sorry for the noob question, im doing a Phalaris arundinacea extraction and it says to use naphtha(zippo lighter fluid). i was woundering if charcoal lighter fluid would work? like this
http://www.kingsford.com/images/KIN_Lighterfluid.jpg

I'm not familiar with the brand especially, but yes, it's probably your run of the mill white spirits. There's an easy way to check if it will work. Pour some in a glass of water. If it doesn't mix or dissolve into the water, it should be fine. Mind you, ether is far better... Zippo fluid takes too long to evaporate at STP, and I do rather dislike heating petroleum vapours, no matter how slightly...

Watch out for higher boiling petroleum distillates.

You should get some ether man. Naphtha sucks hard. You end up with an oily liquid that won't evap away. And the cheaper it is, the more oil you are left with because of lower standards in production.

Either pay for the pure lab grade shit, or stick to a cleaner nonpolar.

FMJ - Has swiy used White Spirits and found it to be effective???

Well, son, it's like this...

1. Yes. That shit is probably nonpolar. Any methanol-or-whatever can probably be washed out using Jam's nonworking "ether extraction," which does *wonders* for making sure your heptane stays seperate from water.

2. Yes. It's probably crap. So, for that matter, is the lighter fluid... why, just the other day, I was telling someone that they had successfully recrystallized... napthalene... in a DMT extraction, I think it was.

3. Yes, a beginning chemist could get around the fact that it's crap, without even having to clean it up much. However, if you have to ask whether petroleum distillates are nonpolar, we have to ask exactly how much work we want to do being the on-call n00b 1-800-tek-support for a thousand and one simple questions...

...the conclusion?

Distill it, in an air tight setup, without the use of too much fire and/or sparking. You'll either do perfectly fine, with a much cleaner np solvent - or, you'll blow your ass up.

...and that, my brother, is the essence of chemistry right there.

1st thing check the msds it lists CAS # 8052-41-3 is stoddard solvent
CAS # 64742-88-7 is med. naptha a BP test could find out which on they used.
You cant get vm&p naptha? for paints

the directions said use naptha which is zippo lighter fluid and i was just woundering if this was this was any different becuase of the word charcoal...i though ether was illegal, or am i thinking of somthing else. anyways where can i get it?

Ether is not illegal. Look for if its available and they have both kinds on the shelf, always pick the "Heavy Duty," it will have more of a % of ether in it. Look for an all yellow can of heavy duty Starting fluid. if this helps you any.

Wouldnt buy very much of it or more than two cans at a time if you do, and grab a lawnmower spark plug or something etc with it..
While its not illegal to purchase anywhere most stores do keep a sharp eye on the folks that buy more than a couple cans of it or so..

Be Carefull with it too..

where? wal-mart?

zippo is not naptha anymore. Stareting fluid is for????? starting cars so go to stores with automotive depts. Its going to be a mix of ether and ? hexane which probably wont matter but if you want all ether you need to distill it.