This video documents an experimental chemistry project attempting to convert common children's white glue (polyvinyl acetate, PVA) into drinkable ethanol. The process involves several complex steps: meticulously drying a gallon of glue to isolate the PVA plastic, physically breaking down the hard PVA using a wood chipper, pyrolyzing the PVA under vacuum to crudely extract acetic acid, and then undertaking extensive chemical purification. This purification involves neutralizing the acid to sodium acetate, washing with solvents, reconverting to acetic acid using sulfuric acid, and rigorously drying it via azeotropic distillation with dichloromethane. The purified acetic acid is then reduced to ethanol using sodium borohydride and methane sulfonic acid in DMSO, a reaction plagued by side products like foul-smelling dimethyl sulfide. Isolating and purifying the final ethanol requires multiple fractional distillations and treatments, leading to a drastically reduced yield. The final product, a small amount of ~68% ethanol, is successfully produced but retains a distinct chemical/gasoline-like flavor despite extensive purification efforts. The project highlights the theoretical possibility but practical difficulty, inefficiency, and challenges of such a conversion.
Turning Children's Glue into Drinkable Alcohol: A Chemical Journey
0:00:20 Objective: To chemically convert the polyvinyl acetate (PVA) in children's glue into drinkable ethanol. The proposed route is PVA → Acetic Acid → Ethanol.
0:01:45 Starting Material: A full gallon (3.78 L) of Elmer's children's glue is used.
0:02:18 Initial Challenge: Drying: The first step is removing water from the glue. Air drying proves extremely slow (taking weeks) due to surface skin formation.
0:03:49 Accelerated Drying: Methods like chopping the glue, using a food dehydrator, and finally a vacuum oven (80°C) are employed, eventually yielding dry PVA blocks after nearly a month.
0:05:56 Challenge: Breaking PVA: The dried PVA is rock-hard. Attempts with a food processor, blender, and hammer fail (breaking the table instead).
0:07:33 Solution: Wood Chipper: A wood chipper successfully shreds the PVA into small, manageable chunks suitable for chemical reactions after multiple passes.
0:09:24 PVA to Acetic Acid (Pyrolysis): The PVA chunks are heated strongly in a flask under vacuum. This breaks down the PVA, releasing vapors.
0:11:34 Observation: The distillate initially contains water, then turns yellow and smoky as acetic acid and other breakdown products (like benzene) form. The process yields a dark, foul-smelling (burnt plastic/gasoline) liquid containing crude acetic acid and hazardous impurities.
0:17:18 Acetic Acid Purification Pt. 1: The crude acid is separated from oily impurities, then neutralized with a large amount of baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) to form sodium acetate in water.
0:20:34 Acetic Acid Purification Pt. 2: The sodium acetate solution is heated to boil off volatile impurities (like benzene) and water, leaving behind solid, crude sodium acetate.
0:23:01 Acetic Acid Purification Pt. 3: The solid sodium acetate is repeatedly washed with hot acetone to dissolve and remove remaining impurities, significantly cleaning the powder.
0:25:40 Acetic Acid Regeneration: The purified, dried sodium acetate is reacted with concentrated sulfuric acid, and the liberated acetic acid is distilled off.
0:28:48 Problem: Impure/Wet Acid: The distilled acetic acid is still yellow and, unexpectedly, contains a lot of water.
0:29:53 Advanced Drying: The wet acetic acid is dried using dichloromethane (DCM) and magnesium sulfate, followed by careful fractional distillation to separate the DCM/water azeotrope, yielding ~100mL of pure, dry acetic acid (confirmed by FTIR/NMR). Yield is significantly reduced.
0:33:46 Acetic Acid to Ethanol: Pure acetic acid is converted to ethanol using sodium borohydride and methane sulfonic acid in DMSO solvent, following a literature procedure. The reaction requires careful temperature control and produces hydrogen gas.
0:43:06 Side Product Problem: The reaction produces dimethyl sulfide, a volatile compound with a horrible rotten cabbage/sulfury smell.
0:42:23 Ethanol Isolation: The ethanol is isolated from the reaction mixture by fractional distillation, initially as a dilute ethanol/water mixture contaminated with dimethyl sulfide.
0:47:09 Scaling Up: The ethanol synthesis is repeated on a larger scale (using a 5L flask in two batches) to process the remaining acetic acid.
0:50:02 Final Purification Challenge: Multiple (4+) rounds of fractional distillation, including copper packing and filtering through activated charcoal/ion exchange resin, are needed to remove the persistent dimethyl sulfide smell.
0:51:12 Low Yield: Each purification step significantly reduces the amount of ethanol recovered.
0:52:05 Final Product: A very small final volume (significantly less than the initial ~90mL) of ~68% ethanol is obtained, which finally smells clean (like ethanol) and appears pure by NMR.
0:53:50 Tasting: After warnings about safety, the creator tastes the glue-derived alcohol.
0:54:54 Taste Result: It burns due to high proof and possesses a distinct, lingering chemical/gasoline-like flavor. It's deemed unique and technically drinkable but not pleasant, highlighting the difficulty of removing all trace impurities.
0:56:16 Conclusion: While chemically possible, converting glue to drinkable alcohol is extremely inefficient, labor-intensive, produces hazardous intermediates, suffers from difficult-to-remove impurities, and results in a very low yield of questionably flavored product.