Strange. When I made ether ages ago, I used normal distillation setup with addition funnel and I remember mixing the starting solution of acid and
ethanol pretty quickly without any refrigeration and just kept the heating bath temp between 140-145C and collected distillate as it produced and
adjusted the ethanol drip rate to distillate drip rate. The whole process took several hours and after I washed it with bicarb and redistilled the
ether, dried it and stored it over a pinch of NaOH.
Ether forms peroxides over time and it is usually stored in aluminum containers stabilized with something commercially. The peroxides are a risk when
concentrating ether by distillation, usually not by themselves because the concentration is so low. Easily avoided with small amount of NaOH.
A higher risk for common chemist is the extreme flammability and low boiling point of ether. It just simply evaporates, floats everywhere and
self-ignites at 160C. I'm actually surprised I never got into any trouble with it when I was young and stupid ages ago, because I always used direct
gas burners to heat everything, including ether, never greased any joints and was just mostly reckless by nature in my experiments.
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