Rob, Methylated spirits has 'Pyridine' added to stop people drinking it. This has exactly the same boiling point as ethanol (allotropic) so apart from the water content, methylated spirits evaporate and leave no residue.
Over here (UK) Methylated spirits is much cheaper than Isopropanol, I guess it doesn't matter what alcohol you use as long as the Sodium Hydroxide dissolves in it. As you say you likely need a small water content to help with NaOH solubility. Methylated spirits has some water in it, so takes up some sodium hydroxide. - hey it works for me! Best, Mark Ford -----Original Message----- From: Matson, Robert [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 12 March 2004 18:57 To: 'Howard Wu'; mark ford; Bob C.; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: AD:Not a happy 'Campo' Hi Howard, et. al., > Most Pure ethanol still has 4% water. Why not use 99% isopropanol, > for the money probably the best buy. I think denatured alcohol is higher than 96% ethyl alcohol; however, the impurities put in to make it undrinkable (and thus comparatively cheap since it isn't taxed like liquor) remind me that I should look into what those impurities ARE. Could be that when denatured alcohol evaporates, it leaves behind the sticky residue of whatever those impurities happen to be, and that might not be so good for meteorites. I'd be surprised if isopropanol was any cheaper per gallon than denatured alcohol -- always seems pretty expensive at the drugstore. And if you're using either ethanol or isopropanol as a soaking solution with sodium hydroxide, you're going to have to add water anyway -- I don't think NaOH is very soluble in either one. --Rob ______________________________________________ Meteorite-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
