Unfortunately, because of the ban on alcohol, many people in
Iran is being victimized by fake alcohol which contains methanol.
I would like to know if there is a simple and accessible way for the general public at home to differentiate between these two and to assess the illegal amounts of methanol in an ethanol-containing beverage.
This testing approach should be as simple as possible even without the laboratory equipment (like a test kit)
Hello, mr. Naseh.
Probably, the easiest way to detect methyl alcohol is hot copper spiral test. When red hot copper is plunged into methanol, formaldehyde is producted. It has specific unpleasant smell, which is difficult to describe in words, but almost impossible to confuse, once you know, what it's like. Ethyl alcohol wouldn't produce any specific smell in the same conditions.
This method is good, if methanol concentraion is high, but it doesn't work so well, when methanol is mixed with ethanol and methanol's concentration is relatively low (i.e. 5-10%).
There are published ways to differentiate methanol from ethanol by the color of their flame and by the odor following treatment with an oxidizing agent. I do not think I would trust either to eliminate the methanol risk for human consumption. Distilling would allow you to separate methanol from ethanol (lower boiling point), especially if you measure the temperature of the vapor entering the cooling coils. Of course the odor would be soon detected by any authorities with intact olfactory sense, and your still located. It is a difficult problem, even in the land where Al-Rhazes first discovered al-cohl.
Yes there is a safe test:
https://milehidistilling.com/product/methanol-test-kit/
Hello, mr naseh
The best and most accurate way to detect methanol and ethanol is to use chromatography analysis (gas chromatography) . It even determines the percentage of ethanol and methanol. But it's not the easiest way for the general public to use it.
William Mcdaniel and Rahele Tahmasebi have already given the ultimate answer. I just wanted to repeat it because any misunderstanding might cause very serious results. Except for high tech instrumental lab techniques, all methods that can differentiate ethanol from methanol would fail to give accurate and reliable results for mixtures of ethanol, water and methanol, which are the subject of this discussion. Hence, the more appropriate approach should be to separate them, which happens to be relatively easy through fractional distillation. On the other hand, since there is no intention of obtaining any methanol, no cooling and condensing is necessary, as long as appropriate aeration is ensured. For the best practice. distillate vapor temperature should be monitored (CH3OH: 64,7°C; C2H5OH: 78,37°C). I wouldn't recommend any method that doesn't accurately identify methanol (like for example GC) or accurately separate it (like fractional distillation) from the mixture; but when none of them can be done, it might be assumed that boiling away (slowly and with continuous mixing) at least 10 percent of the mixture can reduce the amount of methanol to some extent.
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