Can We Recycle 3D Printing Alcohol?

what if you had an unlimited supply of alcohol okay not that kind of alcohol alcohol for cleaning resin 3d printed parts alcohol is a bit expensive and we need to use a fair amount of it so if i had an unlimited supply and i guess if there was no impact on the environment by using new alcohol all the time i would always clean my parts with fresh new alcohol and i'd get cleaner parts well today we're going to try to clean and purify dirty alcohol cheap and environmentally conscious and we're gonna see if we can turn this into this first let's talk about the way i'm not gonna do it i've seen people on facebook say they're recycling alcohol using a distiller a distiller heats up a liquid to a boiling point where it evaporates and turns into a vapor rising leaving the solids behind then the vapor collects as condensation turns back into a liquid and drips down into a container in the end you have pretty much clean alcohol in the container and all the contaminants are separated out so for me i just don't feel comfortable doing this purifying alcohol in a distiller and heating it up seems dangerous alcohol is extremely combustible i mean the alcohol i use denatured alcohol says fuel right on the container and all it takes is a spark but what do you think would you feel comfortable doing it let me know by leaving a comment below anyway in this video i'm going to try to recycle alcohol without using any heat or electricity and without any additives this method is very affordable and it costs only a few cents per gallon a month or so ago i stumbled on a youtube video where someone used a gravity filter to purify alcohol i'll leave a link to that video in the description but i'm going to try it out and see if it really works i made my own version of the filter shown in that video mine is smaller and less expensive so that we can process the alcohol in smaller batches if it works we're going to save a lot of money let's see what happens so this is a ceramic water filter this outer shell is ceramic and has a pore size of 0.2 to 0.5 microns that means it shouldn't allow any particles smaller than about 0.5 microns through inside this dome is charcoal which also helps to clean the liquid i got these on amazon and they are very affordable at around twenty five dollars for two filters each one is rated to filter as much as a thousand gallons of drinking water you're also going to need two buckets with tight fitting lids i got these at ace for under 10 for the pair i wish these lids were a little more sturdy and thicker but these will work fine for now assembly is very simple drill hole in the bottom of the bucket and then one in the middle of one of the lids the rubber seal goes on first to keep it from leaking then screw the filter through the bucket and into the lid below and tighten the nut and then put the bottom lid on the collection bucket and here's my assembled alcohol gravity filter pretty simple only took a couple of minutes to assemble the first thing i did was to prime the filter normally these filters are used for water filtration and you start by soaking them in water we don't want to add any water to the mix so instead my first step was to run a batch of clean alcohol through it that should thoroughly prime the filter so here's the first issue the filter is not incredibly fast it's going to take probably a half a day to run a gallon through here if you have a larger bucket you can fit two filters in there side by side and it will work twice as fast i'm also hoping that it will take out some of the smell i hate the smell of isopropyl or rubbing alcohol otherwise known as ipa the smell of it gives me headaches so as a test i made a second filter with these smaller buckets and i'm running a batch of clean ipa through this one to see if it changes the smell so all these first two batches are running let's talk about why ipa and denatured alcohol needs to smell so bad and why it's poisonous well during prohibition the government wanted to limit and control the consumption of alcohol and more importantly they wanted to tax it but alcohol was still needed for other purposes like sterilizing disinfecting manufacturing and chemical processes bootleggers started stealing industrial alcohol and reselling it in speakeasies for consumption so the government ordered those alcohols to be denatured or to be made not natural rendering them poisonous smelly and foul tasting again this was to try to prevent consumption of alcohol during prohibition and later to make sure that no one consumed alcohol without paying the government for the privilege in the denaturing process they add a poisonous version of alcohol methanol and also some bitters so that you won't want to drink it and those also make it smell bad in fact during prohibition the early methods of denaturing were deemed to not be harsh enough and the government demanded that even more methyl alcohol be added up to 10 percent and this led to the deaths of about 10 000 people before the end of prohibition in 1933 and to keep the taxes flowing the denaturing process is still done today thanks for the history lesson michael sure there's a link in the description to an article in slate about it the alcohol that i use to clean 3d printed parts is called denatured alcohol but isopropyl alcohol is also denatured so is the alcohol used in hand sanitizer and in perfumes so let's check the smell of the ipa that i ran through here it took about four hours to process this quart the smell of the isopropyl after filtration is only a tiny bit milder than what it was before filtration so almost none of the bitters are being removed and let's be clear none of the poison is being removed you still can't drink it after filtration you will die a painful horrible death even if you use a distiller to purify it it will still have the same percentage of water and the same poisonous ingredients after purification maybe walter white could figure out a way to renature alcohol but you're not going to do it so just a public service announcement you cannot distill rubbing alcohol or denatured alcohol and make it drinkable it is still poisonous alrighty then here is the first batch of denatured it was clean going in and it's still pure and clean looking now i got this glass container to dispense alcohol from i really hate pouring it out of the metal containers because it drips all over everything this glass container has a stainless steel spigot and i can store it with the lid up so it won't leak the link is in the description now a real test i collect old dirty alcohol and prego jars and these jars have been sitting around for a long time some more than six months so the particulates have settled to the bottom i'm going to sift these through a paint filter and run them through here's the second issue the alcohol in these jars seems sort of clean after settling but there were still some resin chunks that made it through and if the alcohol is very dirty at all the resin collects on the outside of the filter and clogs it so i put on a glove and wiped it off with my finger and then it started dripping again but this clogging can make it take even longer to filter eventually the alcohol will make its way through but if you put really dirty alcohol in there it could take a week to filter a gallon all right here's my first batch out of the filter at first glance it looks pretty clear but honestly it's still a little bit yellow to see how it compares to the fresh alcohol i'm going to dump it in the big jar and mix it in with the fresh alcohol and yeah now it looks like lemonade not clear at all my next mistake was checking to see if it still had resin in it so i exposed it to uv light and it started curing up this is after sitting in the sun for an hour yeah it formed a mucus that was not a smart move to salvage this batch i used some cheesecloth to separate the alcohol out from the mucus i probably lost about 15 of it doing that i'm not even going to talk about how difficult it was to clean this jar and dispose of that mucus because it was it was gross after separating out the mucus oh gosh it's like a horrible thing it's terrible after that i ran the alcohol through my other filter and a day later that came out a lot clearer it doesn't look like lemonade anymore this alcohol even if it has trace amounts of resin in it is perfectly fine for cleaning parts because let's be honest the moment you put a part in the alcohol it is going to get some resin in there so this is probably as clean as what it is right after you dip the part in there anyway but now i'm strictly avoiding allowing this jar to get exposed to uv light because it was a pain to clean and i don't want to have to do that again so to really test this filtration system out i'm going to try to clean up this super dirty alcohol that i have i collected the alcohol in a glass jar and let it sit for a while after about two weeks most of the resin had settled on the bottom of the jar but it's still pretty milky up top then i set the jar out in the sun for a few hours to try to cure up all the resin in there after two hours in the sun it was a solid blob usually when it's like this there's a membrane that you can break and then it'll have alcohol inside but when i broke up this one well it looks like baby puke let's see yeah this is done for there's no salvaging that so again the key to this whole thing is to not let the alcohol get that dirty you got to filter it after one use and trying to clean apart an alcohol that's this dirty doesn't work anyway i think it makes the part even more dirty and causes that film to form on it okay some final thoughts about all this first of all sure it's a pain in the arse it takes time and energy and it's a slow process but on the other hand it's not that bad once you get your routine down it's not that difficult next i think i'll take these filters apart and make a three bucket double filter because i think with this cheaper brand of filters it needs two passes to get pretty clear this filter is rated at 0.5 microns but there are more expensive filters out there rated at 0.3 microns so that might help but it would also filter slower than this one although you could put two filters in each bucket to double the speed there will be an upkeep process that has to happen occasionally i'm not there yet because i've only been doing this for a couple of weeks but after a while the outside surface of the filter will get a layer of gunk on it and it will have to be de-gunked i think you should be able to filter about 500 gallons of alcohol through each of these filters the total cost of this filtration system was about 40 dollars and if it can process a thousand gallons of alcohol that comes to four cents per gallon which is a lot better than the 17 a gallon to buy new alcohol if you liked this project and are considering making it let me know in the comments and share this video on social media also my channel is not just about resin 3d printing i also make videos about various projects that i'm making with my 3d printer using arduino raspberry pi coding led projects prop making toys and other maker stuff i have a laser engraver and i have some videos coming out about that i also just bought a commercial embroidery machine and i'll be making some videos about that i'll be doing more robotic projects and artistic projects and combining the two last summer i made a little car cupholder robot that has one specific job that's a really fun video so please check that out and i have a large scale robotic project video that should be out really soon so be sure to check out all the videos on my channel subscribe and share thanks for watching [Music] [Applause]

Channel: Nerdtronic

Views: 80,210

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Id: 3BkicNw-qH8

Length: 11min 41sec (701 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 04 2022