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Distillation of ethylene glycol and antifreeze, explanation
| We often receive inquiries for distillation of
antifreeze. Antifreeze can be distilled, but it is important to know
what your objective is when trying to reclaim or concentrate antifreeze.
Antifreeze can be either Ethylene Glycol or Diethylene Glycol,
each of which has different properties that must be considered.
Ethylene Glycol has a boiling point of 135C and Diethylene Glycol has a
boiling point of 240-250C. The water in which it is mixed has a
boiling point of 100C.
The first point to be considered is whether you are going to condense
or concentrate your antifreeze, or actually distill the antifreeze.
To condense the antifreeze is simply to distil the water contained in
the antifreeze, thus removing the water and leaving the antifreeze behind
in the distillation chamber. When you do this the water is removed
and everything else remains behind. Water can be remixed to control
the percentage of antifreeze in the solution to be reused. |
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If you want to distill the antifreeze and obtain a purity of the glycol, you
must apply the options for solvent separation. Utilizing separation, you
would first remove the water from the waste antifreeze. In a second cycle
(automatically), you would distill the glycol at a higher temperature and remove
the glycol from the waste antifreeze. This will leave the additives, dirt,
debris, and oils behind in the distillation chamber. |
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To distill Ethylene Glycol, a standard distillation unit is
sufficient.
For distillation of Diethylene Glycol, you need to use the vacuum option to
reduce the boiling point of the Glycol.
In any case when removing water, it is required to apply option
"G", which doubles the amount of heating capacity in the distillation
unit. |
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