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I have liters of ethanol contaminated with methyl acrylate (MA) from cleaning UV resin 3D prints. Is there an easy way to purify this ethanol by separating MA (as unwanted product) from it? Distillation is not a good option, because MA has boiling point of 80°C, less than 2° higher than ethanol.

Tom
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    Do you want to recover the methyl acrylate or just want rid of it? – Waylander Sep 09 '23 at 07:46
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    Waylander: no, I do not want MA, it is useless for me, I just want to recycle/regenerate ethanol for another use as cleaner. May be it is not problem if it contains MA, but it has very bad odor, much worse that ethanol itself. – Tom Sep 09 '23 at 10:16
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    Could you then add sodium hydroxide to hydrolyse the MA to sodium acrylate + Methanol and then distill to get your ethanol? – Waylander Sep 09 '23 at 10:55
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    Yes, that seems easy. Sodium acrylate will precipitate? What about reaction of ethanol with sodium hydroxide, is there any? [link] https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/90281/will-naoh-react-with-ethanol – Tom Sep 09 '23 at 10:56
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    As the ethanol solution concentrates then it will eventually precipitate – Waylander Sep 09 '23 at 10:57
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    @Waylander: Thanks, I will try it and write here about the result. – Tom Sep 09 '23 at 11:00
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    Probably need to heat the EtOH solution to get complete reaction of the MA – Waylander Sep 09 '23 at 11:04
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    OK, I can confirm that it works. I have tried it in small scale, about 20 ml of contaminated ethanol, after adding NaOH and heating to 60°C and stirring, cloudy precipitate has formed and odor is now "alcoholic", stronger than ethanol itself, but I think it is thanks to methanol formed. Thank you for advice. – Tom Sep 09 '23 at 12:48

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