[TheUnfocusedOne]

Hi everyone,

I recently came received a very nice distillation setup from the EPA. I'm not sure what's been through it, but I want to use it to distill gin. I realize it might not be possible to confidently make this glassware clean enough to make something for human consumption, but I thought I'd run some stuff by you guys.

I'm thinking about giving it a good soak in some HCl to pull out any metals. I was planning on using normal over the counter muratic acid from home depot, but I'm a little worried about what impurities might be in it.  After that (and really rinsing it!), I was planning on giving it a soak in a sodium hydroxide/alcohol mix, so I can etch away the outer most layer of glass, and hopefully pull out any organics. Finally, I was just going to run a good amount of alcohol through the system, disposing of it after I was done.

The kit has some really nice parts in it, worth a few hundred bucks. If it doesn't work out, I'll donate it to the chem department at my alma mater.

What are your guys thoughts? Terrible idea or worth trying?

I've been talking to a friend of my who does trace metal analysis, and she's been giving me ideas (like the HCl soak).

[Arkcon]

Briefly, no, its not a good idea.

1).  Distillation, for the home production of spirits, isn't legal.  Pretty much, everywhere, worldwide.  People will want to argue that point with some random national trivia, but in practical application, this is true everywhere.  So lets just change your premise -- you want to distill impure water for ... stocking a survival kit, or something.

2).  As a general rule, anything that's been used for laboratory chemicals is never, really, really, really, really, thoroughly cleaned out and then used for food.  No one does that.  There's no established protocols for that.  Its not taught anywhere, and no one reputable has this experience.  Someone will post eventually, years from now perhaps, says, "Oh yeah, i done that, jus' thre runs with the HCl and NaoH, and three runs trou the still throw awy runs.  Is gud way.  Dun all the time here in the bush."  But that's not the same as I described above.

[TheUnfocusedOne]

Yeah that's what I figured.There's a few pieces that are brand new that I'll be keeping, but I'll probably just donate the rest.

It's not worth possibly poisoning myself over. I was pretty sure this was going to be the case, but I thought there might be a process of cleaning that I'd never heard of. Worth a try.

[Arkcon]

Well, when you buy new glassware, and you want to do sensitive analytical work, the manufacturer will suggest something like what you cam up with.  A lengthy soak in either dilute acid or dilute base, depending on your future reactions, and then some "throwaway" standard runs, before you start to use the equipment for real.  So your plan wasn't illogical or poorly thought out.  But still, not advisable.

[vmelkon]

I don't have experience in this kind of situation but if you want to get rid of "metal ions", shouldn't you use HNO3 instead of HCl? I think that all nitrates of metals are soluble while certain chlorides are not. Some chemists use a certain solution to clean glassware but Im not sure what. It does have potassium dichromate in it.