[foolelle]

Hi everyone. Newbee here. I know nothing about chemicals or chemistry so I have come to ask a question if I may...

I have purchased some 99.9% Isopropyl Alcohol and I am unsure if what I have received is genuine or not. What I have received is flammable as it burns when I light a small amount of it. However, it doesn't burn away completely, an amount of non-flammable liquid is left behind. My basic knowledge, or basically no knowledge is telling me that if something is 99.9% something, and that something is flammable then, it will be gone after it has been light.

Also, it doesn't smell like alcohol. It is not a small I have ever smelled before so I am just really unsure. I got it so I could mix it with aloe juice to make a hand sanitizer for my pregnant wife during the current situation.

If someone had a test or a way of telling if it is genuine I would be super grateful.

Thanks so much and stay safe!

[Corribus]

Where did you buy it?

Just FYI, slightly diluted alcohol solutions are more effective disinfectants than "pure" alcohols. But if you dilute too far, they lose their potency. Other substances may also interfere with the disinfectant properties. So, there is no guarantee that it will still kill microorganisms once you mix it with aloe.

https://www.cdc.gov/infectioncontrol/guidelines/disinfection/disinfection-methods/chemical.html

[foolelle]

hi Corribus,

thanks so much for your reply. Yes I have read a good deal about their effectiveness with, without and with too much dilution, so if I stick to the 1:2 rule I should be ok.

I bought it from ebay... 

[Enthalpy]

If you already went to a hospital, you know the odour of isopropyl alcohol and recognize it. No other common substance smells like that. You know, when the odour tells you "I'm in a hospital".

When burning, slightly more than 0.1% can stay as a residue, maybe 0.5%. If the traces are more abundant, it's not 99.9% isopropyl alcohol.

1:2 is already too dilute for definite antiseptic effect.

Stay rather at soap. This doesn't hurt you nor your wife, you know what it contains, and it's a known virus killer.

[foolelle]

Hi Enthalpy,

thank you for your reply. Yes I think i am going to bin it. I am just not confident that it is what it states and I don't know enough about chemicals to be messing around with it. I think you are right re soap, we just wanted something to keep us safe for when we had to leave the house, but it is looking more and more likely now that in Ireland that lockdown is coming.

Thanks everyone for you help and I wish you all good health.

Thanks
FOOL

[Enthalpy]

I haven't grasped the fundamental advantage of hydro-alcoholic gel over soap. Maybe it acts faster, a definite advantage at work. State propaganda makes any opinion difficult: instead of "leave the face masks and alcohol for hospitals", the secret police tells "don't use any, they are useless".

Maybe you find true isopropyl alcohol on the Web in a next attempt?

What lockdown means depends on each government. Here in Germany we can still go to the supermarket, but about any shop is closed, including internet cafés, and even banks and pharmacies despite they're explicitly allowed to open. So pile up goods, taking in account that if you're sick you shall stay at home 2 weeks after the end of the symptoms. Rice and noodles are easy, everyone thinks of toilet paper, but vitamins are more difficult to keep: grape...

It looks like the number of ancestors you lose depends on whether hospitals are overwhelmed, and the figures I see from Britain, not Ireland, are truly alarming. In Austria, Germany... the multiplication of the infections calms down since the lockdown. In both countries, the mortality is still low despite the big number of infected people - but consumables and workforces may be exhausted in a week. So it does make sense to slow down the spread, even for young healthy people.

I don't know how efficient it is, I know it looks ridiculous, and I'll go on:
https://www.chemicalforums.com/index.php?topic=103351.0