Where my friend lives one can't purchase pure food grade ethanol, or even real everclear. So if one was to purchase normal 40% ethanol vodka could he remove the water to get close to pure ethanol? He has a distilation apparatus as well as anhydrous magnessium sulphate. I'm sure many could benefit from this info.

fractional distillation followed by drying with magnesium/sodium/calcium sulfate salts will get the alcohol concentration close to 95, 96%.
to get absolute ethanol, distillation with benzene would need to be done.

Can it be done without a fractional distillation setup? I only have a standard distillation setup...

you can also add lime and shake then filter and achieve same result...


search ethanol drying recipe

Lime as in calcium hydroxide?

No sorry, I was referring to the basic Ethanol Drying recipe here:
https://www.dmt-nexus.me...spx?g=posts&m=123968

Calcium Oxide

For me “lime” means calcium hydroxide and “quicklime” specifically means calcium oxide. But sometimes calcium oxide is called "lime" so that's why I asked.

That reaction with calcium oxide produces lots of heat.

Could the water-ethanol azeotrope be broken by the addition of something like acetone, IPA, limonene, toluene? Nobody wants to use benzene... even toluene would be a better problem to deal with.

So a 750ml bottle of vodka would need almost 4lbs?
Where can it be purchased and is it pricey?

yes.

using what you have, a simple distillation apparatus and magnesium sulfate, you can obtain 95-96% EtOH as well, without needing to buy anything else.

set the temp to around 80C, distill, and dry over the salts. decant.

Why even bother buying vodka - make a simple fermentation with water, sugar and yeast and distil that. Might take a few distillations to get a higher purity and then dry with Epsom.

Yes, fermenting in a 5-gallon container with 2 kilos of sugar will give someone ~1.5 litres of pure alcohol (dissolved of course in the brewing wort)

But how on earth to distil 5 gallons with standard chemistry glassware??

Just do the first distillation or two in a stovetop "wok still" (put the wort in a big pot, put a trivet at the bottom of the pot to set a smaller collection pot on, insulated from the heat, and put a wok filled with icewater on top of the big pot so the condensation drips into the collection pot). After that the volume should be manageable with lab glass

As fun as making moonshine sounds, for now my friend must stick with drying the vodka. Besides a 1.75 liter of cheap vodka is only 7 bucks!

Benzyme, thanx. He'll try that. Is there a formula for the amount of magnesium sulfate to liquid?

20g should be enough.

he should start with about 20g, it should be enough

20g. Much better than 4 lbs!
He'll run this distillation tomorrow and report back.
Thanks

One thing I find funny is if you do a google search everyone says to freeze the vodka....I keep a bottle of Grey Goose in the fridge for those last minute cravings and vodka dosent freeze.

So did some dummy just post that once and everyone just repeats it wihout testing it? Anyone who's ever gone to college knows the best place to keep vodka is in the freezer!

Good vodka should not freeze in the freezer. But some cheap vodkas do not freeze either. A vodka that freezes is just not worth drinking, at least this is the consensus in the birth country of vodka.

For the distillation freezing does not really affect a thing. I remember someone randomly posting in the internet that by freezing vodka the water freezes but not the alcohol, so you can easily separate them. This guy of course was talking out of his ass.

If you try to distil vodka to higher proof it may be a good idea to invest into a hydrometer (the instrument used for measuring density of a liquid) It is widely used to estimate ABV in beer and other fermenting brews as well as distilled spirits, syrups, etc. In your case it can be used to monitor the process.

Also, magnesium sulfate absorbs its own weight in water. 100g MgSO4 can absorb 100ml/g of water. In that sense you can guesstimate the amount to use according to your suspected water content of the final product.

the 20g suggestion is assuming distillation
distill the vodka at 80 C, then pour the distillate into a jar/beaker holding 20 g magnesium sulfate.