Distill my beating heart. Question for do-yourselfers.

Topic created by FuckingMachineOperator
on Sat, 27 Sep 2025 at 19:43

FuckingMachineOperator said on Sat, 27 Sep 2025 at 19:43...

Hypothetically speaking, if one were to use food grade (99.9% pure) sodium nitrite, would vacuum distillation of the finished product remove the impurities? Asking for a friend, for the sake of argument.

AssPumper33 said on Tue, 30 Sep 2025 at 01:15...

I am not a DIYer but have considered making and have some relevant training.

I once inquired about distillation in this forum. The response was limited and negative. It was reported that alkyl nitrites are unstable enough that contaminants will just reappear in a matter of days.

My understanding is that food grade sodium nitrite is routinely used and distillation is generally considered unnecessary, hazardous, and wasteful. I do not know whether this is accurate but I have been unable to find quality product for many years.

I suspect the impurities resulting from the reaction differ from those generated in storage. If this is the case distillation would yield a unique product even with the subsequent decomposition.

Do you know what impurities are expected? Will the differences in boiling point be sufficient?

Squirtle said on Wed, 1 Oct 2025 at 14:48...

Perhaps alkyl nitrates resulting from oxidized powder? The difference in volatility is substantial and the separation should be easy.

Dr. Wang said on Sat, 18 Oct 2025 at 19:17...

Short path vacuum distillation is on my to-do list. What follows is a whole lot of speculation and ambiguity.
As mentioned, it would reduce less volatile impurities (the consequence of which I could only speculate), but the finished product will still decompose.
You'd want to catch the lightest, most volatile upper fraction (which logically would be almost everything), so you'd probably want to pump a dry ice/acetone bath through the condenser.
My DIY product is at its peak for the first 5 days. You can see the shimmering distortion of the vapor roll out of the bottle when you unscrew the lid. I have wondered if this is a distinct fraction with a lower BP, indicating the most potent part is actually coming from contaminates in the alcohol, and now that I think about it, I once carefully fractionated my alcohol precursor, and it produced less satisfying product. Perhaps it's a mixture of nitrite products which produce the best effect.
There's so much left to figure out in pursuit of top quality product.
I need to get off my butt and have GC-MS done one of these days.