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:** 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.
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**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.
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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)
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