Extract Diethyl Ether and Heptane from Starter Fluid

In this video we obtain the useful solvents diethyl ether and heptane from car starter fluid. Sign up for a free trial at audible: http://audible.com/nurdrage

First, spray the car starter fluid into a flask. Setup a fractional distillation apparatus around the flask but cool the condenser with ice water. Diethyl ether boils at 34.6 degrees Celsius so a room temperature condenser wouldn't be as efficient as an ice temperature condenser. Now start with very light heating and gradually ramp up until diethyl ether starts to distill at 34 celsius or so. Go slowly at first as diethyl ether boils very easily. You'll need to gradually increase the temperature to keep the flow constant. Eventually there will be a spike in distillate temperature as the ether finishes distilling so stop the heating if it passes 70 celsius. The collected product diethyl ether while the residue should be other aliphatic solvents. Most starter fluids contain heptane in addition to ether.

Diethyl ether is useful for grignard reactions and heptane is useful as a general purpose non-reactive non-polar solvent.


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