Hello,

I was under the assumption that ethanol is always denaturated with Bitrex which makes it not okay to use for extraction/crystallisation purposes...

However, at least where I live, some ethanol is denaturated with IPA (isopropyl alcohol) which makes it okay to use for some of our purposes...

The importance of this news is the fact that any denaturated ethanol is way cheaper than the non-denaturated stuff...

So, at least in some parts of the world, what is sold as "rubbing/desinfecting alcohol" is in fact ethanol + IPA...

Where I live, both pure ethanol and pure IPA cost about 5 times or more then what the combined ethanol/IPA product costs...It's funny because it's true...

PLUR

check the MSDS supplied by the manufacturer.
some companies add denatonium, others add methanol or pyridine.

Hello,

In europe they are allowed to use a lot of differents denaturants:

_Methanol
_Diethylphtalate
_Thiophene
_Diéthyléther
_Isopropyl alcohol
_Tert-Butyl Alcohol
_Sodium salicylate
_Methyl salicylate
_Brucin (and it's salts)
_Denatonium benzoate
_Quassin
_Naphta
_Camphor

So as Benzyme said read carefully the MSDS.

I only got a very brief look at the bottle as my pharmacist was showing me that her denaturated ethanol was denaturated with IPA, but I'll doublecheck next time I pay her a visit...who knows it may be ethanol + IPA + other denaturants, although I can't see the point in using several denaturants in one product...

PLUR

Does it taste bitter? At the very least, distil it, preferably with some kind of fractionation column. You do not necessarily need glassware to do this, either. Sometimes more than one denaturant is used, genuinely to be more annoying to the likes of us!

Dont taste it...

Many of the denaturants form azeotropes with ethanol, so distillation is not going to help much. Where Dr_Sister gets hers, the denaturant is methanol, so it causes no problems for most uses.

if the only denaturant is Bitrex (which in most cases, it isn't), then distillation wouldn't be a problem.