I'm having a very difficult time making the video on getting propionic acid from the haloform reaction mixture, the process is REALLY slow so it's taking awhile. I might skip ahead to react propionic acid with ethanol in my next video, then go back and make propionic acid from the haloform mixture in the video after that when its finally finished. Still addicted to fallout 4...
That journal article is a nugget of gold. It examines something that everyone (in chemistry) does but that nobody really bothered testing or quantifying and comes out with some counter-intuitive conclusions. If only more science were like that. Also it uses the term 'super dry'.
For sure Cody! Did you end up getting/using any? I don't see you use them very often in your videos, and I learned about them from this channel (as well as Nile Red and Doug's Lab).
I actually used molecular sieves to solve a low- viscosity problem with silicone polymers. (I still have the metal canister they came in.) I had to do this for a silicone manufacturer I worked for as an R&D chemist in the late 90's. I had to dry a large quantity so I used the drum it came in and a drum heater for convection mixing. The low viscosity was due to water end-blocking the chains. I checked this by using a OH curing catalyst (tributyl tin, if I recall right) and sure enough the polymer would cure. Before I tried that I did a little research and found that the starting materials did contain a minute amount of water. A quick calculation showed that even a trace of water spelled doom and the bad lots curing under OH conditions clinched it. The normal manufacturing procedure called for heating the starting materials to above boiling (150 C? ICR) and using a nitrogen sweep for a few hours, but from my experience it is really hard to remove all the water (or even low boiling solvents) this way. I would almost always detect a tiny solvent peak on subsequent gas chromatograph shots no matter how rigorous my solvent removal. I did not use the Mg turnings, although we had some on hand from the massive Grignard reactions we used to run, but the sieves did the trick. That along with drying the reactor and such. It is pretty difficult to keep large reactors and amounts of materials dry. I did consider sodium, but my supervisors nixed it. Beside fixing the problem quickly I was gratified to put another stupid "lab superstition" to rest, that is that molecular sieves caused the starting materials to react. I was amazed at how many labs have such superstitions. Anyways, great video. You really make me want to get my chemistry set in order again.
NurdRage Thanks! Coming from such an interesting guy that is quite a compliment. I spent a lot of my time fixing problems with NuSil's products and it was pretty interesting work. Which was a good thing because just about everything else there was, well it is hard to explain without writing a short story. Actually several short stories. I think one of my fellow employees put it best when he said he wasn't sure if he was working for a real company or was unknowingly involved in a psychological experiment that went horribly awry.
Man, I am in second year of chemistry in college, and I have a feeling your videos will be VERY useful in the near future... But yay, for now I watch them for the lulz :) Keep up the good chemistry!
I've been drying out 70% isopropyl alcohol using first table salt and then anhydrous magnesium sulfate. I don't know the purity, but it's purer than 91%. I know this because I use it as a solvent to erase a certain kind of ink, and my purified alcohol works much, much better than the 91% straight out of the bottle. The 91% can't erase the ink completely and leaves a portion of it behind.
You are the most knowledgeable person I've seen in YT in regard to molecular sieve. Best person therefore to ask I'd think. If I had a fiberglass HEPA filter that exhaled breath must pass (within a closed handheld unit shared with activated charcoal, only open at the top and the bottom. Breath is of course made up of two types of water. We've got a liquid water in our gaseous water or water vapor. A simple hydrophobic mesh is sufficient to catch and hold on to liquid water, but with the unit needing to of course be 100% air permeable, and with the other portion of our breath being a gas, water vapor, the water vapor freely passes into the HEPA filter. The water vapor eventually saturates the HEPA filter until you left with a brick, unable to pass air through. In your opinion, will the adding of activated molecular sieve, mixed in with the activated charcoal that sits below if you have a filter within the unit, be sufficient to dry the water vapor? Well probably not completely by any means, so I guess my question is Will adding the MS down in there with the AC underneath have any noticeable effect in at least slowing or minimizing the amount of water vapor that will drench the HEPA? Any insight would be much appreciated. Thank you
+leerman22 lol, no. Dryness is a description of the taste of wine and spirits. It’s the absence of sweetness. A ‘dry Martini’ refers to the type of vermouth that is used, which can be either sweet or dry.
+fpm1979 mixologist here. Not quite. While it is true that there exists both dry and sweet vermouth, all traditional martinis use only dry-vermouth; never sweet. A classic martini uses a decent amount of vermouth, and a dry-martini uses less...and an extra-dry martini uses only a small amount; and an extremely-dry martini uses no vermouth at all. Dry-vermouth is less sweet than sweet-vermouth, but gin is less sweet than dry vermouth (gin has no sugar at all). so making a dry martini means "up the concentration of gin".
verdatum On a related note, when did someone think calling you mixologists was a good idea? All I can think of when I hear that is a small child playing scientist.
Those sieves look cool. While they may work much slower, seems that an added bonus over the magnesium approach is the lack of (or very minimal) cleanup required.
The methods seems reasonable, but two questions: 1. Did you quantify the water content before and after each test? 2. Did you experience a slight vacuum pull when you removed the stopper in the molecular sieve test?
fantastic, I'll buy the sieves and use it to dry water from methanol, trymethil borate to dry the water from this mixture. I'm really happy thank you very much
Curious; would the seines work faster if agitated? I.E. left on a stirrer plate (no heat, obviously) for a while? Or is the risk of mechanical failure too high?
You could also wash with brine then dry with sodium sulfate or magnesium sulfate--neither of which are too expensive (you'd only need a sep funnel and some way to filter of the mag/sodium sulfate). This is a LOT faster (about ten minutes) and will dry practically everything--you just want to watch out for solvents miscible with water because they'll be lost with the brine wash.
+aetius31 you could use MgSO4 to remove "most" of the water from a solution, but more often than not, you will need to do some additional drying, it is a nice way to remove a bulk of water from a wet solution relatively quickly however.
Hello :) I'm a first year high school student and, I wish if you could make videos about basic chemistry, For newbies .. something to help the new guys, something like.. Basic rules, things to keep in mind .. etc. Thanks for your efforts to teach the world :)
NR, first i wanna say that i love your videos so much and i've been an avid follower for years, keep on doing what you're doing man. Ive noticed that in your latest videos over the past couple months the pacing of your narration has been a little confusing? like just little things, almost like the audio is glitching out or skipping or something. is this all in my head or have you changed the way you edit your audio?
How about calcium chloride? I live in my car at the moment and find having a container of calcium chloride in there a must for keeping humidity in check.
How about anhydrous magnesium sulphate ? I find that quite effective at drying out solvents when you're in a fix and haven't got any sieves in the lab.
Question: you mentioned that Magnesium can't be used for drying more inert solvents such as ether since they won't react with it. But shouldn't the Magnesium react with any water present, regardless of the reactivity of the solvent?
I know drying from reading stuff, But I also know about washing. =) All the stuff I have read about bio diesel they talk about washing. But you need to dry after washing. The 3rd is dying (adding smell to natural gas, Propane). I had a science teacher in high school get all bent out of shape from me talking about dying gas as in adding smell. But in elementary school that is the term someone from the gas company was using when they were talking to my glass about natural gas and safety stuff for around the house.
These molecular sieves are amazing! I do maple syrup as a hobby and the most time consuming and expensive part of the process is removing copious amounts of water from the sap and reducing the entire mixture up to 66% sugar by volume from about 3% sugar by volume. Could these sieves be used to shorten the boiling process?
+Doc Hussey hmm... so you're going from 3% to 66%? I don't think sieves would help in this particular case. They're great for going from 99% --> 99.99% since the last 1% is usually the hardest to remove in a solvent. But for bulk water, sieves would likely cost you more time and effort than save. Primarily since you also have to dry the sieves and that takes several hours at least. Also, i'd think you'd have to get food-grade molecular sieves for something meant for human consumption. I'd stick to tried and proven methods when it comes to something you intend to eat.
Bugger, a man can hope. Thanks for thinking it through. The only way advances are made is when people look outside of tradition at other means. Guess this one was a little _too_ far outside :)
@Nurdrage Where do you get your Methanol from? Do you buy it at crappy tire as Methyl Hydrate? Or from another source? I would like to start making my own Glow Fuel for RC plane engines. Thanks
hey, just out of curiosity: the way you're pronouncing the word sieve is unfamiliar to me, is that a geographical thing? like for example canadians would say seeve, while americans would say siff?
Daniel Mallett sodium metal would also react with the alcohol, faster than magnesium metal does. For small alcohols like methanol, this can be dangerously exothermic. Magnesium works well because when it or the magnesium alkoxide react with water, insoluble Mg(OH)2 or MgO is formed. So even though magnesium can also react with alcohols, the alkoxide salt is soluble and this promotes water removal.
Wow this is so strange I just used anhydrous diethyl ether as part of my lab just a few hours ago and it had these sieves in them which is the first time I saw them.
I got brown sieves and after I dried them and used them they absorbed the water but left a brow color in the solvent, why are they contaminating my alcohol?
I'm trying to dry some Ethanol with molecular sieves to dry some samples to observe them under scanning electron microscopy, but the ethanol becomes quite cloudy. I guess was there's lots of dust in the beads! I may need to filter it or something
Would it be possible to set up a column filled with the Zeolite, to filter the H2o out of Ethanol vapor during fractional distillation? I use to use a system that used zeolites to produce pure nitrogen air for filling tires at the shop I worked at, but never got to pick any technicians brain about how that system was designed (multiple filters, loops, etc)
don't tell anyone of you see this, but change what you put in at first to a yeast/wheat mash, and you can make moonshine. A bad tasting one, but moonshine!
Mg doesn't work well with ethanol. Im trying 100ml EtOH 90% + 4g Mg + some iodine (about a couple of spoons of 5% iodine solution in EtOH). it is bubbling when I heat it, but as soon as it cooled down, bubbling diminishes, and goes away completely in 10-20min, and there is no evidence of white MgO, though iodine consumed a little
+David W. Smith the sieves themselves are like dry clay. They'll hold their shape with light handling, but if you start stirring the mixture they'll break up and put massive amounts of sieve dust in your solvent which is a pain to remove. If you intend to distill your solvent later then i suppose stirring is acceptable. But if you're going to use the solvent directly then i recommend just letting sit for longer.
seems like I read somewhere you can dry alcohol with epsom salts by desicating the epsom salts by heating then filtering the alcohol through it. is this acurate. Id like a food grade finished product. and what about deep freezing to crystalize the water into ice?
Hello NurdRage, I have some case. I wanted to make an Alcohol Drink, so I bought an Ethanol Food Grade 96%(from Pine Fermentation), they sell it here in my country. I have 2 problems first, how to make sure that it is Food Grade? since I bought it Online, and kinda not official store. second, if its Food Grade Confirmed, how to remove its Pine Smell? Thank you, Im not a chemist, but I can learn.
ayy lmao I dont think distilling would get rid of the pine smell since its probably some sort of oil dissolved and would likely come over with the ethanol.
thefriendlymadman or somethink volatile that will redisolve in the etoh after distillation.. and perhaps it's not exacty food grade, you can't be sure.
In terms of determining if it's food grade without any analytical equipment such as GS-MS that could be difficult to determine at home. To get rid of the pine smell, that is likely coming from residual terpenes, distillation would not remove them however I would personally attempt to run the ethanol over a reversed phase silica column. The terpenes may be retained long enough to separate them from the ethanol.
@nurdrage . The iodine etching to start the reaction again got me wondering: can anything be added to a car battery that has sat uncharged to remove the sulfation that on has occurred on the lead plates to 'start the reaction again'? Thanks.
That's actually a great question! Calcium chloride is a widely used drying agent, but is not normally used for alcohols, phenols, aminos, and carbonyls (acids, ketones, esters) because it is slightly reactive with them, producing organic compounds as impurities, such as Ca(OH)2 and CaCl(OH). It also doesn't have as high an efficiency as the magnesium oxide destruction process demonstrated here, due to leaving, on average, 1.5 mg of water in each liter of output dried solvent. The Magnesium oxide destruction shown here is very, very thorough and the side products do not distill. Magnesium sulfate tends to introduce impurities from compounding as well.
Also, magnesium sulfate is less efficient at drying than calcium chloride, leaving about 2.8 milligrams of water in each liter of dried solvent. So, same issue: if you need DRY solvent, magnesium oxide destruction. If you predry ethanol or methanol with a drying agent, before a destructive drying, be sure your drying medium doesn't leave behind impurities that react with products or reagents in other steps in your synthesis!
as far as my understanding goes a reflux setup is some sort of gravity trap where the fumes first flow to a separate reservoir before continuing on to the distillier. this ensures that whatever churning or violent bubbling that causes reflux from the boiling reservoir falls directly into the trap reservoir instead of going directly into the distiller and ruining the end product.
I'm really sorry for the deffinition I just gave you, that was actually a backflow setup. The reflux tower is actually a very simple distiller that sits right atop the boiler reservoir, its purpose is to only let pass the fumes with the lowest boiling points, the rest condenses and falls back down, this ensures higher purities on the end product.
Quick question for you, when using molecular sieves to separate the water from ethanol can you do it when it's in its vapor form or do the sieves have to be submerged in the liquid solution for them to work? Also if you can use them on the gas/vapor form would you need a different sized sieve?
+tjpld I am ignorant about it, but since they work in a mechanical way (by trapping water particles in the pores), I guess they can work forever unless the pores get filled up with residues or the pores get damaged becoming bigger.
Thanks for this. I have been interested in ways to purify ethanol without distillation. In most countries home distillation of ethanol is illegal. It would be nice to have relatively pure ethanol for use in alcohol stoves and as a solvent. The most pure I can buy is 75% alcohol by volume. Legally I can't distill that. So a non distillation method would be needed. I wonder if 75% would be pure enough to use a molecular sieve? I can always try it and find out. I suspect that it might work; but would need to be done in batches. As soon as one batch of Sieves has absorbed all the water it can; switch to another batch of Sieves.
+Trans Feminist Autism Yeah you'd probably have to do it in batches. Be sure to measure the density of your alcohol as you progress so you know how well you're doing. I'd be worried though about handling looses as the alcohol sticks to the sieves so when you remove them you also loose a bit of alcohol. As for the legality of distilling. I'm not sure where you live, but where i live in canada distilling at home is technically illegal but rarely enforced. The laws are more for stopping illegal distilleries from selling alcoholic beverages. The police aren't too worried about small scale home distillation operations if they're just intended for personal use and not for sale.
+NurdRage I have a proof and trail hydrometer. So measuring the alcohol content would be easy enough. Even though it may be inefficient; I may try it anyway. It could be a fun experiment. Heck I may even try that with some home made wine just for fun. Yea here in the US I am probably not likely to get in trouble for distilling small amounts of store bought alcohol for personal use. For my situation distilling is the best option. I already have all the necessary glassware.
+Trans Feminist Autism alrighty, if you do try it with something you intend to consume, be sure to find food-grade molecular sieves. The industrial grade stuff might have oils or heavy metals stuck to the surface which would be unhealthy if they get into your drink.
+Trans Feminist Autism Look for Everclear in the liquor store. It's already 95%, so it would save you some trouble. Hardware stores sell ethanol by the gallon, but it's denatured with methanol.
blabla62871 In some places, even possession of distillation apparatus is illegal (you'll be fined, and apparatus will be confiscated), as well as possession of >80% non-denatured ethanol solution without prescription.
+RDarthur91 I haven't played it, but now I won't do anyways... I still remember the shitty gameplay I had in portal 2 when some asshat told me the wheatley-twist beforehand
I'm having a very difficult time making the video on getting propionic acid from the haloform reaction mixture, the process is REALLY slow so it's taking awhile. I might skip ahead to react propionic acid with ethanol in my next video, then go back and make propionic acid from the haloform mixture in the video after that when its finally finished.
Still addicted to fallout 4...
+NurdRage Have you picked a side for fallout 4?
+NurdRage I read this in your "voice". Ahaha
+NurdRage Couldn't you just rinse the seeds? I mean some kind of stirring with a flow of water and a simple mesh like a colander?
I think you can make it from Ibuprofen but Im not really sure since I work a lot more with inorganic chemistry rather than organic.
+NurdRage Fallout 4 has the best trailer!
That journal article is a nugget of gold. It examines something that everyone (in chemistry) does but that nobody really bothered testing or quantifying and comes out with some counter-intuitive conclusions. If only more science were like that.
Also it uses the term 'super dry'.
I need me some of those Sieves!
Cody'sLab Hi there! Wasn't expecting two exelent chemists in one place! Great!
For sure Cody! Did you end up getting/using any? I don't see you use them very often in your videos, and I learned about them from this channel (as well as Nile Red and Doug's Lab).
Make sure to use 3A molecular sieves which only absorb the smaller water molecules and not the alcohol. ;)
Hi Cody, can you bring back the precious metal recovery series
I actually used molecular sieves to solve a low- viscosity problem with silicone polymers. (I still have the metal canister they came in.) I had to do this for a silicone manufacturer I worked for as an R&D chemist in the late 90's. I had to dry a large quantity so I used the drum it came in and a drum heater for convection mixing.
The low viscosity was due to water end-blocking the chains. I checked this by using a OH curing catalyst (tributyl tin, if I recall right) and sure enough the polymer would cure. Before I tried that I did a little research and found that the starting materials did contain a minute amount of water. A quick calculation showed that even a trace of water spelled doom and the bad lots curing under OH conditions clinched it.
The normal manufacturing procedure called for heating the starting materials to above boiling (150 C? ICR) and using a nitrogen sweep for a few hours, but from my experience it is really hard to remove all the water (or even low boiling solvents) this way. I would almost always detect a tiny solvent peak on subsequent gas chromatograph shots no matter how rigorous my solvent removal.
I did not use the Mg turnings, although we had some on hand from the massive Grignard reactions we used to run, but the sieves did the trick. That along with drying the reactor and such. It is pretty difficult to keep large reactors and amounts of materials dry. I did consider sodium, but my supervisors nixed it.
Beside fixing the problem quickly I was gratified to put another stupid "lab superstition" to rest, that is that molecular sieves caused the starting materials to react. I was amazed at how many labs have such superstitions.
Anyways, great video. You really make me want to get my chemistry set in order again.
+Ray Giordano very interesting story! thanks for sharing :)
NurdRage
Thanks! Coming from such an interesting guy that is quite a compliment.
I spent a lot of my time fixing problems with NuSil's products and it was pretty interesting work.
Which was a good thing because just about everything else there was, well it is hard to explain without writing a short story. Actually several short stories.
I think one of my fellow employees put it best when he said he wasn't sure if he was working for a real company or was unknowingly involved in a psychological experiment that went horribly awry.
I love chemistry and NurdRage is one of the coolest channels I have ever seen. I subbed years ago. Love it
Hey man I just want to let you know I really appreciate your videos I consider you one of the important educators in my life
Man, I am in second year of chemistry in college, and I have a feeling your videos will be VERY useful in the near future...
But yay, for now I watch them for the lulz :)
Keep up the good chemistry!
I totally can relate to your comment.. I'm in my second year of chemistry in uni as well :D
I graduated in 96
Glad to see that you are making videos again!
I've been drying out 70% isopropyl alcohol using first table salt and then anhydrous magnesium sulfate. I don't know the purity, but it's purer than 91%. I know this because I use it as a solvent to erase a certain kind of ink, and my purified alcohol works much, much better than the 91% straight out of the bottle. The 91% can't erase the ink completely and leaves a portion of it behind.
Thank you for this instructive video I always wondered what are molecular sieves.
You are the most knowledgeable person I've seen in YT in regard to molecular sieve. Best person therefore to ask I'd think. If I had a fiberglass HEPA filter that exhaled breath must pass (within a closed handheld unit shared with activated charcoal, only open at the top and the bottom. Breath is of course made up of two types of water. We've got a liquid water in our gaseous water or water vapor. A simple hydrophobic mesh is sufficient to catch and hold on to liquid water, but with the unit needing to of course be 100% air permeable, and with the other portion of our breath being a gas, water vapor, the water vapor freely passes into the HEPA filter. The water vapor eventually saturates the HEPA filter until you left with a brick, unable to pass air through. In your opinion, will the adding of activated molecular sieve, mixed in with the activated charcoal that sits below if you have a filter within the unit, be sufficient to dry the water vapor? Well probably not completely by any means, so I guess my question is Will adding the MS down in there with the AC underneath have any noticeable effect in at least slowing or minimizing the amount of water vapor that will drench the HEPA? Any insight would be much appreciated. Thank you
"if you have a" filter. That's a cute one. HEPA for F's sake
When you get your silver play button you should show us how you test it for what metals it's made of!
Thank you very much for making this video. I've had an issue for the dryness of alcohols.
Is this what they mead by "dry martini"?
+leerman22 lol, no. Dryness is a description of the taste of wine and spirits. It’s the absence of sweetness. A ‘dry Martini’ refers to the type of vermouth that is used, which can be either sweet or dry.
+leerman22 I'm not exactly sure if I want to drink dry ethanol.
+fpm1979 This, because people are assholes and need to say non-sweet dry.
+fpm1979 mixologist here. Not quite. While it is true that there exists both dry and sweet vermouth, all traditional martinis use only dry-vermouth; never sweet. A classic martini uses a decent amount of vermouth, and a dry-martini uses less...and an extra-dry martini uses only a small amount; and an extremely-dry martini uses no vermouth at all.
Dry-vermouth is less sweet than sweet-vermouth, but gin is less sweet than dry vermouth (gin has no sugar at all). so making a dry martini means "up the concentration of gin".
verdatum On a related note, when did someone think calling you mixologists was a good idea?
All I can think of when I hear that is a small child playing scientist.
Those sieves look cool. While they may work much slower, seems that an added bonus over the magnesium approach is the lack of (or very minimal) cleanup required.
The methods seems reasonable, but two questions: 1. Did you quantify the water content before and after each test? 2. Did you experience a slight vacuum pull when you removed the stopper in the molecular sieve test?
fantastic, I'll buy the sieves and use it to dry water from methanol, trymethil borate to dry the water from this mixture.
I'm really happy thank you very much
Curious; would the seines work faster if agitated? I.E. left on a stirrer plate (no heat, obviously) for a while? Or is the risk of mechanical failure too high?
Vacuum distillation would be an interesting topic to cover.
We usually dry our seives in an old microwave. Gotta do it in short bursts or the seives melt through glass.
THEY MELT THE GLASS?!
You could also wash with brine then dry with sodium sulfate or magnesium sulfate--neither of which are too expensive (you'd only need a sep funnel and some way to filter of the mag/sodium sulfate). This is a LOT faster (about ten minutes) and will dry practically everything--you just want to watch out for solvents miscible with water because they'll be lost with the brine wash.
I have heard that magnesium sulfate was also used to dry mildly moist alcohol(isopropyl alcohol).
+aetius31
you could use MgSO4 to remove "most" of the water from a solution, but more often than not, you will need to do some additional drying, it is a nice way to remove a bulk of water from a wet solution relatively quickly however.
+mark goos ok thanks for the clarification
Hello :) I'm a first year high school student and, I wish if you could make videos about basic chemistry, For newbies .. something to help the new guys, something like..
Basic rules, things to keep in mind .. etc. Thanks for your efforts to teach the world :)
I am confused. Anhydrous Magnesium Sulfate in Diethyl Ether does dry the Solvent. I.E. I have done it before.
What percentage of your solution was alcohol before and after each possess. Estimates are ok, i want a general idea of what this can achieve.
Methanol doesn't form an azeotrope with water, so it was pretty dry.
Just buy some fondu fuel. Distill it to separate it from the blue dye that they add.
NR, first i wanna say that i love your videos so much and i've been an avid follower for years, keep on doing what you're doing man. Ive noticed that in your latest videos over the past couple months the pacing of your narration has been a little confusing? like just little things, almost like the audio is glitching out or skipping or something. is this all in my head or have you changed the way you edit your audio?
Anyone else think he sounds like Keith Olbermann talking with the speed slightly slowed?
Once I heard it, I couldn’t un-hear it!
How about calcium chloride? I live in my car at the moment and find having a container of calcium chloride in there a must for keeping humidity in check.
Hope good fortune finds you soon ❤️
so this is what happens when i ask for a dry martini?
i always wondered, why have you never show your face or real name?
any way, that one of the wonders of this chanel xD
+NurdRage would a good prior step to chemical drying be to use a Dean-Stark trap to capture the water?
Would it not be beneficial to de-gas the solvent, too?
How about anhydrous magnesium sulphate ? I find that quite effective at drying out solvents when you're in a fix and haven't got any sieves in the lab.
I wonder if this method could also remove other impurities produced during fermentation which are still present after the distillation process?
Question: you mentioned that Magnesium can't be used for drying more inert solvents such as ether since they won't react with it. But shouldn't the Magnesium react with any water present, regardless of the reactivity of the solvent?
late answer but i think that the magnesium makes complexes with the diethyl ether, thus "deactivating" it in a sense
I know drying from reading stuff, But I also know about washing. =) All the stuff I have read about bio diesel they talk about washing. But you need to dry after washing.
The 3rd is dying (adding smell to natural gas, Propane). I had a science teacher in high school get all bent out of shape from me talking about dying gas as in adding smell. But in elementary school that is the term someone from the gas company was using when they were talking to my glass about natural gas and safety stuff for around the house.
perfect ive got a spaghetti strainer in the kitchen!
These molecular sieves are amazing! I do maple syrup as a hobby and the most time consuming and expensive part of the process is removing copious amounts of water from the sap and reducing the entire mixture up to 66% sugar by volume from about 3% sugar by volume. Could these sieves be used to shorten the boiling process?
+Doc Hussey hmm... so you're going from 3% to 66%? I don't think sieves would help in this particular case. They're great for going from 99% --> 99.99% since the last 1% is usually the hardest to remove in a solvent. But for bulk water, sieves would likely cost you more time and effort than save. Primarily since you also have to dry the sieves and that takes several hours at least.
Also, i'd think you'd have to get food-grade molecular sieves for something meant for human consumption.
I'd stick to tried and proven methods when it comes to something you intend to eat.
Bugger, a man can hope. Thanks for thinking it through. The only way advances are made is when people look outside of tradition at other means. Guess this one was a little _too_ far outside :)
@Nurdrage Where do you get your Methanol from? Do you buy it at crappy tire as Methyl Hydrate? Or from another source? I would like to start making my own Glow Fuel for RC plane engines. Thanks
hey, just out of curiosity: the way you're pronouncing the word sieve is unfamiliar to me, is that a geographical thing? like for example canadians would say seeve, while americans would say siff?
Wouldn't sodium metal dry alcohol really fast too? Assuming it's mostly dry to start.
Daniel Mallett sodium metal would also react with the alcohol, faster than magnesium metal does. For small alcohols like methanol, this can be dangerously exothermic. Magnesium works well because when it or the magnesium alkoxide react with water, insoluble Mg(OH)2 or MgO is formed. So even though magnesium can also react with alcohols, the alkoxide salt is soluble and this promotes water removal.
And this is how to make the illusive powdered alcohol.
... Though I doubt this is safe to consume.
I boiled magnesium shavings in methanol for a day, but it did not dissolve a single gram, what did I do wrong?
Wow this is so strange I just used anhydrous diethyl ether as part of my lab just a few hours ago and it had these sieves in them which is the first time I saw them.
Could molecular sieves be used to create an anaerobic environment for nitrifying bacteria?
I got brown sieves and after I dried them and used them they absorbed the water but left a brow color in the solvent, why are they contaminating my alcohol?
I'm trying to dry some Ethanol with molecular sieves to dry some samples to observe them under scanning electron microscopy, but the ethanol becomes quite cloudy. I guess was there's lots of dust in the beads! I may need to filter it or something
Would it be possible to set up a column filled with the Zeolite, to filter the H2o out of Ethanol vapor during fractional distillation?
I use to use a system that used zeolites to produce pure nitrogen air for filling tires at the shop I worked at, but never got to pick any technicians brain about how that system was designed (multiple filters, loops, etc)
don't tell anyone of you see this, but change what you put in at first to a yeast/wheat mash, and you can make moonshine. A bad tasting one, but moonshine!
this was a joke, don't do this, you'll die... or will you? I don't know, I'm not a scientist. It might actually work?
I wonder what would happen if you poured the sieves into pure water......
Mg doesn't work well with ethanol. Im trying 100ml EtOH 90% + 4g Mg + some iodine (about a couple of spoons of 5% iodine solution in EtOH). it is bubbling when I heat it, but as soon as it cooled down, bubbling diminishes, and goes away completely in 10-20min, and there is no evidence of white MgO, though iodine consumed a little
Can I use calcium oxide instead????
Shouldn't the Sieve method work better if the solvent is constantly in motion, thus providing more liquid to the surface area, quicker?
+David W. Smith the sieves themselves are like dry clay. They'll hold their shape with light handling, but if you start stirring the mixture they'll break up and put massive amounts of sieve dust in your solvent which is a pain to remove. If you intend to distill your solvent later then i suppose stirring is acceptable. But if you're going to use the solvent directly then i recommend just letting sit for longer.
seems like I read somewhere you can dry alcohol with epsom salts by desicating the epsom salts by heating then filtering the alcohol through it. is this acurate. Id like a food grade finished product. and what about deep freezing to crystalize the water into ice?
Can you separate salt and water from sea water by using molecular sieves? Just wondered...
Abhijeet Phadke Its easier to just evaporate or boil the water.
is it possible dry the alcohol with aquarium zeolite rather than laboratory molecular sieves as it is unavailable for me at the moment :/
Curious
are you ever gonna try to make a high vac set up in your home lab? or is that just too dangerous?
Is there any way to determine the difference in purity between these two methods?
Can I use a crude anhydrous magnesium sulfate to dry my ethanol and isopropanol will sodium sulfate ruin the drying process?
Wouldn't anhydrous Epsom (dried magnesium sulfate) salt work just as well?
Why don't you use Sodiumsulfate?
one ångstrom is 100pm ("picometers" 10^-12m)
+kevjtnbtmglr Picometers are actually 10^(-12)m. The 100pm is still correct though
+Mcsticken right, fixed
Hello NurdRage, I have some case.
I wanted to make an Alcohol Drink, so I bought an Ethanol Food Grade 96%(from Pine Fermentation), they sell it here in my country.
I have 2 problems
first, how to make sure that it is Food Grade? since I bought it Online, and kinda not official store.
second, if its Food Grade Confirmed, how to remove its Pine Smell?
Thank you, Im not a chemist, but I can learn.
distill it
ayy lmao I dont think distilling would get rid of the pine smell since its probably some sort of oil dissolved and would likely come over with the ethanol.
thefriendlymadman or somethink volatile that will redisolve in the etoh after distillation.. and perhaps it's not exacty food grade, you can't be sure.
In terms of determining if it's food grade without any analytical equipment such as GS-MS that could be difficult to determine at home. To get rid of the pine smell, that is likely coming from residual terpenes, distillation would not remove them however I would personally attempt to run the ethanol over a reversed phase silica column. The terpenes may be retained long enough to separate them from the ethanol.
@nurdrage . The iodine etching to start the reaction again got me wondering: can anything be added to a car battery that has sat uncharged to remove the sulfation that on has occurred on the lead plates to 'start the reaction again'? Thanks.
What would be the best way to remove 1% MEK from 99% ethanol?
Sieves definitely don't work with hydrazine sadly. I believe they catalyze it.
can you dry alcohols with magnesium sulfate?
I have a stupid question: why does nobody uses anhydrous magnesium sulfate (or calcium chloride) to dry ethanol?
+piranha031091 It doesn't work nearly well enough. There's still a substantial amount of water left with those.
That's actually a great question! Calcium chloride is a widely used drying agent, but is not normally used for alcohols, phenols, aminos, and carbonyls (acids, ketones, esters) because it is slightly reactive with them, producing organic compounds as impurities, such as Ca(OH)2 and CaCl(OH). It also doesn't have as high an efficiency as the magnesium oxide destruction process demonstrated here, due to leaving, on average, 1.5 mg of water in each liter of output dried solvent. The Magnesium oxide destruction shown here is very, very thorough and the side products do not distill. Magnesium sulfate tends to introduce impurities from compounding as well.
Also, magnesium sulfate is less efficient at drying than calcium chloride, leaving about 2.8 milligrams of water in each liter of dried solvent. So, same issue: if you need DRY solvent, magnesium oxide destruction. If you predry ethanol or methanol with a drying agent, before a destructive drying, be sure your drying medium doesn't leave behind impurities that react with products or reagents in other steps in your synthesis!
+Finn, just Finn. what about sodium sulfate how well do you think it will preform ?
GamesGeeks
Basically identical to Magnesium sulfate
as always, great video ;)
could you, please, make sulfuric acid from nitric acid and sulfur?
What is a reflux column and how does it work? And a drying tube?
as far as my understanding goes a reflux setup is some sort of gravity trap where the fumes first flow to a separate reservoir before continuing on to the distillier. this ensures that whatever churning or violent bubbling that causes reflux from the boiling reservoir falls directly into the trap reservoir instead of going directly into the distiller and ruining the end product.
I'm really sorry for the deffinition I just gave you, that was actually a backflow setup. The reflux tower is actually a very simple distiller that sits right atop the boiler reservoir, its purpose is to only let pass the fumes with the lowest boiling points, the rest condenses and falls back down, this ensures higher purities on the end product.
@NurdRage Can molecular sieves be used for drying nitric acid?
I think i'm becoming confused whether or not this is his real voice.
Does isopropyl alcohol electronic cleaner 99.9 % anhydrous be OK?
Would it work if i used silica gel instead of molecular sieves ?
Do you think one could push ETOH above 96% with zeolite?
+casey dalen isn't that what I'm doing in the video?
Will that make it pure magnesium.
I have a request. make a video showing how to make methane from hydrogen and CO2
Nurdrage, Do u use a voice changer?
Me big fan of u.
Quick question for you, when using molecular sieves to separate the water from ethanol can you do it when it's in its vapor form or do the sieves have to be submerged in the liquid solution for them to work? Also if you can use them on the gas/vapor form would you need a different sized sieve?
Проблема в том, что чем выше температура нем ниже адсорбция.
how would you test result of drying?
Is there an upper limit on the amount of times you can reuse the sieves? Even when using them always for the same solvent?
+tjpld I am ignorant about it, but since they work in a mechanical way (by trapping water particles in the pores), I guess they can work forever unless the pores get filled up with residues or the pores get damaged becoming bigger.
I remembe that once I stumbled upon description of molecular sieves stating that they can be reused 10000 times. So that's a lot anyway.
Thanks for this. I have been interested in ways to purify ethanol without distillation. In most countries home distillation of ethanol is illegal. It would be nice to have relatively pure ethanol for use in alcohol stoves and as a solvent. The most pure I can buy is 75% alcohol by volume. Legally I can't distill that. So a non distillation method would be needed. I wonder if 75% would be pure enough to use a molecular sieve? I can always try it and find out. I suspect that it might work; but would need to be done in batches. As soon as one batch of Sieves has absorbed all the water it can; switch to another batch of Sieves.
+Trans Feminist Autism Yeah you'd probably have to do it in batches. Be sure to measure the density of your alcohol as you progress so you know how well you're doing. I'd be worried though about handling looses as the alcohol sticks to the sieves so when you remove them you also loose a bit of alcohol.
As for the legality of distilling. I'm not sure where you live, but where i live in canada distilling at home is technically illegal but rarely enforced. The laws are more for stopping illegal distilleries from selling alcoholic beverages. The police aren't too worried about small scale home distillation operations if they're just intended for personal use and not for sale.
+NurdRage I have a proof and trail hydrometer. So measuring the alcohol content would be easy enough. Even though it may be inefficient; I may try it anyway. It could be a fun experiment. Heck I may even try that with some home made wine just for fun.
Yea here in the US I am probably not likely to get in trouble for distilling small amounts of store bought alcohol for personal use. For my situation distilling is the best option. I already have all the necessary glassware.
+Trans Feminist Autism alrighty, if you do try it with something you intend to consume, be sure to find food-grade molecular sieves. The industrial grade stuff might have oils or heavy metals stuck to the surface which would be unhealthy if they get into your drink.
+Trans Feminist Autism Look for Everclear in the liquor store. It's already 95%, so it would save you some trouble. Hardware stores sell ethanol by the gallon, but it's denatured with methanol.
+NurdRage i watch these vids for fun so i know none of the chemisty like stuff thst you talk about great vid tho.
when my chemistry is asked a difficult question and he always responds the universe hates us then goes on to explain
How do you get magnesium in Europe? I think it is banned.
Would stirring speed up the drying process (especially the one with sieves)?
+Arrvi
no, that will break the sieves and turn them to powder
wouuu this video it is amazing thank you
Wouldn't this be illegal in most countries?
+blabla62871
Distillation of ethanol solutions is illegal in some countries :)
blabla62871
In some places, even possession of distillation apparatus is illegal (you'll be fined, and apparatus will be confiscated), as well as possession of >80% non-denatured ethanol solution without prescription.
quickest method for drying any solvent is sodiumsulfate and magnesiumsulfate.
but also the worst methods. check the article i linked in the video description
Why do you pitch down your voice on the videos?
can i use powdered magnesium?
We need green smash glow crystals. NOW.
"I am a molecular sieve, not a miracle worker."
can i eat magnesium
i dont know why but the pronunciation of "Sieves" sounds weird... I would say "Siv" rather than "Seeves"
but did you beat Fallout 4?
+verdatum the final boss is your missing son
you're welcome
+RDarthur91 I haven't played it, but now I won't do anyways... I still remember the shitty gameplay I had in portal 2 when some asshat told me the wheatley-twist beforehand
do molecular sieves perform better than NaK?
+TheMeilinger Depends on the solvent, you would never dry alcohols with alkali metals.
+David Zed i know :D but ether for example, would be drying it with molecular sieves be good enough for grignard?
Mg+2HOH=Mg(OH)2(sediment)+H2(gas)
Can magnesium powder be used
Yes it can but be very careful the reaction is exothermic and you have such a huge surface area you might get thermal runaway add very slowly
can I use 3A sieves to bring 95%ethanol to 100%?
Yes actually, although it is somewhat time consuming and expensive. for the vast majority of purposes 95% ethanol is just fine.