Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Acetone from Nail Polish Remover

zestywesty - 2-3-2004 at 15:00

I managed to buy a kask of acetone from Ace Hardware yesterday. I bought it for 12.99 and it had 3.8 liters inside. I was also looking in the Grocery store at and wondered if it would be cheaper to extract acetone from nail polish remover. Grocery store nail polish remover only contains about 70% acetone and has several other chemicals and fragrences added, though they did not list the ratios of the other chemicals. Any ideas for a process to extract the acetone?

thunderfvck - 2-3-2004 at 15:13

Distill it?
Acetone's boiling point is something like 56C.
I think you'd probably just be better off buying it at ACE.

BromicAcid - 2-3-2004 at 15:23

Places that specialize in beauty products sell 100% pure acetone by the gallon, about $9.65 locally. In addition you can pick up paraformaldehyde and high concentrations of hydrogen peroxide relitively pure.

vulture - 2-3-2004 at 15:47

Distillation will require a very good fractionating column. Nail polish remover will also contain methylacetate.

thunderfvck - 2-3-2004 at 16:33

How pure is the acetone from the hardware store?

IgnorantlyIntelligent - 2-3-2004 at 17:58

Totaly pure. 100% acetone if it is ACE brand. I buy ACE brand in the huge gallon containers for 10 bux. I can't imagin not being able to afford acetone......

thunderfvck - 2-3-2004 at 19:00

Well I do live in Canada where Ace is not a local store. However I do go to Rona and find acetone there. I'm assuming it's the same purity then.
Any hazards associated with acetone? I've done a bit of searching on it, found some stuff but nothing solid. I don't want to open a new thread for this either. I use the stuff quite often, cleaning glassware, etc...I tend to get a lot on my skin also. Big problems?

Eliteforum - 2-3-2004 at 19:28

Acetone is flammable. Highly so.

thunderfvck - 2-3-2004 at 20:10

That I know. I did a foolish thing yesterday, I won't repeat the experiment. Needless to say I burned a nice part of my carpet and much of the plastic container which was holding the flaming liquid.

Eliteforum - 2-3-2004 at 20:31

You put a burning liquid in a plastic container?!

thunderfvck - 2-3-2004 at 21:15

I did?!

Who told you that!

Eliteforum - 3-3-2004 at 07:06

My mistake, I read it too quickly (or slowly it was around 5am at the time)!

Saerynide - 3-3-2004 at 07:48

You should buy it pure if you can. Distilling from nail polish remover kinda ruins it but adding more water to it than necessary when the water vapours condense :( I trying distilling it once, and I got a solution that was nice and colourless, but it had even worse solvating properties than before :mad:

thunderfvck - 3-3-2004 at 13:11

haha

Sorry Eliteforum. I'm just fucking with you. You read it correctly the first time.

Quantum - 20-3-2004 at 20:57

I have a bottle of nail polish remover that says one the front that it is 100% Acetone. I guess they would not lie to me?

Aqua_Fortis_100% - 14-11-2007 at 03:39

Well, I've searched a little and can't was able to find out more results..

The place where I live is somewhat suspicious about chemicals and people wanting them..So the only OTC acetone is the nail polish remover, full of dyes ,water and ethanol ( the max. acetone content allowed by the law in every OTC chemical is 60%)..

So, how should I go to separate them using a improvised destiller? I'm just inconformed with this... The next 'cheap' way being hunting out in an chem supplier (not very good idea, because of my age they can think I will use to make illicit substances - because in my country the acetone is a widely used chemical by criminals to refine their drugs) or at the last and desesperate route, using the Piria process (calcium acetate-> acetone)...

EDIT: I remember someone saying in some thread that the resumed info I want can be found at Rhodium archives. I tried some search on google about this but can't was able to find anything.. If anyone has the link I will apreciate a lot..
thanks
EDIT2: I need of somewhat more pure acetone as a solvent and also for do better some synthesis ( chloroform, etc)..


[Edited on 14-11-2007 by Aqua_Fortis_100%]

[Edited on 14-11-2007 by Aqua_Fortis_100%]

not_important - 14-11-2007 at 03:54

To do a good job is likely to take a bit better than an improvised distillation rig. Still, you could try it.

A first simple distillation should serve to get all the acetone along with some water and ethanol; acetone and water are listed as having an azeotrope of 88.5% acetone boiling just below the BP of acetone itself. There might be a ternary azeotrope of the three, don't know. And a bit of the other ingredients might come over as well, if they are somewhat volatile, but the dyes should stay behind. You should have something is your distillation rig to reduce carry-over of spray, say a loose wad of metal scrubbing mesh.

After that you could treat the distillate with CaCl2, which will grab onto the water and ethanol. You want a good excess of the caCl2, and don't leave the acetone in contact with it for too long, as it often has some CaO/Ca(OH)2 in it and will cause the acetone to self-condense.

Filter off the CaCl2, then distill the acetone again, should do it. The CaCl2 can be regenerated by heating it.

Isopropyl alcohol is a better starting point than acetate. It can be oxidised to acetone, or just dehydrogenated to it. The dehydrogenation is a 'hot tube' type of reaction, passing the alcohol vapours over hot copper, nickel, copper chromite, or other catalysts will result in some of it converting to the ketone and hydrogen.

bio2 - 14-11-2007 at 13:29

...."acetone and water are listed as having an azeotrope of 88.5% acetone boiling just below the BP of acetone itself."....

CRC lists acetone/water as zeotropic and I have never seen a reference that
lists an acetone/water binary azeotrope.

So what gives here? Does it really exist or is there disagreement on this.

not_important - 14-11-2007 at 20:21

Quote:
Originally posted by bio2
...."acetone and water are listed as having an azeotrope of 88.5% acetone boiling just below the BP of acetone itself."....

CRC lists acetone/water as zeotropic and I have never seen a reference that
lists an acetone/water binary azeotrope.

So what gives here? Does it really exist or is there disagreement on this.


I was looking in the 45th edition of CRC handbook, which does list an azeotrope. It appears that one exists at a bit above atmospheric pressure, and that simple codistillation may cause some water to come over with acetone at ordinary pressure when using shorter columns.

This may be enlightening http://www.egr.uri.edu/~lichatzt/tutorial5.html

bio2 - 15-11-2007 at 10:09

OK, my info was from CRC 74th.

The linked article is very good where it illustrates the complex behavior of
acetone/water.

Azeotrope at atmospheric pressure aside, anyone who has tried to distill
dry acetone from water knows that it is nigh impossible.

Aqua_Fortis_100% - 15-11-2007 at 17:10

not_important, the info you provided is really amazing! thank you very much... I always thinked about removing the water without "pain in the ass" , just adding some kind of drying agent to it (like CaCl2), filtering and distilling, but never ocurred to me how to reliably separate the ethanol from the acetone, just because I dont have a vigreux column or even an good thermometer... :( .. So I can use the CaCl2 to remove also the ethanol? what kind of compound it form with it?
(also, after quick treating with CaCl2 and filtering, can I use some other drying like dried MgSO4 or CuSO4 or even Na2SO4 ? (I know that the Na2SO4 can not just be used and distilled at same time because it loose most of their absorbed water from the crystal, because of the heat applied .. But and the MgSO4 ? does it have the same behavior?)...


BTW, I like your idea of oxidation of IPA, but two things limits it to me.. the price of it here is generally high (can be even more expensive than acetone) ,and also to separate the final mix.. So oxidizing ethanol (air, Cu and heat) can be a more better alternative, because of its very low cost and also the facility to remove the Ca acetate frm the mix and applying Piria process..But I'm worried bout the purification, which maybe can be worse than using IPA method..

[Edited on 15-11-2007 by Aqua_Fortis_100%]

not_important - 15-11-2007 at 21:26

Calcium chloride forms addition 'compounds' with the lower alcohols that are similar to those it forms with water. I believe that with MeOH and EtOH you get CaCl2.3ROH, with the propyl alcohols its 2ROH or 1:1. Fairly mild heat decomposes the compound, so you can distill the alcohol off of it. It does form complexes with some ketones, but these tend to be fairly weak and the water or alcohol ones with form in preference.

Almost all of the addition or 'water of crystallation' drying agents lose water on heating, its always better to stir the liquid with the drying agent and then filter it off rather than distilling from the drying agent. MgSO4 and CuSO4 are an order of magnitude better than Na2SO4, MgSO4 generally is cheaper and easier to deal with than than CuSO4, and CaSO4 is several orders of magnitude better than both those. Sodium sulfate is fairly slow acting as well, but is cheap and easy to regenerate, and is neutral and thus non-reactive to most organics.

http://www.mallbaker.com/techlib/documents/americas/3045.htm...

The sulfates don't form addition compounds with the alcohols, the other MX2 halides do to some degree or other, CaCl2 is both the cheapest and easiest to obtain.

The oxidation of ethanol that you refer to is the same as used for IPA. It's a bit tricky doing it right using air, as you're dealing with a flammable if not explosive mixture; you've got to control the mix ratios and the flow rates to keep control. Too much air and you burn your product to CO2 and H2O.

The acetone from decomposing calcium acetate needs to be treated with an oxidising agent such as KMnO4, then a weak base such as NaHCO3, to remove aldehydes, unsaturated compounds, and acids. Filter, fractionally distill, treat with CaCl2, filter, distill, dry with CaSO4. Yields are 75% at best, the heating is a little tricky as you're dealing with a solid, overheating can cause some decomposition with ketene being forms - nasty stuff to inhale.

From IPA it's fractional distillation, CaCl2, filter, fractionate, final drying. Unconverted IPA is recovered as the high boilers from the 1st distillation, and from the CaCl2 addition product.

Aqua_Fortis_100% - 16-11-2007 at 14:15

Thank you againg.

Today, traveling in the neighbourhood , I found a very interesting soap and cosmetics making shop and browsed their aisles... I found some interesting, pure and much CHEAPER chemicals.. just purchased 1L of 100% IPA for half the price that is generally found (their absolute ethanol is 1/3 of the usual!) , and also 500g of pure white MgSO4.7H2O for very few money... I also purchased in hardware 2 kg of plaster of paris, to make some more sodium sulfate ( according to frogfot's page.. I did tried this one time with less amounts and worked nicely )..

So in IPA oxidation, if I redistill the final mix an pass it again along the hot Cu pipe/with Cu powder , the yield of acetone is increased or just this will risk decompose the earlier formed acetone (??)

[Edited on 16-11-2007 by Aqua_Fortis_100%]

bio2 - 17-11-2007 at 12:42

Here are some references on the behavior of
acetone/water for everyones enjoyment.

J Phys Chem 3, 317 (1899)
Ind Eng Chem 38, 751 (1946)
Ind Eng Chem 44, 1872 (1952)

Z Phys Chem. 39, 485; 40, 440; 41, 331 (1902)

[Edited on by bio2]

MagicJigPipe - 17-11-2007 at 18:03

Wow... Isopropanol costing more than acetone? That's crazy...

Pure paraformaldehyde in beauty stores?? Are you sure? What is it used for?

Centimeter - 18-11-2007 at 01:20

You could also oxidize the isopropyl alcohol using sodium hypochlorite (Bleach) and acetic acid, although this would certainly introduce a great deal of water. This whole thing seems crazy! I can’t imagine going through so much work to get acetone!

Now onto health hazards with using acetone. Acetone is able to penetrate into you blood stream quite easily. Subsequently it is capable of transmitting things that it has dissolved into your body just by touching it. In fact, my father worked on a project in which he studied using acetone solutions as potential spray-on inoculations. So be careful when cleaning glassware, especially when working with potential carcinogens.

Also, acetone is extremely bad for the environment. So I hope that everyone is disposing of their gallons of acetone properly!

bio2 - 18-11-2007 at 15:15

......Also, acetone is extremely bad for the environment. ............

Acetone is produced by the human body is not very toxic
and is environmentally biodegradable.

This of course doesn;t mean it should be flushed down the toilet or indiscriminately
inhaled.

[Edited on by bio2]

smuv - 18-11-2007 at 16:23

Quote:
Also, acetone is extremely bad for the environment.


Do you have a source for this?

According to this article, acetone seems pretty benign. For the quantities of acetone used in experimentation I think it would be reasonable to assume that biodegridation would quickly remove the acetone from the soil (outlined in the above article). Additionally this article (and many others) show acetone to be fairly benign to organisms; many of which simply metabolize acetone to produce carbon dioxide.

prole - 20-11-2007 at 06:54

Hey all. I can't believe nobody has mentioned the bisulfite adduct for purification of acetone (a ketone). It's in the library (here), check Vogel's 3rd. I imagine that would render your nail polish remover into ultra pure acetone.

I always distill my hardware solvents. They invariably contain particles and coloured impurities that are not noticeable until it's distilled. The residues left after simple distillation range among cloudy, dusty, gold to green to yellow.

As an aside, I once heated a small amount of acetone in a test tube without a boiling stone and the whole lot vapourized and shot straight to the ceiling. Funny thing was, it never hit the ceiling, it remained a gas. I had to change my pants after that. Ah, sweet ignorance!

not_important - 20-11-2007 at 07:34

Bisufite is an expensive way to purify a solvent, as it uses up the bisufite and base/acid used to destroy the addition compound. The complex with sodium iodide was used to purify acetone back when it was a product of the destructive distillation of wood, methanol was the main contaminate.

These days fractional distillation, drying, and fractionating again will do a good job of cleaning acetone. Different methods of production, different contaminates.

prole - 20-11-2007 at 09:49

@ not important: I agree, the expense and trouble may be prohibitive for large amounts. But since others are suggesting actually synthesizing acetone, this isn't too far to go. Plus, it's fun.:cool:

elementcollector1 - 22-1-2013 at 10:15

I have up&up acetone with impurity of an organic compound (don't have it in front of me, something like dihydroxyquinone)? Probably that's not it, but according to Wiki when I looked it up, it remains solid well past the boiling point of acetone. There is no methylacetate or water in this product, according to the label on the back. Any simple purification routes? I can distill if necessary, but I wanted to know if there's anything simpler.

Does acetone catch fire when heated in a distillation apparatus?

blogfast25 - 24-1-2013 at 09:24

Quote: Originally posted by elementcollector1  

Does acetone catch fire when heated in a distillation apparatus?


Not if you heat it to boiling point and gently distill. Totally safe. Just make sure your condenser condenses all vapours so your work space doesn't get to contain a lot of acetone vapours. The BP of acetone is so low you can use a steam bath as heat source, even safer!

elementcollector1 - 25-1-2013 at 17:23

The steam bath idea worked beautifully. Incidentally, the actual impurity was denatonium benzoate. My boiling, crude acetone turned yellow-orange on heating - is this the presence of this impurity? The distillate itself was very clear, almost identical to water in color and viscosity.

Definitely doing this again, soon I'll have liters of acetone on the cheap... >:D

bellasmith - 26-1-2013 at 00:30

That I know.

blogfast25 - 26-1-2013 at 06:50

Quote: Originally posted by elementcollector1  
The steam bath idea worked beautifully. Incidentally, the actual impurity was denatonium benzoate. My boiling, crude acetone turned yellow-orange on heating - is this the presence of this impurity? The distillate itself was very clear, almost identical to water in color and viscosity.

Definitely doing this again, soon I'll have liters of acetone on the cheap... >:D


By distilling you concentrate whatever non-volatile crap in the re-boiler flask, which thus goes progressively more coloured as you distill off the acetone. In commercial nail polish remover there's a whole range of stuff, besides DnaB, also a bit of oil, usually a dye, some water etc...

But a cheap source of acetone nail polish remover I wouldn't call! Techical acetone is cheap as chips... But it's a nice exercise in simple distillation alright!

[Edited on 26-1-2013 by blogfast25]

[Edited on 26-1-2013 by blogfast25]