I think I may have posted initially and said alcohol rather than ethanol. That may be the source of confusion. Just to underline. Anything with methanol in it is poisonous and must be avoided. So that's Heet and denatured alcohol which is a mix of ethanol with a bit of methanol. Research Grade Ethanol is 99.9% ethanol and ok to drink, but it really needs to be mixed with something to make it in anyway pleasant. Everclear (grain alcohol) is 95% ethanol and also makes good fuel as well as an interesting cocktail. Also butane does not in anyway make an interesting cocktail, score one for ethanol.
Heet is a methanol product. It contains 99% methanol with 1% of a proprietary additive. As I've stated above, ethanol...the "alcohol" that most people are familiar with...can be denatured in a variety of ways that may, or may not, add toxicity to the liquid.
Originally Posted by
prathmann
Non-denatured laboratory ethanol is commonly classified as either 'absolute' (nearly 100%) ethanol or as 95% ethanol which has 5% water content. I would not recommend consumption of absolute ethanol (although I tried some as a teenager) since to remove the last bit of water requires a process (azeotropic distillation) that uses highly toxic chemicals (typ. benzene) and some trace impurities are likely to be present in the alcohol. Better to use the 95% ethanol where the remaining 5% is just water. And, of course, any denatured ethanol should never be consumed.
Thank you for broaching the subject. I wasn't really wanting to go there because of the complaining about 'technical mumbo jumbo' but you are correct.