I wonder if someone could give me the contents of the official Zippo fuel brand, in order to try and destilate nafta. I can't find it's contents that is why

Naptha* is a liquid hydrocarbon mixture of solvents with different boiling points, what exactly are you trying to distillate*? Are you talking about simple;fractional distillation to isolate a specific solvent from the hydrocarbon mixture (Naptha) or what?

You can check the contents if you google: brand/product name/MSDS (material safety data sheet).

(Slightly edited so i dont repeat myself in another reply)

I had the idea of getting for example lighter fuel and separate the Naftha from other impurities in the lighter fluid

To separate out the less-volatile constituents of lighter fuel you would need a fractionation column of some sort. These exist in various patterns - I have found a 30cm Vigreux column to be quite satisfactory in the home laboratory when working with flask volumes between 500mL and 2.5L. This has worked well when I chose to distil* some naphtha*, allowing easy collection of different fractions of distillate* (How's your Spanish by the way, Th Entity? )

Smoker root, have you any previous experience of distillation - particularly of distilling flammable liquids? Do you own any glassware already? (Of course, glassware isn't actually necessary for distilling naphtha, it just makes the construction and disassembly a bit easier. Soldered copper tubing also does a pretty good job.)

There are threads to be found on the forum where distillation equipment is discussed, so for the moment I'll spare myself the time of going into further detail here.

HAHAHAHA yeah I have spanish as first language that is why my english is crap. I have a lot of experience destilating alcohol and toluene. Thank you anyways! Can you share the links of the post's?

I have distilled Zippo lighter fluid once and if I remember correctly, the b.p. range was 80 - 125 °C, so it is a higher boiling kind of naphtha, probably containing longer chain hydrocarbons (heptane, octane, decane...) and less of the short chain ones (pentane, hexane).

I dont know any spanish, in fact English is my 2nd language that i learned, however i still use Google Translate and i check my writing few times before i post.



And what are the impurities you are talking about, can you tell me or share the MSDS of the lighter fluid you have?

You would probably have to use fractional distillation column, which depending on the quality, the place you buy it and the size of it, ye..can be expensive. And sometimes it can be tricky to work with, especially if you are not chemist or familiar with the process. Since you are familiar with distillation of toluene and you have worked with it, why not just use toluene instead of naptha, you will pull everyhting out of the RB and later refine it, aromatic solvents are far better than aliphatic for extracting indole type alkaloids.

Good Luck and be careful

Well then, you're doing really well and it pleases me greatly that the Nexus is such an international place. I would be hard-pressed to guess what your first language is, you don't have many of the signal aberrations that usually give the game away!

Smoker root - glad to hear you've experience with distilling toluene and ethanol. Were these just simple distillations? Flask, stillhead, condenser, receiver? Fractionating columns can be cobbled together on the cheap in a variety of ways depending on what set up you're starting with.

It's proving tricky to track down the exact relevant threads about distillation, but using that word as a search term in the "subject" field turns up a fair few possibilities.

HaHa Thank you!

Hi i have made some research and found somethings out. The oficial Zippo lighter fluid contains 30% light nafta by weight and the rest are adulterants, the greater impuritie that shows the safety sheet is 70%(by wheight) Light Hydrotreated Distillate. This lighter fluid also contains things like benzene however below 0.1% by weight so dosen't really matter. I found out that a fractional destilation apparatus might work quite well and I am thinking on collecting the nafta in between the temperatures of 30-90C(boiling point) however I don't think it is quite safe. Any ideas?

"Light Hydrotreated Distillate" is not a contaminant (especially with being present at 70%, that constitutes the main ingredient!) All it is is synthetically produced naphtha. The hydrotreatment reduces any multiple bonds in the feedstock distillate so that the product is stable against atmospheric oxidation and polymerisation.

If you're fractionating, you might want to collect fractions of different boiling ranges separately. And stopping at 90°C is a bit low, remember n-heptane has a BP of 98°C.


What makes you think it's any less safe than distilling any other liquid of similar flammability characteristics? And what would you perceive to be unsafe about the resulting distillate?

It is not that, it makes me feel unconfortable doing this with no background behind it. I am jsut weird haha. My greatest fear is to get something that is not nafta and just lose time

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