Posted this on BLTC under http://www.totse.com/bbs/Forum5/HTML/011338.html but decided LT was more appropriate.

A water extraction does not remove the hexane from starter fluid since hexane is not water soluble. (http://www.sierranevada.edu/life/safety/msdslocl/startflu)

Would the following method yield almost pure ether, if not, is there another method to get pure ether without using a reflux still?

Methode

1. Wash it with water, twice.

2. Add it to 20x its volume in water and discard everything but the water

3. Distill that mixture using melting point, remove ether.

4. Repeat step 4 until all ether is gone.

Rational

1 removes water soluble additives

2 ether has 6.9% solubility http://www.matheson-trigas.com/msds/MAT08980.pdf, the other petroleum products, hept and hex -ane have 0.003% http://www.matheson-trigas.com/msds/MAT10680.pdf and 0.014% http://www.matheson-trigas.com/msds/MAT10950.pdf respectively, so only the ether dissolves in the water

3. This is the same as jacking wine, except I am theorizing that since the ether is not as water soluble as the ethanol, the water will freeze and the ether will leak out.

The advantage of this would be that the ether is purified to almost the extent of a reflux still, _without_ heating it.

For my purposes (anesthetic), reagent grade would be desired, so a plain water extraction would not work....

Will this work? thanks=) -ratt

[This message has been edited by Rattof (edited 07-22-2003).]

It might work, but due to the large volumes of fluid involved you may experience large losses. You also need to get rid of the heavy oils that are in the starting fluid.

Do you have a sep funnel?

No=/ I was planning to siphon it and use a pipette to get what couldn’t be siphoned. I will look for one...

Sorry=/ I screwed up step 2. I had meant to add something about discarding the water insoluble oils.

Loses aren't too big a problem since starting fluid is relatively cheap

[This message has been edited by Rattof (edited 07-22-2003).]