SWIM was walking around in an industrial area one day and got the urge to look at an auto paint shop to see what thinners they had, in case toluene could be found.
Sure enough he found what he was looking for. Sort of. It was half toluene and half a mix of phenol and ammonia. Is this mix specifically designed to become an azeotrope or something? If not, would it be possible to use water to wash off this crap. SWIM looked at info about phenol (he figures ammonia will just wash straight out), and it's soluble in water to the degree of 8.28g/100ml.
So, if swim ran water over this solution, preferably in a large steel or polypropylene container, he'd be able to remove all that gak wouldn't he? Seeing as tol only takes in .05g/100ml water, would that work?
Sorry if this question has been answered before, I couldn't find anything of the sort in tfse, there was plenty about separating methanol and toluene (which I figured was easy with lots of water), but phenol is a more stubborn alcohol than methanol with regards to dissolving in water. Another idea that occurred to me just now - what about using ethanol to improve the solubility of the phenol in water? Doubt it would be useful though.
Other than that, can any bee tell SWIM whether toluene can be bought at petroleum depots in OZ (specifically the sunshine state)? SWIM understands it is an octane improving additive, and also that it's something that recently (maybe it was a while ago, but google gave so many hits regarding this) dodgy petrol stations using it to fluff out petrol to dodge petrol tax.
Thanks bees, SWIM has struggled without a still and with using 'shellite' now for ages, wondering why he never seemed to get decent results in A/B extractions. Now he knows why. Sitting there looking at his shellite fraction he was washing on some straight tapwater he could see quite clearly for the first time a slight yellow colouration in the shellite, and for so long he kept reading these things about getting strong tinting, and now he knows why he never saw it. He doesn't want to use any kind of hexanes, the requirement for being hot (to almost boiling) is rather inconvenient. Not to mention dangerous.