Can you distill methylated spirits in a reflux still to produce pure ethanol?

Answer 1

I was thinking about this too...

Methanol has a BP of ~ 64*C, ethanol has a BP of ~ 78*C

When you run a batch through a refulx still you disgard the head (as metho burns off first)

Methylated spirit is only a about 5% methanol, so theres not much to remove anwyay, run it through twice and discard 2 heads if need be.

Taste it to tell when its methanol or ethanol (only a drop, its harmless), methanol has a real tang, wheras ethanol just tastes warm.

Hope this helps

Another user answer:

Technically yes you can if you have fine enough temperature control, and to be sure multi-distillation passes would be advised.

There are usually more additives than just methanol you want to remove, you want to boil off te methanol first, making sure the temp is accurate, just a few degrees under ethanol boiling point would do - I would do this for a long time.

Then you also need to distill the ethanol off alone, at under 79 degrees, Isopropyl Alcohol is another additive and its boiling point is 82.4c, there is another additive which is 79.2 which is butanone, though its not a health risk, you still need to technically remove it for a pure ethanol product.

There's others but theyre outside either range and not hazzardous like methanol, usually foul flavours and stuff that promotes vomitting, and they should be removed via careful temperature distillation on either side.

Even so, you shouldn't try to distill methylated spirits for human consumption, there are a few news reports of people trying this and dying.

"We present the case report of a 47-year-old man fatally poisoned by ingestion of a home-distilled liquor produced from 'methylated spirits' containing 5% methanol and 90% ethanol. Classical signs of severe methanol poisoning, including altered conscious state, shock and profound acidosis were manifest at the time of presentation. Despite an ethanol infusion and haemodialysis he was declared brain dead 36 h after arrival at the emergency department."

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/120102452/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0