Thread: 100% Methylated Spirts for French Polishing

Originally Posted by silentC

OK, that's my misunderstanding of the process. I assumed it was boiled off in the still at a temperature that evaporates ethanol only. The process you describe sounds very high-tech. I wonder how they made their 100% ethanol a hundred years ago

I must admit I've never understood what the 95% - 99% refers to. I understand that it's 95% ethanol, but I assumed that the other 5% was the denaturing chemical/s, not exclusively water. Yet that contradicts what I've read elsewhere where it is suggested that 95% methylated spirits contains 5% water.

Regarding stills, I found this:



http://www.dassa.sa.gov.au/site/page...124#production

That might be redundant though.

Interesting isn't it, distillation. Yes, most of the other 5% is water, with just traces of the denaturing material.
Yes, I wonder how they ever did FP hundreds of years ago without 100% alcohol Well in truth they didn't, because it didn't exist and doesn't exist except in the lab. The stuff that these days sells as 100% methylated spirits is just denatured absolute alcohol, it will be something like 99-99.8% ethanol, the remainder water and denaturing agent (<0.1%). It's 100% methylated spirits in the same way as red cordial concentrate is 100% cordial.
I would say absolute ethanol would have easily been made for the last couple of hundred years, it's just a distillation process, anhydrous (100%) ethanol is a more recent beast.
Cheers
Michael