What is denatured alcohol?
Thanks for any info!
Answer:
The ethyl alcohol used in fondue pots is denatured by adding 5% methyl alcohol. This makes it poisonous as far as drinking. It also allows you to buy it without the excise tax charges on grain alcohol products. It is fine for burning. It burns cleanly with out soot or carbon monoxide. It is not toxic to burn, it is toxic to drink.
Methylated spirit (Meths or denatured alcohol — but not Rubbing alcohol, which is different [1]) is ethanol which has been rendered toxic or otherwise undrinkable, and in some cases dyed. It is used for purposes such as fuel for spirit burners and camping stoves, and as a solvent. Traditionally, the main additive was 10% methanol, which gave rise to its name, but this is not always the case now. There are diverse industrial uses for ethanol, and therefore literally hundreds of recipes for denaturing ethanol. Typical additives are methanol, isopropanol, methyl ethyl ketone, methyl isobutyl ketone, denatonium, and even (uncommonly) aviation gasoline.
As used in the phrase denatured alcohol, denatured means "a specific property of ethanol, its usefulness as a beverage, is removed". The ethanol molecule is not denatured in the sense that its chemical structure is altered.
Denatured has stuff added to it to make it unsuitable for drinking. Alcoholics would drink it if this wasn't done.
The purple stuff sold in hardware stores is denatured with pyridine, methanol and methyl violet dye to make it undrinkable.
Other grades e.g. industrial Meths WP is denatured with 2% methanol (Without pyridine)
Grades used for cosmetics are denatured with Bitrex
note also that all above also contain 5% water.
They will cause no harm unless you drink them or set yourself on fire!
Methylated spirit (Meths or denatured alcohol — but not Rubbing alcohol, which is different [1]) is ethanol which has been rendered toxic or otherwise undrinkable, and in some cases dyed. It is used for purposes such as fuel for spirit burners and camping stoves, and as a solvent. Traditionally, the main additive was 10% methanol, which gave rise to its name, but this is not always the case now. There are diverse industrial uses for ethanol, and therefore literally hundreds of recipes for denaturing ethanol. Typical additives are methanol, isopropanol, methyl ethyl ketone, methyl isobutyl ketone, denatonium, and even (uncommonly) aviation gasoline.
As used in the phrase denatured alcohol, denatured means "a specific property of ethanol, its usefulness as a beverage, is removed". The ethanol molecule is not denatured in the sense that its chemical structure is altered.
There is no duty on methylated spirit in most countries, making it considerably cheaper than pure ethanol.
Different additives are used to make it both unpalatable and poisonous in such a way that is hard to rectify through distillation or other simple processes. Methanol is commonly used for this in part because it has a boiling point close to that of ethanol, and separating it by distillation is difficult, but not impossible as methanol and ethanol form a zeotropic mixture (not to be confused with an azeotropic mixture). In many countries, it is also required to be dyed blue or purple with an aniline dye...
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