Recycle Isopropyl Alcohol FAST! | Recovering IPA From 3D Printer Resin Wash
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 27 พ.ค. 2024
- In this video I quickly recover isopropyl alcohol from resin 3D Printer wash in just 4 hours. Using methods similar to those used in water treatment plants. We add an aluminum sulfate solution to our 3D Printer IPA resin wash and mix until the resin particles coagulate and leave us with clear IPA. Once we have processed the resin wash we decant the isopropyl alcohol into another container for reuse on new resin 3D Prints. This method of isopropyl alcohol recycling is cheap and easy.
0:00 - Why recycling IPA is Hard
2:08 - IPA Recycling & Wastewater Treatment
4:01 - Aluminum Sulfate & Resin Wash Treatment
5:08 - IPA Recovery Process
6:32 - Tips for Wash Station Users
7:38 - Getting all your IPA Back
8:05 - IPA Dilution Concerns
8:37 - Aluminum Sulfate vs "Alum"
9:24 - Wrap Up
Aluminum Sulfate - amzn.to/3woW0xU
Glass Beakers - amzn.to/3o56NcW
Magnetic Stirrer - amzn.to/3mUlMHm
Wash and Cure Plus - amzn.to/3oa8PbP
Spare Wash Container - amzn.to/3BXJXbP
99.9% Alcohol I Use - amzn.to/3BVDAWF
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DISCLAIMER
This video is for educational purposes only and you should understand the use of chemicals and processes before attempting yourself. The creator of this video makes no warrantee of fitness or use of this information. All information is provided as-is and should be treated as such. You accept full responsibility for how you use this information.
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#3dprinting #anycubic #elegoo - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
Okay, so I was hesitant to even try this just because of the dilution factor, but my IPA was so dirty that I figured I’d at least half-ass it, and half-ass it I did, successfully…
I happened to have an alum block laying around, I use it after shaving (it helps with razor burn and cuts boys, you’re welcome), so I used a zester and shaved off what I think was about 8-10g or so. I added maybe 2tbsps or less of distilled water, mixed it up a little bit and then added it all to my IPA, being sure to get all of the undissolved alum, which was most of it since I used such a small amount of water. I let my machine run for like 10 minutes and already noticed a difference after it was done. I let the IPA sit for a few days, not purposefully, I just wasn’t using it. I came back to look at it on day 4-5 and it was the cleanest I have ever been able to get used IPA, and I have used a bunch of different methods. It was honestly pretty damn surprising, I used maybe 1/10th or less of the alum in his directions and wayyy less water, so I really didn’t expect the results that I got. It also caused the resin to precipitate in a way where the solids were larger, causing them to sink completely with a clear separating line, unlike with sunlight where the (really dirty) IPA just becomes cloudy and never seems to want to separate, at least with the resin I exclusively use.
I hope this helps someone, while all the people below are correct about the flaws in this method, you can still get pretty kickass results using alum if you do it this way!
Awesome to hear you got the results I was getting. As for dilution using salt to "salt out" the water is my next plan for this. By using regular table salt you can have salt and water collect and pour off the IPA to get back to near 100% concentration. There are a ton of YT videos that cover the process. Thanks for giving this a chance Ben!
@@MakersMashup oh yeah good idea! I have done that with some 91% that I had laying around and it worked really well! Thanks for putting this out there
Very interesting. It makes me wonder if adding the water is really even necessary. Perhaps 91% IPA doesn't need it. Around how much IPA did you add the water to?
The water increases the propagation of the flocculant. It's only slightly soluble in alcohol. Without it I found it's not as effective. I was treating about 7 liters of 99% ipa
@@Jaysunn I tried adding only alum to some after this, and it definitely did cause the resin to precipitate, maybe not quite as much. I also let the machine run for a long time, like 30 minutes or more, so maybe the agitation causes more interaction with the resin and alum. As MM says, the solubility of alum in IPA is so small, but if you’re using an ipa that is already 9% water, you’re probably fine to just add the alum. Even if it doesn’t work there’s no harm in trying, worst case it will just fall to the bottom and you can strain it out, if you even care to go that far.
Interesting technique, here are a few things to note. 1) As others have mentioned, decanting does nothing to reduce the water content as the two liquids are miscible, 2) each cycle of purification reduces your IPA concentration by a factor of 0.87, so 100% IPA becomes 87% IPA after one cycle, 76% IPA after another cycle and so on, 3) IPA is hygroscopic and more volatile than water, both qualities will further reduce your IPA concentration over time. Personally, I'll stick with distillation, but I could see this being used as a pre-treatment to keep my glassware clean. Thanks for the content!
If anyone is confused about how I derived my second point, this is a perfect use case for the dilution equation C1*V1 = C2*V2 where C1 and C2 are the initial and final concentrations, and V1 and V2 are the initial and final volumes. Plugging in his numbers get us 100% * 1000 mL = C2 * 1150 mL. Solving for C2 and crunching the numbers get us to 86.96% IPA. There will be some very small error due to the volume of resin initially dissolved in the IPA - if we did account for this the final concentration of IPA would be even lower, but the difference is entirely negligible.
@@megaladog6517 How does this work if you add back in fresh IPA to this mix? Like if I took my now 85% IPA and added 97% IPA to it how would I figure out the concentration?
@@sirforcer We can modify the dilution equation slightly to something like C1*V1 + C2*V2 = C3*V3, which is essentially computing the weighted average of your two IPA solutions. Let's say you have 100 mL of 85% IPA and you add 100 mL of 97% IPA, your final volume is 200 mL so the equation becomes 85% * 100 mL + 97% * 100 mL = C3 * 200 mL. Solving for C3 and evaluating provides the final concentration of 91% IPA.
Clearly, your actual final concentration depends on the amounts of 85% and 97% IPA you're mixing together. It might be better to plug in a desired final IPA concentration and solve for the volume of 97% IPA needed to get you there. Hope this helps!
what about fractional distillation? wouldn't the result just be alcohol since the water won't even come close to boiling and evaporating?
@@SeraphX2 Fractional distillation is great, but it won't perform much better than simple distillation in the case of an azeotrope (like water and IPA). Here, separation is limited because of the way that IPA molecules and water molecules interact. Neither simple distillation nor fractional distillation address this problem, so you’ll get about 90% pure IPA at best with either technique regardless of the boiling points of the pure liquids. There are ways to get around this, but they are typically more complex and expensive.
Looks like quite a mess when decanting. I remember in high school chemistry, we used a glass stirring rod to help avoid splashing during a pour by touching it to the bottle or decanter and pouring down the rod. The surface tension pulls ot down the rod instead of down the side of the container.
Yeah, agree ,its fun all that alcohol in the desk , thats not good :)
I consider pour spouts that don't pour cleanly to be failures and not worth it.
Surface tention does not work like water or oil, it's alcohol. It breaks mich quicker.
But theroetically you are correct
I bought 5l of 99.9% IPA when I got my printer about 16 months ago, still on the same 5l. Never tipped any away but only have about 2l left, you can clean and recycle it loads of times.
what is your process?
I just bought 108L of 80% ethanol hand sanitizer at a massive discount. I wish I had read your post first haha
Hi! 👀What is your process??
I will definitely be trying this method. Thank you for sharing and doing the leg work.
You can use sodium metabisulfite to achieve the same thing. You mix about 1/2 tsp per gallon and shake it up good to dissolve, I usually pour the mixture into another jar just in case some didn't dissolve, it mostly settles out over night. You can get it from most home brew supply stores. Great video by the way thanks.
Also another note if your IPA is diluted down past a certain percentage there is a hydrometer specifically for IPA to see its strength if you add salt into diluted IPA and rigorously shake it the salt will dissolve into water, let it sit and you can visually see 2 layers in the solution itself while salt water is dense you can reclaim the IPA at a higher strength. This is a easiest method to increase let's say the IPA is diluted to 30% for some reason and you want to make it stronger with added salt you can in theory turn 30% to 90%.
My concern with the decanting is Alcohol is miscible in water, so it mixes in all amount and proportion, even if in an alum solution initially, it is being dispersed completely in the alcohol when mixed. To reduce the amount of water needed, add the 25 mg to 70 or so mL of boiling water then added the the resin before the solution cools and the crystals start to precipitate out.
As some others have mentioned this will slowly decrease the IPA concentration with the added water. If this eventually becomes an issue a secondary processing can be done by adding nonionized salt or dehydrated epsom salt (magnesium sulfate after drying it out) since the salts will be dissolved in water but not IPA (save for a small amount). Then it's a matter of decanting or siphoning the IPA at that'll be at the top of the vat.
How much salt should you add per liter or water added?
Great job! Very good tip and solution for reducing waste.
Thanks for watching!
Great video... Thanks for sharing the knowledge.
great video instruction. I have the wash and cure plus and this will be super helpful. I just ordered all of these items using your links.
Delightful! 🔥🔥🔥
Man, you make my day! Thanks!
Great video!
After decanting the aluminum sulfate/IPA mixture, you may do well with a micron filter. I just watched another channel that did tests using a micron gravity filter to cleanup IPA, and it worked pretty well on a fully contaminated solution. The video was titled "Can We Recycle 3D Printing Alcohol?" and it was on the Nerdtronic channel. It could be worth watching and using that method as a second step to reclaiming your IPA.
Awesome and innovative method. Kudos for all the research and testing involved!
I have a method to clean my IPA after washing resin parts, and it is simpler, it don't need some unusual chemicals, and don't need any labor: step 1 - put your dirty ipa in container. step 2 - put container into freezer for a night. step 3 - wait about a night, you will get basically something like you get in this video "snow" from fallen of to a bottom of container resin, then you can put your container in warm place without disturbing it much, so "snow" will melt into a resin, and then you can pour clean IPA from that container. And that's all! If after firs freezing your ipa is not clean enough, just let it unfreez (without disturbing) and freeze it again, every cycle will make it cleaner.
It you have cold weather outside (this procedure requires temperatures about -5 celsius and colder) it will work perfectly, too.
Nice one, thanks for sharing
flocculants are wonderful things! You could also just run it through a diatomaceous filter (in keeping with your aquarium hobby). Just keep in mind that if you're using an aqueous solution of flocculant, the water will dilute the IPA unless you distill it out. A common lab approach would be to combine a flocculant/filter with a distillation final step +/- a drying agent like calcium chloride or a molecular sieve.
Thank you for this info. I am still so small scale I have not gotten around to worrying about IPS cleanup but since I am hoping to get more serious about this in the coming months I am definitely adding this video to my 3d printing youtube list.
Have you tried just using a UV light on your container and seeing how much of the resin congeals down? I saw someone else do this but it came out nowhere near as clear as yours but was still very reasonable for a 1st stage wash.
Excellent production value and great tip, thank you!
Pure genius 👌
Very good.
One of the other parts of the waste water filtration process is to run the water through sand beds as a natural filter. That made me think that you could potentially have a very quick process here if you did the fast-stir, slow-stir, and then went straight to coffee filters rather than just leaving the solids to settle out. With the alum making the resin particles flock, the filters should be much more efficient than they would be otherwise.
That is an excellent idea Alex. I can run a batch through a filter and see if it improves performance. I considered using pool sand during these experiments like you indicated here but thought it might make the process too complex or create significantly more hazardous waste. The coffee filter post processing though could be the added step this process needs. I'll let you know how it turns out. If you try it out before I do let me know how your results were. Thanks for the great idea.
@@MakersMashup I’m just curious if you did this and did filtering instead of decanting after the alum made a difference?
Filtering afterwards had no effect. The particles are too small at that point. Letting it rest overnight will get it clearer.
@@MakersMashup Hm, interesting. Worth a shot, anyway.
@@MakersMashup I figured that the coffee filter would be too coarse to catch those particles. Filtering through cotton and ultrafine sand might have an impact, but it's a slow filtration. If you have the time to let it settle, it's probably the most effective method.
I can't wait to try
Thanks for being eco responsible HOME maker
May I suggest that when you are using Alum that you make a gravity sand filter as the floculent you are adding should be a layer on top of the sand and this is how the filtration process is actually meant to occur. Simply broadcasting the alum will lower the specific gravity and make larger sediments to the bottom of the body liquid. It is not a clarifier as such there are other chemicals for this and I am unaware if there would be any off gasing with this or other additives. To add water also means you are lowering the IPA and the clumps of alum observed is the saturation of the alum to water medium.
IPA doesn’t separate from water as easily as oil does, while a layered drink might be stronger on top than the syrup at the bottom, I think the Alum/IPA mix you have would need significantly longer to come close to separating the alcohol.
One solution I’d like to try is incrementally exposing the used IPA to UV light and then filtering. If you try it in one go you’d end up with a spongy IPA mess with little yield but smaller exposure cycles might be a clean way of doing it. It’d also be interesting to use the same process with a little bit of Alum and decanting to possibly reduce the number of cycles required. A final distillation may also prove useful but not necessary as it’s just being used to wash more resin.
I plan on trying this very thing this weekend
It works!!!!!Thanks a lot
This is a very interesting video. Thank you for sharing.
Is there any reason the alum can't be added to clean IPA, then added to the dirty IPA? Will it dissolve?
This would remove the water dilution issue.
Put salt in the IPA after the decant and shake wait 2 min and you’ll see a clean line between water and IPA. and then your back to 99% IPA and if your afraid of the teeny tiny amount of salt wash print with water after wash and cure. It works for me getting cheap 70% for 8$ a gallon and a little bit of salt making 99% IPA.
How much salt do you add?
@@edeaglehouse2221depends on how much IPA you have, add about a couple teaspoons per liter
Ho Lee Sheeeeot. This is amazing. It works. I followed your recipe and dumped the Al2(SO4)3 solution into my Elegoo Mercury and the resin IMMEDIATELY coagulated and came out of solution. This HAD BEEN sitting for several DAYS with almost no precipitation. I'll update in 35 more minutes when the mixing is done.
have you tried adding a dye to the water to see if it shows up when you decant the liquids?
i dont need any of this but i diddnt skip anything and it was a good video
I have a couple thoughts: have you run you solution back through a hydrometer? The water is going to bond with the IPA and reduce your proof if I had to guess. Also adding any water to your wash and cure station will eventually trash the bearings on the mixer in you wash and cure station, same thing goes for using simple green or mean green or the like. So while this seems like an easy and simple solution there are a couple pitfalls.
Does this reduce purity and if so don't place it in a wash and cure.
Good job! I think it's the only video that found a clear solution for that. My only concern since you clean the IPA, is still working the IPA almost like before? Any problem or residue on your prints?
The process has worked great. I havent seen any problems with cleaning prints or things left on prints using this process.
Will potashium aluminum sulfate work too? It's also used as a coagulant.
Bravo!
Copper sulfate root kill would probably also work and be easier to identify because it's blue. I can think of a couple chemicals that might be better than aluminum sulfate. But I'm just getting into this so I'd rather test them for myself.
on an other video i have seen someone putting the allcool with resin into a plastic bottle and he placed it next to a window where the sun could solidify the resin for a few days,, next he used a coffee filter with a funnel to remove the resin.. after a few time of doing it the alcool had a yellow-ish collor so i have been wondering if using he's metod and yours but without water if it would make a perfect clear alcool again without loosing % on it
Great video, sir. Thanks for sharing. Given this was almost a year ago, what have you learned during that time? Still doing this process? What tweaks/changes have you made since last November? Maybe a follow-up video?
I think the only additional step is salting out. I do need to do an update video.
@@MakersMashup That'd be great! Thanks for the quick response.
@@MakersMashup that would be cool
SLA printing noob here. Just bought two 1.3 gal. jugs of IPA thinking I had more than enough of it for my first prints. Had no idea the Wash & Cure tub was that huge! guess I’ll have to buy a couple more 🤨
Water is heavier than alcohol, yeah but that's not how it works. Alcohol dilutes in water very quickly. I'll assume you also remove the waste. You dilute your 99.9% IPA to under 86.86%. Second wash 75.53% and third wash 65.68%. Not sure if 99.9% is required for the cleanup but there are applications for 40% IPA as well (cleaning sensitive materials), so at the end this is a good idea and saves a lot of resources.
The problem with your thought process on the dilution of the IPA is that if the water actually did separate from the alcohol just by sitting, then there would be no need to purchase anything other than 70% IPA as you could just pour off the pure alcohol from the top and leave the water at the bottom. While it is true that water is heavier than alcohol the difference is actually quite small which is why you get specific dilutions of IPA or other alcohols. The only real way to separate alcohol and water is through distillation, (or evaporation which is really just slow distillation).
Fair point on the alcohol but I'm still thinking much of it is coming out through the process of binding with the resin particles. Would be awesome if I could somehow test the concentration afterwards. I could try and test it by weight but we don't know what's binding in that final sludge.
You won't get rid of the water so easily, as chemist I know how painful it is to get water free alcohol. You would need a huge amount of salt to get a separation, but it is possible. But I wonder if it also work with other salts or just water, since you have a saturated resin solution. You might drive it out via the change of polarity of the solvent. Overall it is a nice idea I think I will test something in the lab if I find the time. My approach so far was to polymerize the resin in alcohol in the presence of activated charcoal and after an hour under UV light, filter it through a filter filled with cotton.
Keep me posted and I'd be glad to collaborate on additional tests. I love the cotton idea ve coffee filters. I've done some prefiltering with cheese cloth but cotton may be the way to go for post processing.
@@stratovv.7209 I concur. Water and IPA are miscible, so the IPA has been diluted. Also, IPA has a higher vapor pressure than water, so the IPA will evaporate faster than the water, causing more dilution. Sure, if you waited a very long time, the two would separate. Distillation is the best approach, or perhaps a centrifuge, but that will have different expenses.
@@stratovv.7209 And isn't part of the problem that one molecule can hide inside the other? I remember a chemistry lab I took back in the early 1800's where when you added 100ml of iPA to 100ml of water you didn't get a final volume of anywhere close to 200ml. Am I remembering that wrong?
This sounds like what I used to use to clarify my pool (years ago), and that stuff was called Floccing. I’m wondering if it was basically aluminum sulfate in a water suspension.
Does this leave your prints sticky after cleaning? Wondering how much of the resin actually seperates doing this. UV curing IPA never removes the stickyness
Great video! Do you think this would this be useful for treating leftover water from water washable resin to make it easier to dispose of?
Absolutely. Any resin wash should should benefit by the process.
I just got a water distiller. Works good.
I've considered that but certainly not something I would attempt indoors and without considerable safety in mind. IPA vapor can be quite hazardous.
nj.gov/health/eoh/rtkweb/documents/fs/1076.pdf has some good information.
@@MakersMashup ya i do it outside, I wear organic vapor filter
An interesting idea maybe it is easier to handle, like I do it by filling the used ipa in a transparent container and let it rotate (horizontal) slowly under a curing unit. Then I pour the ipa and the resulting goo in a filter to let it drip into a bottle.
At least a mess, especially squeezing out the filter for the last drops, but a way to always have ipa for prewashing.
This sounds like a good idea. I’ll give it a try to speed up the process. Thanks!
water very easily mixes with IPA and it will not separate, IPA is often used to dry substances because it will pull the water off. so by adding water, you are hydrating your IPA, it will eventually be too dilute to work well.
on the plus side as you do so its flammability is reduced and distilling can pull the IPA out of the water up to a point.
Which product is stronger that can clean every kind of paper that are stained with colors paper like money and stuff like that isopropanol alcohol and ssd solution 😊
Good day.
I had a question, why not use the evaporation method?
In simple words - Purification of isopropyl alcohol by distillation.
The good old way in alcohol production.
I suggest the following;
1.- mechanical cleaning; cotton pads, paper towels, high-density fabric materials.
2.- Irradiation with an ultra violet 315-405-(total spectrum) nm radiation source.
3.- repeated cleaning (rough).
4.- re-exposure.
5.- Rectification distillation.
6.- Preliminary UV irradiation and cleaning if desired.
7.- For experienced cleaners, dry cleaning with aluminum sulfate (pure 25g per solution of 15ml water)
8.- I am a chemist, please advise your method!?.
9.- I’m tired of cleaning alcohol.....
10.- Please pay attention!
Thank you for your attention ;)
Thank you for this video! I appreciate you doing this research and sharing to help others out! Cheers!
another method is to use table salt to the solution. it's a purification technique used in organic chemistry. I add it after leaving the resin in the sun and mix it with extra salt. Sadly it discolors the IPA, but I haven't had a chance to try sending it through a ceramic filter.
So I'm not really happy to be honest....I mixed some up, let it stir in the wash station....ok, it works brilliantly.....but got no bottles of any kind to poor it in!! :-D No, it works great! Thanks for the tip! Checked with a chemist btw if it could be an issue but he says that it is kinda in de area of thinners. Just wear gloves, wear eye protection, a mask to be sure and ventilate. That is it.
Again thanks for the tip!
Excellent work! This type of due diligence is what every hobby needs! Question though, why does no one use the cure function of the wash station to cure the bucket of ipa? Seems like everyone relies on the sun when they have the equipment already
You can do this but it will take days to clear the resin, just as sunlight does.
Unless you have let the dirty IPA sit for a long time to seperate the resin hardens in a lattice structure that results in a jelly/custard like substance at the end.
Curing the resin out in the wash and cure container ends up making a sludgy mess at the bottom and you end up having to scrape it off the stirring mechanism at the bottom. Not a huge deal, but one more thing to have to manually clean.
This is brilliant. I use water washable resin and it never occurred to me that I could use, basically, swimming pool flocculant for cleaning up the waste water before disposal. Nice! Someone in the comments also mentioned bentonite (clay), used in beer and wine manufacture as a clarifier. Cheaper from home brewing stores than cosmetics. Am looking into bentonite as a non-soluble alternative for both water and IPA. Might mitigate issues of dilution of IPA with water solutions of Alum. Thanks again for posting. Cheers.
Bentonite is also the main ingredient in clay kitty litter. If you are going to use litter, get stuff that is pure clay litter to avoid any possible reactions with any additional chemicals.
Interesting, bentonite is used for tanks, the little ponds/lakes in fields usually for watering cattle made by putting a dam in some suitable location. If the ground is leaky due to porous rock or the like, bentonite spread I think about 4 inches stops the leaks by expansion. I mention it because it means the stuff should be pretty cheap in bulk if you go to the right source. 4 inches for an acre is still a LOT of stuff. Plus, it's damn near criminal that the guy who invented clumping cat litter didn't get a Nobel.
Addendum-unfortunately, it's been turned into some kind of BS alt-med product so you can get it for absurd prices like $15/lb and more , or get it in bulk for under a $1/lb, or if you print a LOT of models, $420 for 3000 lbs [this is the pond-building suppliers price].
Use a specific gravity measure to test how much water is in your IPA. SG is used for measuring the alcohol in the brewing process, so many on the web. Probably need a tall beaker because SG's are quite tall.
No need. C1*V1 = C2*V2. In this case, 100% * 1000 mL = C2 * 1150 mL, hence the final IPA concentration (C2) is about 87%. Unfortunately decanting does not separate the water and IPA.
I made some of this stuff in my chemistry class a couple months ago! If I had known I would have asked if I could keep it.
That would have also made a great story. How you created aluminum sulfate and used it to clean resin wash. ☺️
I did see a recent vid on TH-cam about separating out water from alcohol using saline solution. You add a highly saturated salt water solution (ideally saturated distilled water) and add that to the alcohol. The different densities between the 2 liquids make them seperate and then you can syphon off the saline or alcohol (I can't recall which one is the higher up when they seperate. That would remove the majority of any water you initially added. It may even work if you add salt directly to the ipa and that gets taken up by the water in that and then seperate out that way. As always I reccomend your own research though as my understanding of the process is purely from a single video
I've heard and see it. It's legit. Im considering doing an update ont his after the shop is ready.
Does distilling lower the concentration of the alchol?... My gut says no, but I figured someone here may know for certain
biochemist here.. I've been resin printing for years. After 2 or three washes, hit your used IPA with Uv light until its cloudy, then pour it through a coffee filter or Cheesecloth if your impatient. Done.
Id take this one step further. Using water will dilute your IPA. Using cassava tapioca pearls, you can dry your IPA after coagulation. You should end up with 100% IPA after that drying. If you have a molecular sieve, you can use that to dry large amounts too. Celite & filter paper will take out trace particulates.
try striring it fast and shine a uv lazer in from the top, i think thats the best way to coagulate the resin in a way that makes filtering easier
For anyone worried about leftover water, you can always dry it with fine sodium chloride or using molecular sieves.
Following on what sounds like an amazing tip, 1) can you get sodium chloride on your local pharmacy, 2) do you just pour it in the mix and if yes, at what analogy 3) Do you need to worry about any emanating gasses or anything potentially health hazardous??
Sodium chloride is just salt. If you Google salt alcohol water extraction you'll likely find a number of middle school chemistry examples of the process.
That's what did after a similar post 😉
Actually just googled a bit and found out thats salt lol so no need to answer thanks!
The isopropyl alcohol is miscible in water so you might want to try salting out the water and see how that affects the alcohol concentration
Few people have mentioned this and I plan to try it next time I recycle it. It's a great suggestion to use salt to get the water back out. Cheap too.
Seems to me ya might want to look into the home brew sparge tanks this unit proses settles solids to the bottom ware the drain is some have valves and removable containers to remove dead yeast and wheat solids might work better than several different dcant/pours what you are doing here is a very similer process that some home brewres use to clarify beer ....thanks for reading
Im going to try pool store floc. Aluminium chlorate.
Thank you for sharing. I am really confused how to separate water from IPA. To me distillation is the only process to clarify the IPA.
Yes it is. Alcohol is Hydrophilic so it mixes with water :)
@@chefkoch4361
Exactly right, and what you end up with is ~40% IPA instead of 99%.
Ok, I tried this and seems to work pretty well. It is however kind of a hassle. Also to get the water out of the IPA again, I'm adding salt and trying to suck it up with my giant 500ml syringe.
Now unfortunately my basket started rusting. Probably due to water leftover maybe, or the salt.
Now trying to figure out if there is another way to do this. My IPA is now orange in color from the rust.
Very interesting but I think I'll stick to sun UV and filtering (as I'm not a chemical scientist :) ). I have a question, how long is your alcohol rinse? I've heard everything from 1min. - 10min????
I will be doing a 2 bin alcohol cleaning.
Thanks.
It varies by print, design and volume but generally its 1-2 minutes per bath, one ditry, then one clean bath. After the bath I use virgin IPA in a spray bottle and a brush to lightly clean off any remaining residue, particles, etc. Then I use my air compressor, blow off prints until Dry. Pop off bed and cure.
Will this technique not work with just the aluminum sulfate and no water? or does it have to be done with water no matter what?
I tried without water. The results were poor. My thought is the water increases the surface area. If you're worried about dilution you can use salt to "salt out" the water. People have used the same method effectively to salt out the water from 80% IPA. Basically add salt afterwards, shake and then decant. The saltwater separates from the alcohol. Tons of videos on salting out.
@@MakersMashup thank you for your reply. I appreciate it and surely will try salt. Just wanted to ask a couple more things. Will adding salt to 95% ethanol cause any reactions? And also, anyway that the diluting process of the aluminum sulfate can be done with just some clean Alcohol instead of water and therefore eliminate the need to later decant? Sorry if these are stupid questions. Thank you.
For those concerned with the increase of water in the alcohol, I don't know if this would work in this circumstance but I thought I'd throw it out there...
I saw an unrelated video on "purifying" alcohol. It was claimed he increased the "proof" from 70% to ~93%. It involves adding non-iodine sea salt to the alcohol and stirring vigorously. There was no exact amount of salt to be added. The idea is the salt "binds" to the water in the solution leaving you a "purer" alcohol. When it settles out you can actually see the boundary layer between the brine and the alcohol.
Yup, a few commenters have pointed out using salt can easily get you back up to 100%. Next batch I clean I'll likely use this and publish and update video.
Do hazardous waste facilities exist that are willing to work with non-commercial individuals? I always assumed that since the quantities involved were so small compared to industry that the facilities flat out wouldn't bother to work with the little guys.
For my area we work through the local municipality and they have a once a month collection day where you can bring anything. We also have battery collection places open once a week for things like lithium batteries. Check with your local municipality they can point you in the right direction for your area.
Your segment on how water treatment plants work gave me PTSD from my Professional Engineer exam prep days lmao
FYI water and ipa form an azeotrope when you mix them, so you're slowly diluting all your ipa with water, and you won't be able to distill all of it off, least of all pour it off.
Yes others have pointed that out. You can however use salt to extract the water which should be equally safe but does require another step at some point.
Like a boss
I can't wait to try adding alum to my India Pale Ale... (Seriously though, when did IPA start being used as the abbreviation for Isopropyl Alcohol?)
In the hobby? Always.
I just realized that a centrifuge could be used to pre-clean models pretty well. I wonder if a process similar to a protein skimmer could be used to froth off the resin?
I thought of this too but couldn't figure out a way to spin 7l of alcohol in the room :)
@@MakersMashup I meant to use a centrifuge to sling the uncured resin off the green parts before using any wash at all... Then one could recover the uncured resin instead of dissolving it into IPA to begin with... Now I'm thinking "top load washer" in a spin cycle type apparatus. You'd have to print in pairs or use a ballast weight for balance, but I think it could work... 10 min spin cycle, they'd probably come out dry.
I've seen people use an empty airbrush or low pressure air compressor to "air wash" before the liquid (IPA or water) wash. If this is done over a tray or bowl, you could recover the bulk resin for reuse.
Nice job!
I see aluminum sulfate is quite cheap (~1.5 eur/kg ... actually its delivery is ~3 eur :)). I'll probably give it a try, because the wait for the separation is really slow and annoying.
Otherwise once I get well separated resin I can pour out the alcohol (or resin) easily enough without mixing them too much. Only a small amount of dirty alcohol is left with the resin, which I don't have a problem leaving to slowly drip thru a denser filter (the filter would also catch most of the resin and I'll UV cook it afterwards).
Decanting I find to be too rough, tilting the container at first doesn't disturb the resin on the bottom too much, but once the alcohol level drops enough it starts mixing the resin back up (tall narrow bottle-like containers work better).
But siphoning works much better as the dirty container doesn't have to more at all. If you siphon please use a siphon tube with small pump these are cheap and available everywhere as they're used in wine & beer production and also gasoline siphoning.
But the next step is actually simply pumping the clean(er) alcohol. I saw Uncle Jessy show a pump for liquids transfer, and while I can't find that device in my area, I realized that any pump for these large water bottles does exactly the same thing.
So no more tilting the dirty container, no more jerking the tube while starting the siphoning ... just put slowly the tube of the water-pump deep in the clean alcohol (but enough above the resin) and push the button.
It's just the waiting for the separation that's so slow, and if the Aluminum Sulfate trick works I'll definitely do that.
(alternatively I was planning to make DIY centrifuge for 2~4L to speed up the separation :))
Let me know how the centrifuge works out. I had considered the idea but swinging around 4kg or more at high speeds sounded like a recipe for fail video. 😁 Seriously though, let me know how it works I think it should speed it up considerably.
@@MakersMashup ,
I'm still in the investigation phase :)
But I recently discovered there oil filter centrifuges, which seem simple enough (esp. since we don't need heating for alcohol).
There are tons of over-engineered ones (I guess very specialized for certain uses), but a simple one seems to be perfect for our needs.
It consists of 4 main parts:
- inner cylinder. This is the spinning one, horizontal of course. It has open top, and closed bottom (kinda like a cooking pot), except that the top edge actually has a ridge that makes the opening smaller than the cylinder inner diameter.
There are also few holes on the closed bottom plate: one in the (exact!) center for mounting to the el.motor; and few drain holes near the center, which serve to drain the residual dirty fluid when the machine is stopped at the end.
- housing. Outer cylinder (can be any shape actually), it must be higher than the inner spinning cylinder so that it catches all the fluid that's accelerated horizontally.
and the important details are at its bottom as it facilitates draining separately the cleaned fluid from the dirty fluid (and from the central hole for the motor's axis).
These 3 area you can imagine as concentric circles separated with slight circular ridges so that the liquid in each can't overflow over the ridge before flowing out the drain holes in each area.
- electric motor. some people I've seen use a power tool they have. It just needs to be mounted as perfectly vertical as possible to allow for vibration free spinning.
- and a stand that allows mounting the above components.
The stand and outer cylinder are both fixed and connected, so you can consider them single part.
The motor's body is fixed to the stand too, its axis goes thru the housing cylinder to reach the inner spinning cylinder.
It operates quite simple really.
You turn it on spinning as fast as it's safe :)
Then start pouring slowly the dirty fluid (alcohol in our case) that needs some heavier pollutants removed (resin in our case) inside the spinning cylinder.
Because of the spinning the fluid immediately is accelerated to the inner walls of the spinning cylinder.
The spinning cylinder upper ridge encloses a ring-shaped volume on the insides of the wall of the spinning cylinder.
When you pour a little more fluid it'll go over the ridge (think of the fluid's "down" pointing horizontally to the outsides of the cylinder as in any fast spinning centrifuge),
when the total fluid in it is more than the enclosed volume I mentioned it'll start overflowing, and the closes place it can do that is the upper ridge (because the few drain holes on its bottom are closer to the center than the end of the ridge).
So the ridge allows only the upper most fluid to escape, which is the cleanest fluid as the heavier particles (ie the resin) will be accelerated to the walls.
So the clean fluid flows over the ridge, sprays horizontally all around the spinning cylinder, but it's caught by the inner walls of the housing-cylinder, and then leaks down to the outer drain area on the bottom of the housing, which thru a pipe (or few) leads to the clean fluid container.
You keep pouring all the dirty fluid in the centrifuge, and when finished you'll have only the dirty fluid captured in the enclosed spinning volume I mentioned above.
** here's another trick that can extract more clean alcohol. I'll describe below as it's optional.
Then you turn of the centrifuge, and the dirty fluid trapped inside the spinning cylinder flows to the bottom to the dirty drain holes. They lead to the inner (dirty) area of the housing (separated from the clean one by a ridge), and leaks thru a hole (or few) thru a tube to the dirty fluid container.
The remaining dirty fluid can be kept for later to be used again in the centrifuge with more dirty fluid.
Or more likely can be filtered thru some fine filter - it'll be slow, but since most of the dirty fluid is now cleaner we can leave that drip for a long time.
** The optional trick to extract more clean alcohol from being trapped in the spinning cylinder is by pouring some water.
That enclosed volume I mentioned is a known volume (depending on the spinning cylinder size and it's ridge), so you can pour a little less water than that volume.
Water being heavier than alcohol (~21% heavier) will be trapped to the inner wall of the spinning cylinder and will push the remaining alcohol "up" to flow over the ridge.
The pollutants (ie the resin) will still be trapped on the walls, and now will be covered in water instead of alcohol.
When as much alcohol is extracted as reasonable (ie without allowing water to overflow and mix with the clean alcohol), centrifuge is stopped and the pollutants together with the dirty fluid (now mostly water) is collected in the dirty fluid container.
Unfortunately this will has to be DIY assembly project as the ones sold commercially are very overengineered and expensive.
But the motor is easy - most rotating power tools can be adapted to it (and still detached and used as originally designed when the centrifuge is not in use).
The stand can be assembled simply even without welding.
The housing cylinder (or whatever shape it is), only needs to be bigger (and taller!) than the spinning cylinder, and has its bottom separated by a ridge to allow the separated fluids flow out without mixing.
And the only tricky part is the spinning cylinder. Which I currently don't have an idea what existing item to reuse and repurpose. So I'm inclined to get a short cut of a wide enough stainless steel cylinder (it doesn't need to be long at all), get couple of circular plates to weld, one for its bottom (only to be perforated) and the other to have another smaller circle cut out of it, and be weld to the top of the cylinder to form the overflow ridge.
The ridges on the bottom of the housing can also be welded, but since it won't be rotating or experiencing any strong forces it can be also glued.
Actually the whole housing can be done with plastic (or plexiglass if you like to be able to look inside it :))
So the housing cylinder can be assembled by wider plastic pipes cuts.
Sorry for the long explanation, but would like to run the idea with other people to get opinions and advices :)
@@MakersMashup , here's great demo with great explanations of such centrifuge:
search for "Extreme Raw Power Centrifuge | Overview & Operation | Utah Biodiesel Supply" on youtube.
Btw I remember someone used to put a bit of paper (like few pieces of kitchen paper) against the inner wall of the spinning cylinder so that it catches the dirtiest particles.
In our case it'll be easy to keep the centrifuge cleaner, and then just put the pieces of paper in the sun (or in your UV over) to cure the resin before disposing.
You can avoid IPA altogether? by using Yellow Magic, then just let sunlight harden resin. Filterout resin chunks, reuse Yellow Magic(an industrial solvent), with close to 100% recovery. Now the question is what makes up Yellow magic? That is left for your future research. Also with YM, you need to use a heated ultrasonic bath, and mechanical brushing. One side benefit is, no weakening of resin parts due to IPA getting absorbed.❤️👍
Just askin', but are you in the USA? The reason I ask is because you always use the metric system for measurements and hardware, Grubscrew? Thanks
Yup I'm in the U.S. I prefer metric but the 3D printing as a whole is largely metric. Scientific community also favors metric. I find it easier so I generally favor it over Imperial. You're not the first one to ask that. 🙂
Oh and grub screws are those little headless screws that look like pill bugs you find under a log. 🙂
5:05 Something I'm wondering, why not dissolve the Aluminum Sulfate in clean IPA?
It doesnt dissolve very well in alcohol alone.
Pick up some glass stir rods from Amazon. Next time you need to pour out your IPA from the large beaker, rest the stir rod across the top of the beaker, with 1 end sticking a couple inches out from the pour spout. Pour slowly out of the pour spout, so the IPA hits the glass stir rod. It should flow down the stir rod to the end, where it will fall off cleanly into your 2nd beaker. This will greatly reduce the spillage when you transfer your liquids.
Already my plan. Another viewer pointed out. Glass to glass or it's your ass. Great way to remember to use them. 😂
8:20 - The water in the aluminum sulfate solution doesn't settle to the bottom with the sediment to be filtered as part of the decanting process. Look at the Wikipedia article on isopropyl alcohol. The first sentence under the Properties heading: "Isopropyl alcohol is miscible in water". Your "recovered" IPA is contaminated with water. Using water and alcohol to clean most resins will result in a gummy surface that won't UV cure or it'll produce a chalky finish. That's why we aren't using much less expensive 70% IPA.
I like to use a hose and siphon off the clean IPA instead of pouring when decanting.
ive seen others do it but did not try it. How are you starting your siphon? Simple gravity or are you using something to get things going. I know they have some for gas cans and that you simply squeeze a plunger but if you have a known good process or device please share. :)
if you've got a lot to work with, a brewers siphon should work
Great investigation, I'll be making use of this. Out of interest though, did you try exposing the decanted IPA to UV light to see if there were any photoreactants remaining?
The decanted IPA will continue to clear if you wait longer. I tried exposing it to UV during the experiments and it made little difference in the process. I didn't specifically try it afterwards but didnt think I would see significant results based on results during the experiments.
I put a container with IPA in the wash and cure machine and ran the curing program. It worked, however a thick layer of cured resin built up at the walls of the container. I have to add that the IPA I was experimenting with was very very dirty as I used the Collected IPA I use for prewashing!
Maybe the result would be better if you would run the curing and stiring programm at the same time.
Instead of pouring what about using a water pump and tube to pull alcohol off the top thus not disturbing the container itself? Not sure how the alcohol will impact the pump but they're also very cheap.
Question, what is the strength of the recycled alcohol? I use 99% to wash. Any input?
if he starts with 85% and dilutes it 1:1 with water the result will be 42.5% concentration.
how does this method compare to just exposing the dirty IPA to UV and letting the cured particles settle out?
Considerably faster. This process will also speed up using UV to let them settle. They processes are complementary not competing.
I was thinking of using 80% deionised water with 20% IPA for my water washable resin, see if it makes for a better job, so effectively a 20% proof IPA
Can normal industrial ethyl alcohol can be used instalacji of IPA?
Makers in the UK use more ethanol because it's cheaper. In the US, isopropyl is cheaper. The fumes from ethanol are anecdotally less irritating.
On the end of mixing try add kitchen salt to separate water and IPA.
Interesting suggestion. I just did some research on this and looks like its a very common method to remove water from alcohol. I might give this a go.
Will this work with denatured alcohol also?
Unknown. Denatured alcohol contains other chemicals in it. How that reacts with the Aluminum Sulfate I do not know. Someone on Chemistry stack exchange might be able to answer your question though.
This aluminium Sulfate is used in purification of water in swiming pools. Is this the same product??
Likely as long as it's pure aluminum sulfate. Pool chemicals often have other things mixed in. Check the label before mixing. Chlorine and alcohol is seriously dangerous so don't mix anything you're not sure of the contents.
Someone recommended using auto siphon used in distillery to decant IPA.
so for using water washable resin, technically you could add 170g to 1L of resin/water waste, mix it as you describe, run the whole 1L through a filter and then the water would be 'kind of' safe to dispose of normally, then cure and dispose the residue as usual. I'm trying to find a solution to work with water washable stuff as im sick of stinky IPA and want to try eliminate it from my workflow, but i'd feel uncomfortable getting rid of the water like this, instead i'd have to leave it evaporate over time but dont want to have huge amounts of open containers with toxic water in lying around whilst im waiting for it to evaporate away before i can dispose of it. Plus, this 150ml of water you're adding to your IPA mixes, as time goes on your IPA will dilute and become essentially useless for cleaning prints - yes water will be heavier than alcohol so will go to the bottom but you're still diluting the IPA and as soon as you disturb the mixture it will mix it up again as the weigt difference isnt enough to do this - i.e. a good test would be to dye the water you're adding with a few drops of something, so you can see over time how it would gradually dilute the IPA mixture and it can also act as an indicator to dictate when you need to swap out the IPA all together - only trouble is, you'd have to dye it with something that the alum didnt also remove via coagulation.
I was wondering the same thing.
Can't we just cure the IPA in a clear bottle in our wash/cure station to harden the resin, let it sink, and filter it?
I wonder if you can freeze the final solution to get the water out and really end up with nearly 100% ipa?
I think the alcohol will prevent water from freezing, at least at the normal freezing point.
@@walidkhier I did some looking into it, and I'm thinking dry ice may be enough to get the water out of the IPA. I know that most alcohols are natural antifreezes for water, but reading up on freezing distillation can work (in theory). I'll be trying this very soon. This is such a great idea :-)
@@davidfigueroa1969
I am curious to know. Let us know the outcome.
That's what I do in winter time. Just leave it outside. It wont freeze (Danish -5 to -10ish celcius winter) but the resin just gooes up un the bottom - easy to decant. Not totally clean though - but sufficient for reuse washing. Bonus: the water freezes on top and peels off before decanting. The goo is poured in a container outside in sunlight and trashed when solid.
@@michaelhviid398 Thank you for that information. That's going to be very helpful.
Would this work just as well with Acetone instead of IPA?
no idea. You would need to research the interactions between the chemicals. I'm presuming this is not for resin wash. I've not heard of anyone using acetone for resin printing.
@@MakersMashup It’s actually pretty common, I know a lot of people washing prints with acetone, myself included. I even saw people sharing this video in the Phrozen Mega 8K Facebook group wondering about the same thing, if it would work with acetone as well ☺️It’s way stronger, so you only need a short dip. You have to be more careful though, as it’s quite hazardous!
I'll stick to water or alcohol. Acetone comes with many other problems including many plastics it melts.
@@MakersMashup Yup, have to avoid plastic and use heavy duty gloves. It’s just way easier to get where I live :)