Comment by hilbert42
3 days ago
Right, if you live where duty is applied to ethanol then it's expensive. In Australia, where I am ethanol is available as a denatured product. That is, it includes a very small amount (much less than 1%) of denatonium (aka Bitrex) which renders it undrinkable (it's the bitterest substance known). As such, excise tax is not levied.
Here, one liter bottles of denatured ethanol are available in every supermarket everywhere, and up to 20 liters available in hardware stores (at bulk rates it's even cheaper).
For comparison, here denatured ethanol costs about $5/l [in US dollars] versus isopropyl at between $25 and $30/l.
In the United States, if you buy "Denatured Alcohol" at a big box store, it will be a toxic brew of often 50-60% methanol as well as smaller amounts of MEK, MIBK, and even acetone in addition to the ethanol. However, you can order "Specially Denatured Alcohol (SDA)" from various chemical suppliers or even Amazon. "SDA 40B 200" will be 99.5% ethanol with 0.1% tert-butyl alcohol and 0.0005% denatonium benzoate. It's what I use for camp stove fuel since I refuse to carry methanol in my pack with food.
I understand the problem with purchasing EtOH in the US. Frankly, I consider adding MeOH, MEK, etc. to denature it as both dangerous and an archaic procedure. (Moreover, outside lab reagents, MeOH should never exist without denatonium, it's just too dangerous.)
Some people will drink EtOH whether it's denatured with MeOH, etc. or with the much safer denatonium. Why blind or kill these people when one doesn't need to? Sure, EtOH will likely get them anyway but why should the State be their executioner?
There's something awfully wrong with that I reckon.
Puritan wrath, a nice mixture of hatred of ones own ant-existance and hatred on others not participating the labour camp race to the bottom, thats why?
2 replies →
it's cheaper and the free market is regulating itself as god intended.
I had a recent adventure attempting to replenish my Food Grade 35% Hydrogen Peroxide.
Amazon wouldn't even ship the stuff here. I'm coming to realize that any truly potent or powerful substance is strictly off-limits in consumer spaces. Plenty of good reasons for that. But such things as pure isopropyl and pure H2O2 are so versatile and tantalizing to have on-hand, rather than household cleaners with proprietary formulas, as much dilution as possible, unique MSDS, and obnoxious fake fragrance.
I can walk down an entire aisle in the hardware store, chockablock with bottles of household cleaners, and they all amount to 2 or 3 active ingredients, endlessly remixed for credulous homemakers.
35% — that's wishful thinking where I am. I can get 3% in a supermarket and 6% in a pharmacy. I can get H2O2 stronger than 6% but it's a major undertaking, and one is treated with suspicion and or put onto registers—like 'what the fuck do you want that dangerous stuff for?'.
"I'm coming to realize that any truly potent or powerful substance is strictly off-limits in consumer spaces."
There's no doubt about this and it's a damn pain. Outside industrial settings, chemicals that really work are becoming very difficult to get. I accept that highly concentrated (say >50%) H2O2 is dangerous and not something I want or need, and fuel grade (>70%) needs special handling thus the need for controls, but concentrations of about 20% are useful for bleaching where sodium hypochlorite is unsuitable, etc. For example, 6% H2O2 often isn't strong enough to remove foxing from documents, books, etc. so having ready access to a more concentrated solution that I could dilute to suit would be very useful.
It wasn't always like this, I'm old enough to remember when I could get most chemicals I wanted with little effort. Unfortunately, both occupational health and safety and terrorism have put the kibosh on ready availability, controls and restrictions have screwed all of us legitimate users.
Of course, restrictions covering to whom chemicals are sold haven't detrimentally affected the chemical companies one iota, in fact I'd maintain they've benefited them. They've proteced companies from potential lawsuits when users misuse chemicals and they've provided endless possibilities for them to market nigh-on-useless products to naïve consumers like the household cleaners to which you have referred. I could give examples of how some common household products have become less potent over the years but it'd take a full blog to go into details.
There's another downside here too, the less consumers know about the chemicals they use the more unskilled they become at actual chemistry—even if taught chemistry, using products whose ingredients are unknown doesn't add to their understanding. That's also a matter that I've not time to elaborate about here except to say lack of knowledge about chemicals is one of the significant reasons why society is becoming overly chemical-phobic.