Concentrated Hydrogen peroxide is scary AF!
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becausechemistry@lemm.ee 2 months ago
No no no no no.
I’m a chemist. Organic chemistry PhD, now a process chemist in the industry. I do this for a living. Do not distill isopropanol that’s been exposed to air for any meaningful length of time.
Isopropanol slowly reacts with oxygen in the air to generate peroxides that, when you concentrate them down, EXPLODE. Source. Sorry, not an open access journal. But please take my word for it.
Unless you have a way of confirming the peroxide levels in your isopropanol are near zero, do not concentrate it down by distillation. You’ll blow up your glassware, which will probably expose what you’re distilling to your heat source, which will generate a secondary fireball.
PLEASE do not do this.
NegativeInf@lemmy.world 2 months ago
becausechemistry@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Cypher@lemmy.world 2 months ago
This is the exact video I thought of and where I learned about them!
LowtierComputer@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Sounds like fun! Got to go get a still though.
becausechemistry@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Please, don’t do this thing.
remotelove@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
becausechemistry@lemm.ee 2 months ago
The issue with isopropanol peroxide formation is that exposing it to air – even when just using it, like when you’re cleaning parts – starts the process. The air in the head space of your containers is also enough to form them over time. You don’t necessarily need to see solids in the containers for it to be dangerous, since they’ll crystallize out as you concentrate the solution during distillation.
It’s also a numbers game. It probably won’t explode the first time you do it. But there’s a chance each time. Do it enough, and you’ll have an incident.
There are chemical reductants that can clear peroxides. For industrial scale isopropanol distillation, I’m not sure what they use. It may be that they just never distill down to the point that peroxides concentrate to a dangerous level.