Can white spirit be used to clean tiles where alcohol is specified. It is to fit Command hanging hooks which specify clean with alcohol .
- posted
5 years ago
Can white spirit be used to clean tiles where alcohol is specified. It is to fit Command hanging hooks which specify clean with alcohol .
Either degreases. White spirit is more toxic.
NT
I would have thought white spirit would leave a residue ?
Meths.
Meths is crap for pretty much anything.
IPA is reasonably decent as a weak solvent and readily available.
Carbon TetraChloride was the bollocks but you won't get that anymore ('cos it gives you cancer**)
** When I die, it's going to be a toss up between the Coal Tar, CCl4, funky food colours and the asbestos!
Other way around - white spirit leaves no residue or smell once it's evaporated, but being much less volatile, that takes much longer, and it stinks more until it's evaporated. Your alcohol will have additives to make it toxic and to colour it, and these leave residues. (Pure ethanol wouldn't, but you can't buy that without paying lots of duty.)
This is why I like IPA...
Not very much, though, even from purple "meths". The toxic bit is methanol which is even more volatile than ethanol, the dye is pyridine but only at a tiny level
Agreed
The trouble with white spirit is that contains hydrocarbon molecules of various lengths, and the longer are less volatile. Unless you apply a little heat it won't evaporate quite as quickly as meths or IPA.
Oh, but white spirit is not significantly toxic.
no, but the pong hangs around
Use gin or vodka...:-)
I would have thought that meths would have been fine for this job.
I carry meths in the van for cleaning old sockets and switches.
When I was a haematology techician in the 70's we had 2 litre 'winchester' bottles of pure ethanol in the lab for diagnostic purposes, presumably tax-free because I remember it was absurdly cheap for 2 litres of 100% alcohol.
Medical students were always trying to get pally with the female technicians (not many female medical students in those days) to try and get something to make their party drinks go with a bang.
One day Customs and excise paid us a visit and insisted that we kept a register of the exact amounts removed for diagnostic purposes and to *return* the excess back to the container.
Chief technician got quite agitated explaining why we would and could not do this. Eventually it was escalated up to higher levels to make them shove off.
Even normal hot weather (no aircon in those days) made it evaporate pretty quickly, apart from the no-no of contaminating the bulk bottle.
Indeed. Or just get some iso propyl alcohol which is what is used to clean your skin before a blood test. Also used for screen wipes.
I use meths first, if that's not food enough, acetone.
But those residues are trivial and don't interfere with the adhesive on the hooks so that is why alcohol is stated.
(Pure ethanol wouldn't, but you can't buy
You can always freeze vodka. That gets you pretty close.
NT
And for some reason quite a bit cheaper at ebuyer
They probably mean IPA. I seem to recall its pretty cheap from CPC or used to be, its the stuff we used to use to clean tape recorder parts. Brian
They also forensically analyse how much grain distilleries buy to calculate the duty ...
So where do you get your duty free vodka?
Isopropanol from RS Components or a similar supplier?
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