Boiling Metho

[mazcheck]

I have been asked to boil metho for a prac (and keep it boiling for a while) Any suggestions on how to do this safely?

[lada]

Only in water bath or heating mantle, never over open flames (bunsen burner).
Not sure why you have to keep it boiling, but if kept away from flames should be fine.
Lada

[malook]

Make yourself a water bath with a lage sized beaker, place the smaller one with metho inside and preferably use a hot plate to heat. Good luck

[JudyM]

You might need to use a test tube peg to clip the 2 beakers together so you can hold the smaller one in place.
Are you extracting chlorophyll from leaves?

[smiley]

Hotplate, hotplate, hotplate - like everyone else said

[mazcheck]

Actually I don't know what the kids are extracting - could be chlorophyll. All I know is it involves boiling water, boiling metho, soaking in lugol's iodine and drying on paper towel.
Definitely will be using water bath and hot plate. All the teacher told me when questioned about the safety issue of boiling metho was to make sure the metho doesn't boil over or it will catch fire!

[lada]

I have news for you!
I will catch fire even without boiling over.
The vapours are extremely flammable.
You will be safe with hot plate
Lada

[Graham Kemp]

I have news for you!
I will catch fire even without boiling over.
The vapours are extremely flammable.
You will be safe with hot plate
Lada

When ethanol vapours catch fire in cooking, it's called flambé.
The ignition flash is sudden and dramatic. It's quite exciting, but...
You really do not want that happening durring an experiment.

Make yourself a water bath with a lage sized beaker, place the smaller one with metho inside and preferably use a hot plate to heat. Good luck

Even better, if you have them, use a boiling tube for the inner container.

Nice an tall so it directs vapours up high and to the side from the heatsource.

Source

[lada]

Just thought of something.
Last time we used very little metho, each student heated his own (about 10mL) and I boiled water in kettle, poured it into beaker, place small 50mL beaker with metho inside the larger and in no time at all it boiled. Since boiling point is about 78oC it will boil in boiling water from kettle
Lada

[lada]

And we have had an idiot boiling metho over bunsen. Spectacular ignition. The flame is reasonable cool and if you kill the gas at mains, the metho will burrn off pretty fast

[JelJane]

Similar to Lada, we get them to boil the water over the bunsen, turn the bunsen OFF, then put the boiling tube with meths into the hot water.