[pinkus]

I am just wondering why I've never seen someone dry their everclear and THEN do the extraction. I ordered some molecular sieves to make some and do just that.

I'd love to hear input while I wait for them to be shipped from China.

[brown_thumb]

You're asking about refining ethanol to better than 95 percent?

Even if you buy 190-200 proof... how long do you expect it to stay that pure after making a few extractions?

[pinkus]

Originally Posted by brown_thumb

You're asking about refining ethanol to better than 95 percent?

Even if you buy 190-200 proof... how long do you expect it to stay that pure after making a few extractions?

I don't expect to keep it dry. I expect to dry it as needed. I'd dry it with molecular sieves. take off the alcohol needed for the extraction and do it. Then remove the sieves and dry them in the oven. Reintroduce them when I need to do another extraction. This is a personal use op.

Here is a video that does a good job of showing how to make pure ethanol with molecular sieves. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ratR1ngcWss

[troutman]

Here's the thing about 100% dry anhydrous alcohol.

The minute you expose it to air it grabs moisture and will go back to around 95% over time.

Having a drying tube filled with calcium chloride to your extraction apparatus will help keep it dry.

This should give you an idea how to do it.

[mobin]

there's a ton of different ways to do this.

in addition to molsieves mag ribbon is an easy way too.

distillation under 70 torr works to remove enough water for most peoples needs.

[live resin]

Molecular sieves are not efficient for bulk drying of EtOH, they don't adsorb much water. Much cheaper to distill your azeotropic EtOH over anhydrous mag sulfate (you can use a CaCl2 drying tube on your apparatus as troutman mentioned), or use vapor phase drying with a column packed with tapioca. You could then store your anhydrous EtOH over molecular sieves to keep it dry but its best to distill right before use.

You would need to vac and backfill your extractor with N2 if you want the EtOH to remain anhydrous. Realistically your EtOH will become azeotropic again during extraction because buds/trim contain at least 5% moisture

Also, there's been several tests referenced in synthetic ochem forums in which sieves from China were shown to be significantly less effective than ones from US manufacturers like Sigma. You get what you pay for...