Slashdot Mirror
The Science Behind Powdered Alcohol
Daniel_Stuckey (2647775) writes "Last week, the US Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau approved Palcohol, a powdered alcohol product that you can either use to turn water into a presumably not-that-delicious marg or to snort if you don't care too much about your brain cells. It's the first time a powdered alcohol product has been approved for sale in the US, but not the first time someone has devised one, and such products have been available in parts of Europe for a few years now. Now you may be wondering, as I was, how the heck do you go about powdering alcohol? As you might expect, there's quite a bit of chemistry involved, but the process doesn't seem overly difficult; we've known how to do it since the early 1970s, when researchers at the General Foods Corporation (now a subsidiary of Kraft) applied for a patent for an 'alcohol-containing powder.'"
It turns out the labels were issued in error, so don't expect it to be available soon. But it does appear to be a real thing that someone is trying to have approved.
...can turn water into wine.
I recall powedered alchohol cans when in the 1970s. The alchohol was enclosed in vesicles.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Cocognacicaine
rewriting history since 2109
This is one more step on the road to the synthohol we were promised.
I can get 1.75L of decent vodka for about $13/US. That gives me approximately 39 drinks at $0.33 per drink. How much does this stuff cost?
Because, you know, that's all that matters when you're trying to be wasted every day.
What a boon for boozer backpackers: all the buzz but a tenth of the weight!
Can I smoke it?
Sounds like the perfect way to get rid of someone you don't like. They look like they drank themselves to death and you could slip it into their cheeseburger.
Let me know when they figure out to make powdered water instead!
From http://www.iflscience.com/chem...
It has now come to light that Palcohol received approval for their label, not the product. A representative for the federal bureau said that the approval was made in error, though details were not provided about how the error occurred. Palcohol creator Mark Phillips was not available for comment, but agreed to surrender the approvals this afternoon. Phillips will likely re-evaluate the situation and try for approval on his labels again.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...
http://www.amazon.com/gp/produ...
This will be approved when the powder has a weight, volume, and alcohol content comparable to the liquid forms currently on the market. Which kind of defeats the purpose.
On a tangent, there is no technical reason for rubbing alcohol to be made of isopropyl alcohol (not fit for human consumption), rather than ethanol (basically the same thing as vodka.) There is no technical reason that vodka should cost so much more than rubbing alcohol. This is all due to government regulation. Powdered alcohol will not be allowed to fit through the cracks.
My only problem with alcohol is it doesn't like my waist line but it loves leaving me wasted.
... There is no technical reason that vodka should cost so much more than rubbing alcohol. This is all due to government regulation. Powdered alcohol will not be allowed to fit through the cracks.
This should be news to no one. The high sin/public health tax on alcohol (theories of the tax vary) is a key and very prominent feature of public alcohol policy. Most people feel it should be heavily taxed - public discussion of the issue is limited almost exclusively to whether it should be higher still. Powdered alcohol will be regulated no differently.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
either use to turn water into a presumably not-that-delicious marg
Don't tell me to Google "marg", because if it is a word, it's a stupid word. I really doubt that it's a word, though.
I don't respond to AC's.
It is so that rubbing alcohol may be sold without further precautions. That's why it's labelled 'denatured'. Anybody notice something about the price of rubbing alcohol (say, the 70%abv stuff) versus the potable variety?
Actual cool story. Novel chemistry. Could have large far reaching social implications.
Default view. The TWO comments i see at default view are some lame shit about powdered toast man. And can i smoke it.
Back to reddit. where i expect stupid shit like that.
Food grade equipment and starting stock is the reason. Sure there's the "sin tax" for governments to get more money out of alcohol, but that's not the bulk of the difference. The bulk of the price difference is from the fact that you're starting with food grade materials and using food grade stills and other equipment. With non-food-grade alcohol distillation they can throw whatever they want in and, if it's a little impure, or contains some toxins it doesn't matter because no one is supposed to drink it. There is usually a lot of stuff you don't want to drink in that 5% that's in rubbing ethanol; including methanol, toxic esters, turpentine, etc; due to the stock they typically start with. Denaturing isn't just because the gum'mint doesn't want you to drink it, it's that it's not all that safe to drink to start with. And if you decide to cry "oh, why not just 100% pure ethanol", going over 95% ethanol is exceedingly hard to do and gets to be really, really expensive with each added percentage point (or fraction there of).
So, where is the link to the DIY instructions for the creation of powdered Vodka & Redbull?
Their site is irresponsible, and the evident reverse psychology of "do not USE IT EVERYWHERE" seems to be written by a 13-year old. Slashdot at its best...the moderation system is failing us.
I've occasionally heated up liquor to pour over a dessert before flaming it. Brought it to near-boiling in the microwave, and carrying it over to the table where we were going to serve it was ... entertaining. It goes right through your sinuses into your bloodstream, faster than drinking it, but I'd much rather drink it.
This powdered alcohol does keep telling you not to snort it; says it'll get you drunk but be unpleasant, and certainly with the flavored versions I'd expect that to be true. (Even with the unflavored ones, seems like a nose-ful of carbohydrates isn't really what you want.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
In the US, "rubbing alcohol" usually refers to isopropyl alcohol, not ethanol, and it's medical-use purity. And you can absorb alcohol through your skin, so you wouldn't want toxic impurities in it.
That's different from "denatured alcohol", which is usually some combination of ethanol and things that are bad for you, and it's the version that's not food-grade, it's paint-thinner-grade solvent.
The strongest distilled ethanol-water combinations are about 96% ethanol, which has a lower boiling point than pure ethanol; if you want to get it any drier than that, you need to add some kind of other organic solvent such as benzene, so that you can boil off the alcohol-water-benzene mixture at an even lower temperature, leaving the ethanol and less or no water. But you're not normally going to do that for food-grade alcohols, because you don't want any remaining benzene, and because 96% is too strong to be actually drinkable anyway; maybe you'd want a stronger alcohol if you wanted to dissolve some flavoring that's less soluble with the remaining water content, but 96% is usually strong enough to do the job pretty well.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
It's regulated in my country which makes it almost as much of a pain to get hold of as lab ethanol but more expensive.
Around a century ago in Germany there was some Schnapps just a bit beyond that point. Not so hard to distill off some more water with just a little bit of Benzene in the mix. Of course if it doesn't poison you immediately there is cancer to look forward to.
I think there's some varieties of high purity lab ethanol with similar additives to make it easier to distill.
This will be approved when the powder has a weight, volume, and alcohol content comparable to the liquid forms currently on the market. Which kind of defeats the purpose.
On a tangent, there is no technical reason for rubbing alcohol to be made of isopropyl alcohol (not fit for human consumption), rather than ethanol (basically the same thing as vodka.) There is no technical reason that vodka should cost so much more than rubbing alcohol. This is all due to government regulation. Powdered alcohol will not be allowed to fit through the cracks.
Pure isopropyl is excellent for cleaning optical surfaces and dissolving muck. Much better than ethanol or methanol for some times of muck and certain types of surface. Eye glasses, camera lenses, telescopes and binoculars, screens and monitors, projectors etc. Anywhere you have a precision lens mirror or glass where a smear affects the quality of the image.
Mix this with self-heating powder, and you can make the perfect on-the-go gluhwein!
https://heatermeals.com/how-se...
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Alcohol stoves are fairly popular with backpackers. Would this powder be an effective way to carry more fuel? Would it be a fire hazard - especially if it became airborne?
That's different from "denatured alcohol", which is usually some combination of ethanol and things that are bad for you, and it's the version that's not food-grade, it's paint-thinner-grade solvent.
I don't even use denatured alcohol for cleaning things. You can buy pure IPA in gallon steel cans (or even five gallon cans!) at most hardware stores. The only time I've gotten it cheaper is in those rare cases when the grocery outlet has 70% IPA, but usually it's only 50% and less than 70% won't adequately clean many varnishes and so on off of the metal surfaces where I tend to use IPA — in automotive applications. I refill my bottles and then add water to make my own 75%-ish bottles for less-demanding jobs.
They've been dicking around with paint thinner, too! Now you often can't get real toluene, they have some kind of substitute. That sucks, because it's got a bunch of specific uses as a thinner for stuff other than paints, like silicone.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
In the US, "rubbing alcohol" usually refers to isopropyl alcohol, not ethanol, and it's medical-use purity. And you can absorb alcohol through your skin, so you wouldn't want toxic impurities in it.
So shouldn't I rather be worried if I can absorb those toxic impurities through my skin instead of absorbing the alcohol part?
bickerdyke
It's both a sugar AND an alcohol. It's been available in powdered form for a long time. I do not believe it can intoxicate humans, so perhaps not considered "Alcohol" by most people, but the article didn't mention ethanol by name.
For high power laser optics, we just use either high purity water or high purity ethanol. The optics are not taking outside, so there is less variety in what they get on them, but still with the occasional finger print, it didn't seem to make much difference which alcohol is used. And since a few more exotic optical pieces directly recommend ethanol and avoiding methanol is a plus, we stuck with that.
28g per "one drink equivilent"?
good luck sneaking a 6 pack of this into a sports event.
to be relevant in any market it'd be useful, they need to work on the "10-12% alcohol by volume"
9oz flask versus 1/3 pound of white powder, which one is easier to sneak into a venue?
unless i'm missing some other purpose for this product...
I've done work for a distiller. My contact there is a good guy and knows a ton about the products and how their made. I had seen some kind of advertising for vodka in that price range and was giving him a hard time, asking why I should buy his premium product when the cheap stuff was being advertised as four-column distilled.
What he told me was that cheap vodka is made from a large percentage of what he called "blend" which is primarily a distilled alcohol product made from waste oranges. As a giveaway to the orange industry, waste oranges can be made into alcohol with a much lower excise tax than grain alcohol. He said you wouldn't make the excise tax on grain alcohol at $13 for nearly two liters, let alone any profit.
I've always gotten rotten hangovers from cheap vodka and he says that "blend" is the reason why, it lacks the purity of grain alcohol.
In the movie an inventor comes up with a candy that had the alcohol content of a triple Martinis. Rock Hudson, Doris Day, Tony Randall.
photosMy Photostream
I'm going to be in Europe next week. I want to know what parts of Europe it's available in, because I'm rather curious what it was taste like and whether you could actually get successfully intoxicated off it. Where can you buy it?
Lab ethanol (reagent grade) is 99.5% ethanol with 99.5% with less than 0.005% water.
You can buy beer in hardware stores?
Yup, my dad was lamenting the fact that you can't get good solvent based paints or cement sealers anymore, my brother has a house he recently purchased with wooden shake siding that's been neglected for probably 20+ years and it could really use the extra penetration of solvent based paint.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
V.I.P. The product that didn't exist - except as an advertising campaign until Rock Hudson (advertising weasel extraordinaire) hires a mad chemist to make a product. Which turns out to be "a good cheap drunk". Still a fun movie.
"The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been wide
Doris Day, Rock Hudson, and Tony Randall can make any movie fun.
>Most people feel it should be heavily taxed
Citation needed.
Powdered this, liquid that, why don't you just get a syringe and some heroin? They're all just drugs!
Screw the responsibility question. But making it a half-cup by volume for one drink! Stupid.
It's a solution (if you'll pardon the pun) in search of a problem.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"