British youtubers today I'm going to
show you how to concentrate rubbing
alcohol using nothing more than standard
non-iodized table salt
aka sodium chloride mal rubbing alcohol
goes by a few different names including
of course rubbing alcohol isopropanol
isopropyl alcohol and dimethyl carbonyl
it has the chemical structure of c3h8
foam or c3h7 Oh H or ch3cho H ch3 it is
produced via a hydration reaction of
protein and water protein not to be
confused with propane protein is now
keen which means it has double and
single carbon bonds while propane is an
alkane which means it only has single
carbon bonds excuse me
musta had something in my throat making
my voice sound so deep oh one second
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fancy talk aside this process could not
be simpler as all we are doing is
weighing down the water in the
isopropanol and water mixture using salt
eventually as we put enough salt in
there the water will become so dense
that it will visibly separate from the
isopropanol we'll get a layer of
isopropanol floating on top and a layer
of salt water on the bottom
the isopropanol that's floating on top
of the salt water then can be decanted
or sucked off the top of the salt water
and stored in a different container and
the remaining salt water then can be
dried or evaporated or whatever way you
want to and the salt collected and
reused again for this experiment in the
future couple of quick notes first off
do not drink this
just because isopropanol is an alcohol
does not mean it will get you drunk
point on the contrary the only real
alcohol considered safe to drink is
ethanol as a matter of fact most of the
time when people get really bad
hangovers after they drink is because of
methanol contamination in the ethanol
that they're drinking formaldehyde
make a sedan formate are all produced as
methanol is broken down in the body once
again the methanol all being toxic they
produce varying degrees of illnesses to
the consumer now properly distilled
spirit should have very little to no
methyl alcohol in them it should be
pretty much just ethanol that's why a
lot of times you'll hear people say they
get worse hangovers when they drink beer
Mead or wine which has not been
distilled so they have all their
methanol content still in there now
don't get me wrong
other things still do play into a
hangover such as dehydration the
toxicity of ethanol as it breaks down to
your system and vitamin and electrolyte
depletion in your body so why go through
all the trouble of explaining this well
I really want to emphasize the point of
do not drink this even though it's
isopropanol methanol and ethanol are all
alcohols if you were to drink a shot of
ethanol you probably get a little bit
tipsy but if you were to drink a shot of
methanol or isopropanol you'll die in
extreme pain and the least the
isopropanol will cause you to go blind
so once again this is not for drinking
ok second off you gotta make sure that
you buy salt that is none iodized if it
says anywhere on the front of it that
it's iodized then you cannot use the
salt if you're not sure look for salt
that's
kosher salt or it says on the front of
it this salt does not supply iodine a
necessary nutrient if you're still
unsure you can always check the
ingredients list and if anywhere on the
ingredients it says that the salt
contains sodium iodide or potassium
iodide or any type I adore iodine then
you can't use it lastly this process
will only be able to concentrate alcohol
to around its Isaiah trope about 95% any
higher concentrations than that would
require something like a molecular sieve
in order to absorb the extra water and
bring up the concentrations further but
even if you are able to concentrate the
alcohol past its isotrope if left
exposed to the air it will rapidly
absorb moisture from the air and bog
down and concentrate
again also one other thing alcohol
concentrated using this process will
retain a very slight amount of salt in
it which normally wouldn't be a problem
for most uses but if you're gonna use
this for an alcohol stove it might cause
a little salt residue to be left behind
if you're burning it all right let me
actually show you the process now whose
simplest way I have found to do it is
just a jar with a lid of some kind on
this is a pickle jar basically all
you're gonna do is open up the jar still
smells a little bit like pickles and add
in the amount of isopropanol totally not
a fire hazard the amount of isopropanol
you wish to concentrate it should be
noted that you don't actually have to
use a jar you can just use something and
stir it but the jar just seems to be the
easiest it must say that's a good amount
for what I am trying to demonstrate here
next all we're going to do is take our
salt this case I have non-iodized C salt
and add in about 1/8 of the volume of
liquid that we have currently after we
do that we are going to take make sure
the lids are nice and tight not gonna
leak and then just shake the jar around
vigorously for a minute basically all
we're doing is we're we're gonna keep
adding insult until no more will
dissolve at that point the water should
be supersaturated with salt and whey
denser than the isopropanol it will then
visibly separate out but looking at it
right now it looks like we can add in a
fair bit more salt to this so I'm gonna
add in about another 1/8 you can't
actually technically speaking add in too
much salt but you know there's no reason
to waste a bunch of salt at first if you
don't have to
you can do this with concentrations
between 10 and 90 percents the only
thing is though is that the more water
there isn't it the less alcohol the more
salt you're going to need to use the
salt water can be dried afterwards
though and recollected and then used for
this type of thing in the future again
but that's really up to you
let's see it will turn a little bit
cloudy but that's yes it's already
happening all right
I'm going to shake this and I'm going to
set it in front of this camera here so
that way you can see so when I set it
down here what you'll see is as this
settles might take just a second here
yes as you can see there is a layer
slowly creeping its way up a very clear
layer and then on the top it's being met
with a cloudy layer I don't know how
well you can see yeah it looks like you
can see pretty good so if I were to hold
this a little bit close to the camera
this bottom part here that you can see
is saltwater this top part is
concentrated isopropanol I can pretty
much just do this indefinitely just keep
shaking and then setting it back down
I'll reset rate every time I'm gonna
hold a little bit closer this time so
that way you guys hopefully can see
better once again this doesn't need to
be done in the jar it can be done with
just some type of glass and then you
stir it around or anything like that
it's a really quite versatile you can do
it so all you need is some isopropanol
and some salt now you don't actually
have to do this but I'm going to do it
as a visual aid of sorts and I'm going
to add in just a few drops of food
coloring to show the difference between
the layer densities and this shouldn't
really hurt my house of propanol
but if you look right here grab this
camera you look right here the food
coloring is a lot less dense than the
salt water so it wants to float on top
of it just like the isopropanol does
this will change though as soon as I
take it and I shake it around a bit so
imma set you back right here if I now
simply just take this cap it again they
said you can see that it wants to stay
separated because the salt water is a
lot denser than the food coloring but if
I mix it together by shaking it this
will basically cause the coloring to
become around the same density as the
salt water what if we let it sit again
like so you'll notice a different effect
which is pretty cool which is the
distinctive color differences between
the isopropanol and yesa propanol and
the food coloring and the salt water and
the food coloring so as you can see the
food coloring that has dissolved in the
salt water is a very vivid blue while
the food coloring that is dissolved in
the isopropanol is more purple and I did
use purple food coloring so it is kind
of interesting how the colors separate
like that there's not really much else
to it all I need to do now is just pour
off this top layer of isopropanol into a
different container just gonna do this
real quick to a wash all the salt off
the side of the jar so I'm going to get
a different container real quick
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all right so as I mentioned prior you
can literally just unscrew this and very
gently decant or pour off the
isopropanol layer into a different
container like so or my more preferred
method is to use something like a
syringe and very carefully extract the
layer off the top and the reason is is
because you get less of the you get less
of the isopropanol spilling everywhere
and use less chance of you accidentally
sucking up the saltwater and
contaminating it once again the food
coloring is not necessary it does really
help you see the difference between the
two layers though it might make
separating I'm easier but I mean it's
really up to you now you really want to
minimize contamination
chances if you leave like 5% of the
alcohol on top it really should stop you
from chance sucking up any saltwater
one of the great things about syringes
too though is that if by chance I were
to suck up some saltwater so like I'm
gonna really get to the edge here and I
were to suck up some saltwater in here
so you can see my syringes turned quite
purple by just let it sit like I
normally would for the isopropanol and
the jar you'll see that it separates
into two distinctive layers again I
probably have to let this sit for thirty
seconds or so before it actually
separates into very clear layers I can
see it starting
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so with this now we can see that I
sucked up quite a bit of salt water in
here but being a syringe and the fact of
the salt water is heavier than the
isopropanol I can literally just take it
and squeeze right on out all that salt
water and just leave behind the
isopropanol and then add it to whatever
this jar is already pretty much full but
that's all there is to it
to concentrate isopropanol rubbing
alcohol with nothing more than
non-iodized table salt you've seen it
all here it's pretty much live it works
great and like I said the food coloring
can work is very good as a visual
instructor I'm actually surprised at how
much of a color difference there was
between the purple and blue that was
actually really pleasantly nice when I
did it with green it was more of like a
dark green and then a lighter green but
this this is really quite drastic so I
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you