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Dry IPA / Acetone without the use of expensive epsom salts?

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It just occurred to me that we are trying to get all the excess water out of the IPA / Acetone when doing this. The common method is to stick some epsom salts in the oven, add to the solvent, shake for a bit and strain, which is all fine and dandy...

...But why not just put the solvent in the freezer for a day or 2, wait for the water to freeze, and strain from the non frozen solvent? Seems like and easy and free alternative to me. Any reason this wouldn't work?
 
You're referring to something called cold distillation, or the freezing of water out of water/alcohol mixtures. With such a method you can remove enough water to take a, say, 10% alcohol solution to ~50%, but not really much higher.

The more you decrease the water in your solvent/water system the more difficult it is for water to partition out and crystallise. Which, in simple words means that freezing water out of IPA/acetone does not work.

Nice thinking though!
 
Yeah, and usually whatever sulfate desiccant you are using (magnesium/sodium/etc), can be dehydrated and used again. Just bake it at 400f for an hour or two and it will dehydrate back into an annhydrous state. You could spend $10 and never have to buy magnesium/sodium sulfate again doing it this way.
 
Or if you are too impatient to dry your salts in the oven, you can microwave them and watch all the water absorbed boil away in under 5 minutes.
 
Kash said:
Or if you are too impatient to dry your salts in the oven, you can microwave them and watch all the water absorbed boil away in under 5 minutes.
Click to expand...


im super fond of this, it really expedites the process
 
To me it seems that the Epsom salts is the cheapest item in this discussion. Getting good lab grade acetone (or almost any solvent) is more expensive by far. 91% isopropyl alcohol from the corner pharmacy is pretty cheap thought.
 
Well, for a moment there I thought I had a free alternative... Seems my logic was a little flawed, back to spending mega bucks on epsom salts them 😉
 
Mega bucks lol its cheap as hell at any pharmacy. Like 5$ for 3lbs where I find my epsom salts lol. I dont even recycle it and it lasts a long time.

Good effort though. If you dont want to spend money just dehydrate it after use :p
 
Also keep in mind that once the epsom salts are used, they can be re-purged in the oven.

Just make sure that any solvent traces have been given a day or so to evaporate with proper ventilation, unless you relish the idea of starting a fire in your kitchen.
 
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