I did research and a little bit of experimenting with salting out ethanol out of vodka and no I did not drink it because I don’t drink. the picture above is high concentration of ethanol on top and water with potassium carbonate on the bottom dissolved into it.
I am here trying to archive my research onto the fediverse and let the community preserve the science I have done. now I have a PDF file of this discourse post I made. https://discourse.eom.dev/t/salting-out-recommended-procedure-by-solidheron/434 and I don’t seem to have any place to put it and I’m up for suggestions.
if you do want to read the post id recommend skipping the procedure and reading the second half that goes into why you should. procedure is put first because the HOW is more important than the why. please feel free to comment on any mistake I made in the post or if you have any suggestion to improve on it.
95%+ is totally possible with a column still. I can easily pull 92% on mine, and it’s not set up to do ultra high proof. Distillit percentage can easily be measured with a hydrometer, they’re less than €10, and fairly accurate. This process might be really useful to pull the last 20% of water out after distilling.
I’d love to see this experiment done on something like everclear. That’s around 95% abv. It’d be interesting to see if you could get the last 5% of water out of it. It’d also be interesting to see it done on something like an 8% abv wine or beer.
Pic related, it’s my 250 liter column still. I usually get heads that are 92% abv, and an average abv of 80% across a run.
Collum stills are interesting since they work on the principle of bubbling. Kinda gives me a new principle to look into.
I need to order a lot more potassium carbonate to get enough ethanol to use a hydrometer or to get the ethanol to measure to better accuracy with my equipment.
I need to find a sample bottle of ever clear and salt out that and see if any water layer appears. The appearance of that layer would prove salting out can break the limit
I still believe that salting out is a less energy intensive and simpler method than distilling and at least worth doing prior to distilling.