Re: Launch partner?
He also claimed that the 95% pure stuff is “better for you” than the ultra pure Ethanol as it contains fewer impurities - strangely we never tested his claim!
He is right. Ethanol left "to its own devices" will absorb moisture from the air to ~ 95%. It is also impossible to purify ethanol beyond this by distillation. You hit 95% and that is where the story ends.
Ethanol with higher purity than that has been dried. Even if the drying method was "safe", the dried ethanol itself like most ultra dried volatile organics becomes vulnerable to some very nasty reactions with oxygen from the air, uv light, etc resulting in various peroxide impurities. Ethanol is nowhere near as bad as for example furan or ether - those may explode from build up of peroxide impurities in their ultra-dry form. While not "as bad" it is still bad. You really do not want to drink the sh*t which has been extra-dried, especially if has been left around for a while and god forbid exposed to sunlight while extra-dry - it is like licking agent orange.
That is why the bottles for the ultra-dried stuff are always made out of dark glass by the way.
I wasted a chunk of my MSc lab rat days distilling stuff. You could not do anything in the area I worked on without wasting half a week on getting enough distilled ethanol, acetonitrile, ether, etc. It was pretty useless by the beginning of next week so you had to start from the beginning once more.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
