[Brannigan]

Hi, is it possible to produce rubbing alcohol from alcoholic beverages?

[Guitarmaniac86]

Yes in theory it can be done but its pointless to do it as it is uneconomical, wasteful of resources, and its just cheaper to buy rubbing alcohol.


The main problem is the alcohol in alcoholic beverages is ethanol and rubbing alcohol is iso-propanol so you will have to add a extra carbon to ethanol. 


Before that you'd need to isolate the ethanol from the beverage and then try to remove the excess water (good luck water and ethanol form azeotropes and its hard to remove all the water), oxidise it to ethanoic acid, convert that to a weinreb amide (not an ester unless you control equivalents in the next step but you will get a mixture), then react that with a methyl magnesium halide of choice (bromide is what I'd use) to make propanone, then reduce that down to 2-propanol (isopropanol).


I came up with that off the top of my head so there might be a better synthesis, but I write it to point out that it is a wholly pointless endeavour as you can just buy rubbing alcohol cheaply.

[CarbonSi]

Yes in theory it can be done but its pointless to do it as it is uneconomical, wasteful of resources, and its just cheaper to buy rubbing alcohol.


The main problem is the alcohol in alcoholic beverages is ethanol and rubbing alcohol is iso-propanol so you will have to add a extra carbon to ethanol. 


Before that you'd need to isolate the ethanol from the beverage and then try to remove the excess water (good luck water and ethanol form azeotropes and its hard to remove all the water), oxidise it to ethanoic acid, convert that to a weinreb amide (not an ester unless you control equivalents in the next step but you will get a mixture), then react that with a methyl magnesium halide of choice (bromide is what I'd use) to make propanone, then reduce that down to 2-propanol (isopropanol).


I came up with that off the top of my head so there might be a better synthesis, but I write it to point out that it is a wholly pointless endeavour as you can just buy rubbing alcohol cheaply.

The main problem is the alcohol in alcoholic beverages is ethanol and rubbing alcohol is iso-propanol so you will have to add a extra carbon to ethanol.   

But synthesis suggested should be given a try. Practice makes man perfect!

[rolnor]

Yes in theory it can be done but its pointless to do it as it is uneconomical, wasteful of resources, and its just cheaper to buy rubbing alcohol.


The main problem is the alcohol in alcoholic beverages is ethanol and rubbing alcohol is iso-propanol so you will have to add a extra carbon to ethanol. 


Before that you'd need to isolate the ethanol from the beverage and then try to remove the excess water (good luck water and ethanol form azeotropes and its hard to remove all the water), oxidise it to ethanoic acid, convert that to a weinreb amide (not an ester unless you control equivalents in the next step but you will get a mixture), then react that with a methyl magnesium halide of choice (bromide is what I'd use) to make propanone, then reduce that down to 2-propanol (isopropanol).




I came up with that off the top of my head so there might be a better synthesis, but I write it to point out that it is a wholly pointless endeavour as you can just buy rubbing alcohol cheaply.

You can oxidize ethanol to acetaldehyde, then react this witl methylmagnesium bromide