Denatured Alcohol

[szicree]

They are not the same stuff. One is grain alcohol with a bit of wood alcohol, the other is straight wood alcohol. The wood alcohol evaporates very quickly and I think has a lower flash point. Again, not the same.

[Dave S]

Good morning,

Whoever thought that one of the skills we needed as builders was to be chemists.

There certainly is room for confusion with this deal, more so because of all the intermingled common names used for chemicals and names used for marketing purposes than anything that has to do with us as builders......

Let's try this.

1) Alcohol is a class of compounds, not a particular single compound but the term is commonly abused in trade.

All of the compounds we have been talking about in this thread are "alcohol" but they are quite different from one another. Also, some are mixtures rather than pure compounds.

2) Wood alcohol = methanol (wood alcohol being a historic common name for the stuff) Methanol is a simple short chain alcohol with a very rapid evaporation rate. It does not need to be denatured because it is unfit for beverage purposes anyway.

3) Grain Alcohol = ethanol (grain alcohol being a historic common name for the stuff) Ethanol is a longer chain alcohol than methanol with a slower evaporation rate which makes a better washing solvent for that reason. Stuff sold as "Grain alcohol" would better be described as denatured alcohol - it's not going out to the hardware store unless it is denatured but the use of the additional term in the market place is a bit confusing.

4) Denatured alcohol (marketing term or industry standard term) is ethanol (90-95% ethanol) with 5% -10% methanol and or isopropyl added to make the stuff unfit for beverage purposes (Denatured)

5) Beverage alcohol contains ethanol - hopefully not any other alcohols...

6) "Oxygenated gasoline" contains ethanol; where the ethanol starts out pure however when it is released from the production facility, a small amount of gasoline is added to make it unfit for beverage purposes (Denatured) then the denatured ethanol is mixed with large amounts of gasoline at the petroleum refineries before shipping to gas stations.

This might be TMI for our purposes...the cut to the chase is a web search for an MSDS for "Methanol", Denatured alcohol. etc to get a practical description.

Sounds like Denatured alcohol might not be available in consumer channels in canada; but, there have been many Kitfox builders in Canada and they are using something - either a substitute such as methanol or denatured alcohol available through specific channels like professional paint supply houses.

BTW - drinking methanol is not the only way to poison oneself....it absorbs through the skin pretty easily and inhaling too much of it is bad.

Sincerely,

Dave S

[Dave Holl]

I didn't know it was so complicated! So what is IPA?

[Dave S]

IPA = IsoPropyl Alcohol