What makes cleaning/sanitizing alcohol different from drinking alcohol? When distilleries switch from making vodka to making sanitizer, what are doing differently?
In: Chemistry
Edit. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO DRINK SANITIZERS. IT WILL MOST LIKELY KILL YOU.
Bullet points
1. Distilleries use some form substrate , mostly grains, that are broken down by biological fermentation using yeast. This process is also called Ethanol fermentation.
The whole point in setting up a distillery is to produce ethanol.
Ethanol forms an azetropic mixture at atmospheric pressure and cannot be purified above 95-96%.
2. Consuming Ethanol makes people MERRY. Another type of alcohol, Methanol makes people blind and dead. Frankly speaking all other forms of alcohol are toxic to humans.
3. Distillers have processes to convert bland, clear liquid (ethanol ) to suit their needs. Whisky for e.g is brown and oak like.
Further, in distillery pure ethanol is diluted to needs.
A 40 proof whiskey means 20 percent ethanol.
Now coming to sanitizer business.
1. Alcohols in general will kill bacteria , virus etc. Key to note is: A concentration above 75% ethanol solution is recommended by WHO for COVID.
This is a recipe distillers have to follow.
2. To make sanitizer for personal (hands etc.) use ethanol used must be denatured.
Denatured: Govts across the world require ethanol manufactures to add toxic / pungent / colored additives to their produce if it is not meant for human consumption. Resons? Taxation
3. Santizers also have some stabisers / additives to keep them shelf stable.
4. Bottling, it is very difficult to dispense a squirt of Sanitizer from a bottle of corona.
I guess this gives u some insight.
There are a few differences. They mostly involve the “impurities” in the alcohol.
Although many sanitizers are *mostly* ethanol as an active ingredient, they often have secondary ingredients like moisturizers to prevent skin drying (or the associated “burns” from overuse). The sanitizer used at my workplace, Alco H&S has a secondary ingredient – [lactic acid](https://webserv-ext1.sanimarc.com/b2bservices/files/msds/MSDS0910006E.PDF) – that leaves an antibacterial “film” on your hands that you can feel long after use.
Spirits and liquor usually have a variety of impurities like sugars, tannins, or juices that change their flavour or improve their shelf lives; the sugars need to ferment in a controlled way to avoid introducing dangerous bacteria to the drink that can make it “go bad”. They also tend to be much lower percentage alcohol than sanitizers.
Drinking 100% pure ethanol (200 proof) tastes incredibly bad; it’s a solvent. It literally dries your throat out as it travels into your belly. While even high purity ethanol only risks minor damage as long as you keep within your BAC tolerance, *methanol* (the main ingredient of anti-freeze) is incredibly dangerous and you should not drink it.
CAUTION: Ethanol that is sold for cleaning has been denatured, i.e. made poisonous to drink. It is pretty close to impossible to purify denatured alcohol to make it safe for drinking. Isopropanol (rubbing alcohol) is also sometimes used for cleaning, but it is also toxic. Ethanol for drinking has been distilled or fermented from plant sources.
A distillery could easily switch from vodka to sanitizer by making sure the percent ethanol is high enough (above 60% or 120 proof) and adding one of the many solvents that is used to denature ethanol.
Retired organic chemist here.
[deleted]
It’s ethanol plus the ingredient that makes it a gel plus the the taxation
This is from my friend who works at a spirit company. They got the ethanol and packaging ready, all they needed was the powder that made it to a gel.
A lot of hand sanitizer has traditionally been isopropyl alcohol (aka rubbing alcohol), which is poisonous to humans. But any alcohol will sanitize a surface so during the pandemic a lot of distilleries made pure ethanol to sell as sanitizer as well, which is essentially very strong drinkable booze with some unpalatable or poisonous ingredients added to it
**Edit:** Since people are (potential) idiots. **You can make hand sanitizer from Everclear/Pure Ehtanol, but reverse is not true!!!** Hand sanitizer will often have toxic additives in it. Answer was also made in context of a question, when destileries switched from drinking alcohol to hand sanitizer, all they did was change proportions and added some stuff. They did not suddenly change to producing isopropyl alcohol.
—
**ELI5**: Most hand sanitizers use Ethanol – same alcohol that’s present in vodka, wine and beer, they do use special mix of 60-80% of ethanol in a solution, with extra additives that make it better for your hands. They also make it taste _very_ bad so you don’t drink it, so don’t.
—
No longer short or ELI5 really:
The main ingredient in majority of consumer grade hand sanitizer is Ethanol. This is the same alcohol as one used in most alcoholic drinks. Hand Sanitizers can be made form other alcohols (eg. isopropyl), but the ones that come from distilleries will be with Ethanol.
So let’s break it down:
Pure Ethanol/Everclear/Spiritus: 95% (+-) of Ethanol (this is maximum you can get in normal conditions).
Vodka: 40% of Ethanol in the solution.
Hand Sanitizer: 60-80% Ethanol in the solution + additives.
Main difference is percentage percentage of Ethanol and Water in the mix, and use of additives in hand sanitizer.
The easiest way to make a hand sanitizer is to simply mix pure Ethanol with Vodka in 1-1 proportions (you get 69% strength, right int the middle of a bacteria/virus killing range, and a silly percentage).
Except you’ll find it is about 2-3 times as expensive as the same quantity of a store bought hand sanitizer. What gives? Taxes. Alcohol after gasoline is one of the most taxed substances. But hand sanitizer is usually exempt.
But then what would stop people from just drinking hand sanitizer for a cheaper thrill?
Additives. Those additives make the hand sanitizer both more friendly to the skin, and also make the alcohol hard to drink without purifying. Let me repeat: **Additives in hand sanitizer make it unsuitable – and in some cases even harmful – to drink!!!**
PS. Since people asked.
*All natural, organic, hand made sanitizing wipes* recipe by yours truly. Based on WHO recommendations for developing nations. Tested and tried in March, and in continuous use since then, since I don’t trust cheap generic ones that don’t list all ingridients with percentages and I’ve found a wipe form to be super-handy:
1. Mix 500ml of Pure Ethanol/Everclear/Spirytus(95%) and 500ml of Vodka(40%), or mix 500ml of Pure Ethanol(95%) with 250ml of Water.
1. Optional (for extra effectiveness): Add a full tablespoon of a food grade citric acid per liter.
2. Optional (if you don’t want to use separate hand moisturizer): Add 10ml of Glycerine or ~100ml Aloe oil.
3. Optional (if you want it to have gelatinous consistency, I usually don’t as it makes hand sticky): Add appropriate amount of gelling agent (eg. Agar Agar, Gelatine).
2. Pour into a sealable container.
3. Soak a roll of cotton wipes (~1$ a roll) in the mixture (I unroll them for this).
4. After they soak in, transfer some of the wipes into sealed child wipes container.
5. Carry the container with you 🙂 If you didn’t do 1.2 option, few minutes after wiping with alcohol, use hand moisturizer (my preference is shea butter).
I’ve found that in good baby-wipe container they stay moist for ~2 weeks. When sealed in tupperware or similar they last for months. As a bonus you can also sanitize cotton masks in this mixture (leave for few hours, wring out, then leave in sun to dry)
There is no difference between the ethanol in hand sanitizer and the ethanol in vodka. Except that hand sanitizer is mostly pure ethanol, and it has some added chemicals to make it thicker and poisonous to drink.
If it wasn’t for the way the government taxes alcohol, drinkable alcohol would be like $30 a gallon. That’s enough to make like 800 beers.
Latest Answers