This is a followup to a recent discussion regarding the peculiar formulation of Crown so-called denatured alcohol. I was at my local neighborhood TrueValue hardware store today, and decided to see what they had. They stock Sunnyside products. What caught my eye was the note on the label of their denatured alcohol: CONTAINS DENATURED ALCOHOL AND LESS THAN 4% METHANOL.
That was promising, so I bought a quart. I also looked up the MSDS online (product 834 – Denatured Alcholol Solvent), and have excerpted and attached the relevant section. (The MSDS was a protected PDF, so I couldn’t copy out the table as text.)
Now this is denatured alcohol!
-Steve
Replies
The percentages don't add up to 100%, there's about 5% unaccounted for.
John W.
7% non-hazardous ingredients, I would guess."Light the lamp, not the rat! Light the lamp, not the rat!!"
Rizzo the Rat, A Muppet Christmas Carol
Water most likely.John W.
You'd expect 5% water in ethanol. It would be quite expensive to get lower water, and such alcohol would grab water out of the air about as soon as it was opened. (By the way that's a big problem for marine users, whose tanks aren't used as quickly as those in cars. The added water can cause serious performance problems.)
I'm sure the rest is water. It's difficult (and expensive) to remove the last 5% or so of water from alcohol, because you can't do it with simple distillation. (Which is also why Everclear is 190 proof, rather than 200 proof.)
According to their web site, Sunnyside also makes anhydrous denatured alcohol, but I don't think that's something you're going to find at a hardware store.
-Steve
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