peppamang said:How easy would it be to get a close to anhydrous ethanol product out of Everclear with fractional distillation? You've got around 20 degrees to work with inbetween them. Or are there too many contaminants in Everclear? I hear a lot of people use everclear for pepper oil.
If not I've heard people using acetone, probably easier to get anhydrous acetone than ethanol.
It is impossible to get anhydrous ethanol by distillation since it forms an azeotrope with water. And why would we make an anhydrous solvent if we have some in the lab with similar polarity?
The goal is to purify the capsaicin in the best possible way, just proof of concept in the lab. Probably we will dissolve it in a solvent to spray it around.salsalady said:What is the purpose of this fun experiment, to actually make a capsaicin product in a pressureized cannister that can be administered like commercial pepper spray and bear spray? Maybe using some extraction methods might be the way to go.
Or to just make a capsaicin spray that can be spritzed with a plastic spray bottle? Soak some superhot peppers in vodka, strain, maybe mix with water in a spray bottle= pepperspray.