I know the H2O azeotrope exists near 91% IPA / 9%H2O. I want to know if buying a simple distillation is an acceptable method to purify higher as I'm starting with 97% IPA and desire to reach 99.5%
The water―isopropyl alcohol azeotropic mixture of boiling point 80.37 °C, with 87.7 wt% (91 vol%) isopropyl alcohol, can be substantially dried with CaO (200 g/dm3), preferably while refluxing a few hours. After that, distilling (rather than filtering) would be advisable.
To dry isopropyl alcohol you can also consider Linde type 5A molecular sieves.
thank you for that feedback, Carlos. I thought since I had 98.5% liquid IPA being treated, I might be able to avoid the azeotrope condition but if that is not the case the I can continue to research methods to batch treat 250gal liquid IPA using 3A,4A, or 5A sieves. I've not found a system fabrication vendor that will work with this low volume requirement.
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