Useful knowledge: how to determine methyl alcohol at home?

"To the eye", especially not to the professional, it is almost impossible to distinguish between ethyl alcohol, which is included in the composition of all alcohol that is in the world, from its technical colleague - methyl. This leads to annual mass poisonings in Russia and CIS countries, where a bad tradition was the use of alcohol unknown or suspicious origin.

But to drink a substandard counterfeit drink on a ethyl basis - half bad (although in the pre-revolutionary classification, ethyl alcohol was also equated with poisons). Methanol is the real enemy of the body. This is the strongest poison, which, even in relatively small amounts, can have a detrimental effect on the blood vessels and nervous system of a person, and most of all on the state of vision, up to complete blindness. And the use of only 30 to 100 grams (for different people in different ways) of this substance can lead to death. Therefore, the question of how to determine methyl alcohol at home is not an idle one, but very much even a vital one. Especially in connection with the fact that, according to experts, a huge amount of alcohol being sold in our country is a fake!

About how to distinguish between methyl alcohol and ethyl, what is the difference between them, we will tell in our article. We hope that the knowledge gained will help to avoid unnecessary incidents and harmful effects of methanol when consuming alcoholic beverages.

How to determine at home the methyl alcohol

Many remember the recent events in the Czech Republic, where seemingly from the "brand" alcohol suffered a lot of people. And this massive fake, packaged in beautiful bottles, contained methanol. Therefore, information on how to determine methyl alcohol at home is important and relevant. After all, the taste and smell of methanol is not very different from ethanol. Of course, if you have a solution with only one type of alcohol in front of you, then the difference can be determined by various, rather simple, methods, which we will discuss below. But if it is a mixture of alcohols, then the content and quantity of them can be understood only by examining it in a laboratory.

People's ways of determining

So: how to determine methyl alcohol at home? The best ways are borne by experience and are quite effective. The first of them: burning alcohol. We pour experimental liquids into small bottles and ignite. We look closely at the color of the burning fire (and burn will be on anyone, since the fortress is over 40 degrees) and compare. If blaze with a blue flame, then we have ethanol in front of us, and it can be used for drinking purposes (of course, if there are no other harmful impurities there). If the combustion is accompanied by the green color of the fire, then this is methanol. This rather simple and effective method, as at home, to determine methyl alcohol, will undoubtedly work if the solution is clean enough before us. And the method itself is based on some difference in the chemical composition of liquids.

With the help of potatoes

With the help of ordinary raw potatoes it is also possible to determine this difference. The potato needs to be peeled and rinsed. Root the root crop and cut it into a small container, where the test liquid is located: presumably ethyl or methyl alcohol. After a while (usually, a couple of hours) the potatoes in methanol should change its color and become a pinkish hue. In ethanol, the lobule practically does not change color.

Formaldehyde sample

For her, we will need copper wire and open fire. The wire should be copper and cleaned from the shell. Test liquid poured into a bowl. Copper is heated on fire and drastically immersed in a liquid medium. If there is methanol in front of us, then there is an unpleasant and rather sharp smell of formaldehyde. Ethyl alcohol in this case is practically odorless, (sometimes it smells like apple flavor). As an option: add to the liquid potassium permanganate (buy in a pharmacy) and set it on fire. By smell, it is easy to determine whether alcohol belongs to a particular group of methanol or ethanol.

Precautionary measures

If you suspect a methanol intake, you should immediately call a doctor, and do not wait: they say, it will pass and dissolve. Signs of poisoning: a sharp pain in the head, breathing is difficult, a person experiences malaise and weakness, pain in the abdomen and lumbar region, possible vomiting. You can try to do a gastric lavage with the same magenta in a light water solution. And by the way, knowledge of how to distinguish methyl alcohol at home can be useful here, if the liquid that was ingested was left unopened. But a good antidote, oddly enough, is 10% ethyl alcohol!