ok lets take this from another angle.
I do not encourage or condone or suggest nor am I telling you to do this process it does however work.
diethyl ether has a boiling point of 34.6 C
heptane has a boiling point of 98.42 C
Hexane has a boiling point of 69 C
none of these substances with the exception of the diethyl ether has any solubility in water distilled cold or otherwise.
I have read this forum through on this thread and someone was looking to get pure petrolium ether.. this is not the ether that was used as an anesthetic just so you know. petrol ether is and industrial solvent.
to get the anesthetic you will need to first purchase a large quantity of starter fluid (the automotive kind with diethyl ether listen in its contents. and as few unknowns listed as possible.
spray the contents in to a sealable container. I use grolsch bottles as they are resealable and the neck provides me with an automatic funnel. now you will need to construct a still. yes a still an aparatis for evaporating or boiling of a solution to seperate its individual components. I find a couple of sealable buckets and two smaller containers that will fit inside work nice. you will need an immersion heater like you find at a pet store that deals with tropical fish . get an adjustable one preferably digital and wide range of low temperatures.
place your large bucket on the floor. inside of it place a wire rack or some other nonreactive rack to seperate the small container from the bottom of the bucket. on the rack place your small container and in to that pour your starter fluid. take the lid for the large bucket and cut a 1 inch or apropriate hole and fit it with a rubber stopper with a small hole drilled through it. cut the stopper half way through to the hole and fit the cord to your immersion heater in it and run it through the top of the lid and place the stopper in the hole in the lid
place the heater element in the starter fluid in the small container and seal the lid to the large bucket. make sure your setttings are correct a temperature of 35-40 C should be about right.
now wait you can even performa this by reducing the scale of your containers and use your refrigerator to keep the process more pure but you will have to also incert a thermometer in to the small container and out through the large lid to make sure you are getting up to temp for the diethyl ether to boil out of the heptane and hexane. what you are left with is almost pure diethyl ether in the bottom of the large bucket. the process should take no more than an hour to eight and you shoud collect several batches of the final product and re distill them to purify. no this is the information that no one wants you to know this is a very dangerous method as it involves boiling Diethyl ether and having it in a semi gasous form which is highly explosive. no spark flame or other source of ignition..(static electricity kills folks) should be remotely present. get some static guard and spray yourself down too. and ground yourself . you may think I am paranoid but you cannot CAN NOT be too carefull when dealing with explosives and this is what you have made. now as to peroxides and all that that is not my area and I know nothing of it short of what I have read but I have never had a problem with Ether exploding because I never had it around long enough nor did I ever make more than I wanted to use on a specific project.
hope this helps.
again this is for educational purposes only do not do this if it is agains the law in your area.
