components and are fully separable). The trick is to separate ethanol with aid of water.

A demethylizer column is a plate column with 77 plates. The raw distillate is fed in about 2/3rds the way up (about plate 52). Hot water is fed to the column top, and steam is injected at the column bottom. The combination of hot water descending and injected steam ascending, allows a low strength watery solution (15% abv ethyl alcohol) to collect in the column bottom, in a sump or retort. This is further re-distilled as per normal two component distillation and a 94%+ clean demethylized product is recovered suitable for packaging and sale.

The higher overhead product remaining from the demethylizer column (the methanol / ethanol mixture) is collected separately for further processing and component recovery in subsequent distillations.

The hard way:
1) Distill the mixture on Vigreux column. As methanol has lower boiling point, the distillate will contain methanol-ethanol azeotrope whilst the bottom product will be ethanol with some methanol residue. Redistil the distillate until everything boils as one component.

2) Titrate the distillate with anhydrous calcium halide, such as CaCl2 or CaBr2. It will form a complex with methanol but not ethanol. Add in until the stuff begins to precipitate. Filtrate everything and collect both the liquid solution and the precipitate.

3) Do the same with the bottom product.

4) Combine the precipitate phases and heat them until they decompose. Collect the vapour with Liebig condenser. The condensed liquid ought to be almost pure anhydrous methanol.

5. Likewise, the bottom products (liquid phases) ought to be almost pure ethanol.

6) Check that the bottom product boils at 78.37 °C and the condensed distillate liquid at 64.7 °C.

The overall processing costs to produce a distillate acceptably, or perhaps legally low in methanol, can be quite expensive.

[Pikey]

DoH - StillStirrin, you took the words right out of my mouth !

[Driver5773]

“Unit Operations in Chemical Engineering”.... is there a kindle version?

Thanks guys for all the answers. Just goes to show, nothings ever as simple as it seems.

[thecroweater]

“Unit Operations in Chemical Engineering”.... is there a kindle version?

Thanks guys for all the answers. Just goes to show, nothings ever as simple as it seems.

And nothing is harder than you want to make it .