So I’m wondering if one could take a condenser and hook it on the exhaust line to reclaim the ethanol in ones dist when final purging in a vacuum oven? Any thoughts ?
Yes, you can do this, but depending on the oven temp, you may also get other volatiles, like terpenes, so your recovered ethanol will not be 100% pure.
How would I go about doing this?
I would just run some vacuum hosing from the vacuum port of the oven to a cold trap, then to your vacuum pump, leaving the pump on while you purge.
And the cold trap has a drain port and collection vessel for solvent? Which cold trap would you recommend?
That should work fine, but you also could just get a dewar cold trap, too, as it’ll be easier to drain.
Do you have a pic?
