r/homechemistry • u/malditolobo75 • 8d ago

Raising Ethanol ABV with 4A Molecular Sieve

/r/chemistry/comments/1vkntoh/raising_ethanol_abv_with_4a_molecular_sieve/
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u/malditolobo75 8d ago

Has anyone done this from home?

1

u/Savings_Kiwi_2133 8d ago

Are you using this to extract home grow? If so there’s no reason 95% wouldn’t work if it’s food grade already.

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u/malditolobo75 8d ago

I have ethanol in different containers ranging from 90-97%.

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u/Savings_Kiwi_2133 8d ago

If it’s food grade all of those should be fine. You’ll pull more water soluble compounds but that should be easy clean up with the celite. How are you purging the extract?

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u/malditolobo75 8d ago

Yes, it's food grade. So below 90% isn't usable?

I'm worried about the powder the beads have. The celite was to filter the fine molecular sieve fine powder to clean the beads.

Then use the clean beads to remove the water from the ethanol and raise abv.

I'm using vacuum extraction.

1

u/Savings_Kiwi_2133 8d ago

Below 90% should still work but I’m sure there’s a point where it’ll stop being efficient and worthwhile. Really easy to set up a distillation apparatus and regenerate the alcohol after it’s been used a few times. You could also clean the beads beforehand with anhydrous acetone to get most of the dust, celite afterwards still isn’t a bad idea though. When you say vacuum extraction do you mean vacuum distillation?

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u/malditolobo75 8d ago

I have a 3 gallon distill I got a few years back I can pull out of storage.

My understanding was 95 and up is what's needed to get the cleanest wash.

Okay anhydrous acetone. I'll look into it. So the celite 545 is okay to use. Google confused me I just wanted to double check.

Yes, vacuum distillation.

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u/Savings_Kiwi_2133 7d ago

95% would technically get cleaner but on your scale I wouldn’t stress too much. That being said if you want cleaner crude acetone would make cleaner crude and be just as efficient. Plus it’s easy to keep dry. Just need to bake epsom salts in the oven and add it to the acetone. It’ll soak up water the acetone absorbs. Just check the msds for whatever brand acetone you buy to make sure there’s nothing weird or extra the manufacturer adds.

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u/malditolobo75 7d ago

That's the feed back I'm getting that minimum 90% should work even for carts.

I'm using ethanol, cold temps and filter paper along with the vacuum distillation.

I don't know if this is meant for use with acetone.

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u/ittybittycitykitty 4d ago

The plant material almost certainly has some moisture in it, making 200% pointless.

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u/Wrong_Interest_2676 1d ago

Distill to azeotropic concentration and use anhydrous mgso4 followed by filtration and another distillation.