Damn, I searched the net and there are tens of pages mentioning the H2O:EtOH:toluene azeotrope and none talks about its composition. Anyway, its b.p. is 74.6°C.
(see
http://separationprocesses.com/Distillation/DT_Chp06c06.htm
<=worth reading!)
I know this is off topic, but I remember there was a discussion on how to azeotropicaly dry the acetic acid. Here is a method:
http://separationprocesses.com/Distillation/DT_Chp06c07.htm
EDITGsus and Organikum, the patents you two found are excellent. I performed a preliminary test.
I first checked if concentrated aqueous NaOH is mishelable with ethanol. It is not. This means that the patent Organikum found is not bullshit but quite probably works!
Then I prepared an saturated ethanolic NaOH solution by heating a few grams of NaOH pellets in 15ml of commercial ethanol (96% ?). When cooled I decanted the liquid assuming that most of the water would remain on NaOH pellets like claimed in the
Patent US2796443
. I then treated the ~12ml of clear solution with 10ml of (not dried) acetone and a white crystalline precipitate immediately formed just as described in
Patent US1978647
. 10ml more of acetone was added and more precipitate formed.
It seems that quite a lot of acetone is needed for this method as it still forms more precipitate if some more acetone is added. But the patent claims that it can bee done all in one step before even preparing the ethanolic solution, therefore by simply mixing NaOH, EtOH and acetone. This should require less EtOH (as NaOH is only soluble up to ~12% in EtOH), but it should not give a pure product.
Anyway, the precipitate covered the bottom up to 5ml out of the 35ml total so it should not bee such a bad yield, though it looks somewhat fluffy and light. It looks quite crystalline like as opposed to NaOH, so it should bee NaOEt. I would have never thought that it is so easy. And NaOEt is such a precious and useful reagent.