Which alcohols/fuels can be used for making the green flame?

[Fae]

I've seen most green fire experiments that involve borax use methanol or ethanol. Is there any other alcohol that I can use? Also, will it make a difference to the fire if the alcohol is denatured? Fire is generally dangerous, but is there any type of fuel or alcohol that is safer to use than others? 

[Sensei]

How about reversing your question: which element can be used as contamination to get exact flame color?

The list of flame colors of various elements you can find here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flame_test

 

[MathGeek]

Denatured alcohol is usually mostly ethanol with enough of some contaminant (often methanol) so that it is unsafe to drink.  The main reason for this is so that it is not heavily taxed as an alcoholic beverage.  A bottle of Everclear costs almost $20.  About the same quantity of denatured alcohol costs $7.50 at local hardware stores.  For a certain brand of denatured alcohol, you can look up the ingredients or try and find the MSDS.  The ones I've checked are mixtures of ethanol and methanol.

I'm not sure it is any safer, but since it is cheaper, isopropanol is usually the first alcohol I try for chemistry experiments.  It is less polar so salts are much less soluble than in methanol and ethanol, and it does not evaporate as quickly.  But 91% is about $2.50 a quart at Walmart and most drug stores. 

 

[Sensei]

10 hours ago, MathGeek said:

I'm not sure it is any safer, but since it is cheaper, isopropanol is usually the first alcohol I try for chemistry experiments. 

Smelling isopropanol for a few minutes can cause headaches. Drinking it causes vomits. That's for a start.

It's used by electricians/electronics engineers to clean up wires, elements, boards etc.

10 hours ago, MathGeek said:

Denatured alcohol is usually mostly ethanol with enough of some contaminant (often methanol) so that it is unsafe to drink.  The main reason for this is so that it is not heavily taxed as an alcoholic beverage.

Ethanol can have organic origin (fermentation of plants, vegetables and fruits), or inorganic chemistry origin (byproduct of some reaction in chemical plant). Ethanol made by factory still contains some contaminations (e.g. heavy metals), which are not present in normal organic fermentation. Thus there is added yet another contamination to disallow it to be drinkable by people, or reused by food industry to make alcohol drinks.

Edited August 4, 2018 by Sensei