Anyone tried this B&Q alcohol product?

Somebody posted about it a few days ago. If you can find it on the crappy forum search you may find the answer. I can't remember what was said about it on that thread.
 
Nonetheless £2.50 per litre is a monumental price for ethanol, a cheap and plentiful industrial chemical. Petrol costs 60% of that and is 80% tax.

Someones making immense profits on this sort of thing.
 
Rigger Mortice said:
If you can find it on the crappy forum search
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Don't use the crappy forum search, it's crappy.

Use Google instead, prefixing your query with site:ybw.com/forums (no spaces; the colon is important). That will use Google's search techniques but limit the result to just the forum.

Pete
 
A fiver for the convenience of picking up if you happen to be in beanqueue is OK.
I guess it's 95% ethanol and a few percent "stuff to stop you drinking it"?

I might pick some up to use for cleaning brushes after epoxy work and things like that.
I can get IPA cheaper, but not without buying loads of other stuff to absorb the delivery cost.
 
wrr said:
Don't know why they call it "Bio-ethanol" as all ethanol is "Bio"! ]
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Not all ethanol is bio - INEOS at Grangemouth have a large plant making it from ethylene. Making it by fermentation and distillation can only get to about 95% pure as you get a constant boiling mixture, from ethylene you can make 100%
 
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lw395 said:
I guess it's 95% ethanol and a few percent "stuff to stop you drinking it"?
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The chemists in the house will probably correct me, but I was led to believe you can't have more than about 95% ethanol except in a sealed vessel, because at higher concentrations than that it will absorb water from the air until it gets back down to equilibrium at 95%.

Mind you, the people who told me that were mostly interested in drinking it rather than burning or reacting it, so their ideas may not be 100% reliable :)

Pete
 
prv said:
The chemists in the house will probably correct me, but I was led to believe you can't have more than about 95% ethanol except in a sealed vessel, because at higher concentrations than that it will absorb water from the air until it gets back down to equilibrium at 95%.

Mind you, the people who told me that were mostly interested in drinking it rather than burning or reacting it, so their ideas may not be 100% reliable :)

Pete
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I think it's worse than that, if you leave it exposed to air, the alcohol will evaporate leaving more water behind.
95% is roughly the highest concentration you can get by direct distillation, as it's the mixture with the lowest boiling point.
To get a higher concentration, you use a chemical reaction which uses up the water, or dissolve acid in it and re-distill IIRC.
A client of mine has food grade 95% ethanol in 220 litre drums in his warehouse. I avoid the punch at his parties.
 
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