symboom
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Coffeemaker For Distilling Chemicals
does anyone know about this one more.
i read some where where some one used a coffee maker as a retort of course being not going to use the coffee maker again for coffee of course. he was
describing it is made of all plastic inside and was describing how it was used to distill his mixture of sodium nitrate and sulfuric acid and made
nitric acid
and that he replaced the filer unit and just lead the dripping into a funnel
to the coffee pot. and the coffee pot being borosilicate glass.
any one thoughts on this one
[Edited on 14-10-2011 by symboom]
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Bot0nist
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Sounds like a stupid idea to me. If I was going to use a rigged apparatus to distill boiling acids, I would not use a plastic coffee maker ever. Just
get some basic gear man. What are you, in Australia or something?
EDIT: I did not mean to imply that Australians are cheap or something, only that they tend to have trouble finding glassware and reagents do to
politics I guess.
[Edited on 15-10-2011 by Bot0nist]
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Don't judge each day only by the harvest you reap, but also by the seeds you sow.
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cyanureeves
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it just might work because the liquid is boiled in aluminum and sulfuric acid will eat up aluminum quick but the nitric might passivate the aluminum
since it is heated quickly. one better stand way out the way because the red fumes will go everywhere. now the glass pots will work as retorts because
i still have nitric i made that way.glass coffeee pots and oil lamp tubes can withstand great heat. except the cute round glass coffee pots used at
alsups stores,they distort and want to melt.
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blogfast25
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A 'still' like that would have enormous limitations in terms of materials that can be used in it and is not worth doing, IMHO.
The basic components (boiling flask, simple column and Liebig cooler) of a distillation kit can now be purchased for little dough on eBay, if you just
shop around a bit (or a lot, depending). Contact sellers to notify you of best bargains. Invest a little well spent time on this and you'll have an
all glass kit that can distill most simple mixtures.
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fledarmus
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I have seen bulb-to-bulb distillation units that were based on the large coffepots you used to see in churches, VFA halls, and other gathering halls.
These were once fairly common in chemical labs. There is actually a similar model in this thread:
kugelrohr
As for the coffeemaker as retort, I've seen them used as extracting units (and not just for extracting brown juice from ground up coffee beans  ) but not for distilling. Glass is so much easier to handle and less reactive than
anything inside a coffeemaker, and very nearly as cheap.
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blogfast25
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Agreed. Bear also in mind that catering size coffee makers and similar aren't necessarily cheap. Au contraire, mon cher...
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hissingnoise
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And anyway, a quickfit (or similar) still would seem the most basic requirement for anyone with an interest in chemistry!
Some, it seems, will attempt any daft thing to avoid spending a measly few bob on an essential, basic piece of apparatus!
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metalresearcher
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A coffeemaker usually has aluminum tubing which does not resist H2SO4 and the filter unit is not vapor tight. So it is useless. Follow the advice of
the other posters and order some simple glassware.
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symboom
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because chemistry glassware is not allowed to indivisiuals in texas unless you part of a lab.
a cheap one i found that some one was gitting rid of because they simpaly wanted a new one it has all plastic inside all the way up to the part that
drips water on the coffee i plan to replace the filter unit and just place a funnel
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Bot0nist
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Damn, if glassware is prohibited in Texas they might castrate you if they catch you synthesizing nitric acid.
Maybe you should move...
U.T.F.S.E. and learn the joys of autodidacticism!
Don't judge each day only by the harvest you reap, but also by the seeds you sow.
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Steve_hi
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Maybe a good deal
This is what I pan on buying when I have some spare cash
349$ ON EBAY
[img]C:\Users\Steve\Pictures\$(KGrHqZ,!iwE5dbgkOIDBOc1dg5tGg~~60_3.jpg[/img]
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Aqua_Fortis_100%
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If you cant alway$ afford professional glassware, then I believe most times (except if you are willing to mess with fluorine, HF or other extremely
nasty stuff) is legitimate to work with improvised apparatus..
Very cheap generic coffemaker:
Dismantling:
Note there is a thermostat well fixed to resisting element and aluminium tube (in which the water to make coffee is heated and circulates by
convection), closer:
Because of the thermostat, the apparatus will not have a constant temperature, and is relatively low.. But still usable! I suspect it could be even
converted in mild heating/stirring plate, replacing the thermostat by a far stronger one, isolating with some glass wool and puting bellow a rotating
neodymium magnet..
All of the initial stuff can be reduced to this:
You could pass some heatsink paste between the beaker or another glassware and the plate from coffeemaker to improve heat transfer..
The glass with comes along with the machine can be made into a "desert still" like this:
(Taken from: http://www.homechemistry.org/view/Preparation_of_formic_acid)
and used the same way with the coffeemaker..
[Edited on 16-10-2011 by Aqua_Fortis_100%]
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blogfast25
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Quote: Originally posted by Bot0nist  | Damn, if glassware is prohibited in Texas they might castrate you if they catch you synthesizing nitric acid.
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"Freedom, FREedom, FREEDOM", all together now...
I find it hard to believe that owning glass labware in the Lone Star State is illegal for non-institutionalised individuals. And how would they
enforce that? The glass police? ("They come in the night and check your house for illegal erlenmeyers, man! But they only found a 100 ml RBF
and let me off with written warning!") 
It puts the expression 'the knock on the door' into a whole new light...
[Edited on 16-10-2011 by blogfast25]
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watson.fawkes
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| Quote: Originally posted by Aqua_Fortis_100% | | Note there is a thermostat well fixed to resisting element and aluminium tube (in which the water to make coffee is heated and circulates by
convection) [...] Because of the thermostat, the apparatus will not have a constant temperature, and is relatively low.. But still usable!
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The thermostat here is a bimetallic disk type with a fixed set point. If it's useful to get better
temperature regulation, you can unscrew that thermostat and put a thermocouple or RTD in its place, then use a temperature controller.
The chemical compatibility of aluminum is pretty poor overall with many things people might want to run through it. The real issue is cleaning it.
That heating chamber is just not designed to be opened up and serviced on a regular basis. Therefore, in practical terms any re-purposing of such a
unit would have to be a dedication production device. This isn't the worst case by any means.
The only thing that immediately comes to mind is as an extractor of some form. It seems pretty good for steam distillation unit, since you'd just fill
it with distilled water. You could also use it to drive a Soxhelet or Gregar extractor. What you'd do is to mount the U-tube heating chamber
horizontally. On one side, put a tube to the solvent reservoir going down. On the other side, attach a tube leading up to the condenser. Make sure
there's enough total solvent volume so that the weir of the U-tube is below the solvent level by a few inches, to ensure that it's continuously
replenished.
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Aqua_Fortis_100%
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Thank you.
Controlling the temperature of the heating element would allow me to have an even more useful DIY apparatus..
Soxhelet extractor is a good idea for this.. That would be very interesting and convenient to extract natural products and being pratically harmless
to aluminium..
Ive used once this to make some HNO3 ("desert still")...
"The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant."
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symboom
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damn and here it looked like the coffee make used high temp plastic and not aluminum for the heating tube im thinking of just replacing the aluminum
pipe with a lead pipe by casting two halves
and welding together the lead pipe.it should hold the hot water as the heating element heats up the lead pipe and wont melt it
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Vogelzang
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How about making a ceramic ampulla and operculum?
Look how long these sentences are. It reminds me of German.
http://books.google.com/books?id=oWoChuYV2GUC&pg=PA445&a...
[Edited on 20-10-2011 by Vogelzang]
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unsub
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I love improvised lab equipment but have to agree that the plastics and the amount of work required make it not worth the effort unless you want a
dedicated still for 1 specific reaction or you want to use recycled consumer goods. I use coffee pot jugs as beakers and got a nice little one today
for 2.99.
I am pretty sure you can order glass from a private seller on ebay etc. I think you need a condenser a reaction flask and a couple splashheads but
then you can scrounge everything else.
Bare minimum would be a flask and condenser in the old rubber stopper style. As opposed to ground glass.
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