How best to dilute gasoline to use in a kitchen sink?

[clare]

d-limonene,

[clare]

Naptha won't help the flammabilty/explosive danger. Butane is even worse. Methanol is corrosive, VERY flammable and poisonous (absorbs through the skin too)

Dichloromethane may be an alternative but it has serious health risks as well

[rbowman]

Only in your part of the world...

[Mike Duffy]

My favorite 'nanny' warning from childhood was on a package of sodium hypochlorite pool conditioner: 'Do not mix with brake fluid'.

Who would ever get the idea to make such a mixture otherwise?

PS: Make sure you are outside if you want to try this. It would also be a good idea to put on safety goggles as well. And be patient. When the smoke starts, don't attempt to speed things up by adding more of anything.

[Paintedcow]

\|||/ (o o) ,----ooO--(_)-------. | Please | | don't feed the | | TROLL! | '--------------Ooo--' |__|__| || || ooO Ooo

[Cindy Hamilton]

What is your reason for needing to do this indoors?

Cindy Hamilton

[dadiOH]

Use detergent after.

If you live near the border, go to Tijuana, go to a liquor store and buy agua diente, It is pure (180 proof) ethanol. Fifty years ago it was $0.50 per liter, going to be more now.

[Jack Hammer]

Who's going to stop you? The fat girl with purple hair at the cash register? They got TSA agents at your gas station?

[Frank]

• He does not know that I am a retired chemist. I survived many fires and explosions and release of toxic materials in the lab so I sorta know what I am talking about. Then from the technical side, if the gasoline is diluted the polar characteristics will change and it may not function the same.

[Paintedcow]

That makes it a better trolling post, which earned it around 30 replies thus far.

[Stormin' Norman]

I will reiterate my recommendation, use WD-40 for label removal. If the odor is too offensive for your manly sensibilities, buy the product in liquid form. If you do not atomize it with a spray, the odor is far less pervasive.

With WD-40, apply a light layer to the label and just let it sit for a little while. Come back in 10 - 15 minutes and the adhesive will have dissolved and the label will slide off with virtually no work.

If you need a powerful solvent that will dissolve almost anything else, buy a can of lacquer thinner (yes, it is available in California) LT is unbelievable in it's utility.

Use of and storage of gasoline and other highly carcinogenic chemicals mixtures inside the living area of a residence is as inadvisable as smoking or leaving a loaded, unlocked firearm where might be accessible by a 5 year old child.

[Andy Burns]

Dedicated label remover is better than WD-40 and the orange smell is quite nice.

No, he doesn't compare petrol to the others :-P

[Jon Danniken]

Naptha, AKA lighter fluid (Ronson brand) or paint thinner). Or "white gas" AKA camping gas (coleman gas, or the stuff they sell at REI by the quart).

Jon

p.s. Don't do it, it's dangerous, you'll blow up the neighborhood, blah blah blah.

[clare]

It will also REALLY piss off your insurance company - even if stored in a sealed "listed" container.

[Robert Bannon]

Here, in California, we are so inundated with such silly nanny warnings that we become inured to them.

It's a big business just selling the signs, for heaven's sake!

[Robert Bannon]

I'm just trying to improve upon a decades-old process by either: a. Making it cheaper, or, b. Making it easier.

Here's my decades-old process of repurposing food jars (both plastic and glass):

1. I eat the food out of the jar.
2. When the jar is empty of food, I fill it with water (so that it sinks).
3. I then drop it into a bucket of water for a day or so.
4. That softens almost all paper labels so that they can be easily scraped off with my fingernail in seconds (if they haven't already fallen off).

Now all that is left is the underlying adhesive goop, which I easily remove in seconds, by pouring gasoline over the jar and wiping with a rag.

Rarely, I need to use a different solvent (such as Acetone or MAF cleaner); but almost all the time, gasoline works just fine by dissolving the goop in seconds. [Frank, the retired chemist, will be the one to tell us *how* that works so well.]

When the goop is gone, I air out the jar outside (still filled with water so it doesn't get blown around in the wind) for a day or so.

And then I bring it inside to repurpose.

Total time is a couple of days, but actual effort is a minute or two per label.

All I'm trying to do is improve on this process, either by: a. Making it cheaper, or, b. Making it usable indoors

[Robert Bannon]

As Jeff said, we can't get Xylene in California.

[Robert Bannon]

At Costco, they stopped me from filling a 10 gallon jug for gasoline. California has a law. No more than 6 gallons at a time.

[Robert Bannon]

Fran, the retired chemist, will have to let us know *how* that d-limonene works for removing the goop.

Remember, removing most labels is so easy to do with just plain old soaking in water, that the problem isn't removing the label.

The problem is removing the underlying goop.

[Robert Bannon]

That's interesting that you're a retired chemist. My chemistry training stopped after Organic Chemistry (Morrison and Boyd) in college.

Water is polar. But are you sure gasoline is polar?

There must be a good reason gasoline is the best solvent for removing label goop, so, if you're saying the reason is its polarity, all we need to do is find a solvent with similar polarity.

But I've never found a solvent better than gasoline for removing the underlying goop (although no one solvent works at all times).

I'll google to see if gasoline is polar, but it may get complex because there is no one "chemical" called "gasoline". It's a mix of alkanes, alkenes, alkynes and aromatics (but I'll doublecheck since that's off the cuff).