Talk:Ethanol

MJ/kg for Gasohol
This looks incorrect. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:30A:C089:C340:85A6:F8DE:1D93:1E4B (talk) 20:35, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Ethanol
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Ethanol's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "PGCH": From Cellulose:  From Diethyl ether:  From Ethyl formate:  From Butylated hydroxytoluene:  From Pyridine:  From Chlorpyrifos:  From Ethylene oxide:  From Phorate: </li> <li>From Hydrogen cyanide: </li> <li>From Ethion: </li> <li>From Demeton: </li> <li>From Diazinon: </li> <li>From Cyclohexane: </li> <li>From Butyronitrile: </li> <li>From Malathion: </li> <li>From Ethylene glycol: </li> <li>From Acetic acid: </li> <li>From 1-Propanol: </li> <li>From Carbon tetrachloride: </li> <li>From Chloroform: </li> <li>From Dicrotophos: </li> <li>From Carbofuran: </li> <li>From 1,1,1-Trichloroethane: </li> <li>From N-Butanol: </li> <li>From Mevinphos: </li> <li>From Benzene: </li> <li>From Carbon dioxide: </li> <li>From 1,2-Dichloroethane: </li> <li>From Monocrotophos: </li> <li>From Butane: </li> <li>From Trichloroethylene: </li> <li>From Formamide: </li> <li>From 1,2-Dibromoethane: </li> <li>From Phenol: </li> <li>From Tert-Butyl alcohol: </li> <li>From Cyanogen: </li> <li>From Carbaryl: </li> <li>From Chloroethane: </li> <li>From Cyclohexanol: </li> <li>From Carbon monoxide: </li> <li>From Dioxathion: </li> <li>From Naled: </li> <li>From Propionitrile: </li> <li>From Disulfoton: </li> <li>From Ethylenediamine: </li> </ul>

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 05:05, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Merger proposal
Ethanol research has hardly any content. It can easily be covered within Ethanol and Ethanol fuel. Sizeofint (talk) 18:14, 20 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Agree. Ethanol fuel. Sandcherry (talk) 00:56, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

Absorbents vs Adsorbents
Molecular sieves and desiccants mentions "Absorbents" twice, and I (layman) simply don't know if this is correct, but have a feeling it might not be. Perhaps anyone who actually knows could do what needs to be done (if anything)?  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  22:18, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

Ethanol is a drug?
The assertion in this article that alcohol is a drug is at odds with Wikipedia's definition of drug:

"A drug is any substance other than food, that when inhaled, injected, smoked, consumed, absorbed via a patch on the skin or dissolved under the tongue causes a physiological change in the body."

Ethanol is food (with 7 food calories per gram). --MaximRecoil (talk) 23:32, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Doesn't seem to match our definition of food since most people don't consume it for nutrition. Regardless, we go by what the reliable sources say. Also, alcohol is a depressant. Depressants are drugs. Hence alcohol is a drug. QED. Sizeofint (talk) 00:17, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
 * It doesn't matter what most people consume it for; it is food regardless. For example, a communion wafer doesn't cease to be food simply because it is usually consumed for purposes other than nutrition. Food isn't defined by the intent of the eater/drinker; it is defined by the substance's nutritional content. Not only is ethanol food, but it is a macronutrient, which places it in a rather exclusive group along with protein, carbohydrates, and fat, i.e., there are only four substances which can prevent starvation, and ethanol is one of them:


 * "The four principal classes of macronutrients providing food energy to humans are: carbohydrate, fat, protein and alcohol" - link


 * As for reliable sources, there are reliable sources saying that food is specifically excluded from being a drug (which negates your "alcohol is a depressant. Depressants are drugs. Hence alcohol is a drug." reasoning), and there are countless reliable sources which define food as being anything people consume which provides nutrition/nourishment. From the OED:


 * "Food: Any nutritious substance that people or animals eat or drink, or that plants absorb, in order to maintain life and growth:"


 * You can also find countless reliable sources stating that ethanol has 7 food calories per gram (which means it provides more energy than protein and carbohydrates, and a little less energy than fat). --MaximRecoil (talk) 01:23, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Okay, but there are hordes of research papers that refer to "alcohol and other drugs" implying that alcohol is a drug. The World Health Organization calls alcohol a "psychoactive substance" which it further states is identical in meaning to psychotropic drug . Our article on psychoactive substances redirects to "psychoactive drug". Ethanol may also be used as a medication (cough medicine), our article for which redirects to "pharmaceutical drug". Perhaps ethanol is also a food. What this means is not that ethanol isn't a drug but that our definition of "drug" needs to be refined. Sizeofint (talk) 02:14, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, the Wikipedia definition for drug has reliable sources too, i.e., two dictionaries are cited, both of which exempt food from being a drug. So with the "reliable sources" out there being at odds with each other, I suppose Wikipedia is bound to be at odds with itself as well. --MaximRecoil (talk) 02:42, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Beer and wine are food beverages, ethanol is a drug (there's no nutrition in anhydrous ethanol); lot's of foods have drugs in them, that if extracted solely from the food would be, plainly, a drug; e.g. & for instance: eating poppy seed muffins will test you positive for morphine, the main metabolite of heroin. Nagelfar (talk) 20:08, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
 * The compound ethyl alcohol is metabolized by liver alcohol dehydrogenase to acetaldehyde. This is then converted to acetic acid by liver alcohol dehydrogenase 2. That acetic acid is converted into Acetyl-CoA, which is part of oxidative respiration and is converted to energy in the form of ATP. Therefore, ethyl alcohol is both a drug, since it produces a measurable, pharmacological effect on the body, and it is a food, since it is converted to energy. Most people don't consume 100% ethanol (even Everclear is 95%). WTF? (talk) 04:36, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
 * In the United States, alcohol is not regulated as a food under the FDA, it is regulated under the ATF, which is why alcoholic beverages don't have to carry the same label with calorie and nutrition information that all other pre-packaged food products sold in the U.S. do. Rreagan007 (talk) 14:21, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

Yes, we can extract energy from ethanol (rethinking that 100 kcal vodka shot now). We can extract energy from feces too, as the digestive system is not 100% efficient. Will you kindly update the feces article? (In case it isn't clear, this is an argument against the "ethanol is food" argument presented) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 179.176.189.195 (talk) 19:10, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 1 one external link on Ethanol. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added tag to http://resourcespace.icrisat.ac.in/filestore/8/4/0_6c06c9b61b19c20/840_be710da94740b90.pdf
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20101214222420/http://www.nttworldwide.com:80/tech2212.htm to http://www.nttworldwide.com/tech2212.htm

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 16:01, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

Alcohol (medical use)
Is this new content fork really necessary? There isn't a whole lot of content in the medical use section here as it stands. Content on ethanol is already strewn throughout a half-dozen or so articles. In my mind we should be trying to consolidate rather than fork at this point. Sizeofint (talk) 10:50, 11 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Reviewed this and realized it is discussing a non-specific type of alcohol. If any merge is to take place it would probably be to alcohol rather than here. Sizeofint (talk) 21:25, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 4 external links on Ethanol. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070221185632/http://www1.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/pdfs/storage.pdf to http://www.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/pdfs/storage.pdf
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110219052041/http://www.energyfuturecoalition.org/biofuels/benefits_env_public_health.htm to http://www.energyfuturecoalition.org/biofuels/benefits_env_public_health.htm
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.nttworldwide.com/tech2212.htm
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080509125317/http://etoh.niaaa.nih.gov/Archive.htm to http://etoh.niaaa.nih.gov/Archive.htm

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 23:52, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

Within-Article Announcement of Major Changes to Popular Articles like this
The entire Pharmacology section was removed and placed in the "Alcohol (drug)" article. I think there should at least be some redundancy and then a link to the article instead of what we see right now. Also, a page header stub or some kind of announcement within the article would be advisable for significant and dramatic changes such as this. Just a day ago I was researching the Pharmacology of Ethanol and was using this article to do it. When I came back I almost abandoned this article completely trying to figure out where the stuff I was looking for went but I stopped and decided to click "View history", thankfully. Even in the History section of this article it doesn't really explained what happened very clearly. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mbman8 (talk • contribs) 03:42, 10 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Not only should this have been discussed, but this is nearly identical to edits previously pushed through without discussion, rejected by consensus, and rolled back. Those edits were by now-indeffed, whose choice of title, link replacement and other aspects were word-for-word the same, and deemed POV-pushing. I am very suspicious of these changes. oknazevad (talk) 10:12, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Splitting off medical/pharmacological content has become somewhat standard practice (e.g. Cannabis, Epinephrine, Dopamine). I am not opposed; the pharmacological information was starting to overwhelm the industrial content. We should expand the blurb here a bit, however. Another change we might consider is moving the fuel content to Ethanol fuel and presenting it here summary style. Sizeofint (talk) 15:25, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
 * While I can definitely see the split on WP:Summary grounds, I agree that the blurb here is too short. And some movement of material regarding fuel use to ethanol fuel also makes sense. I do question the title of the spilt off article; it seems kinda wp:pointy, as it was the last time this happened. And many of the new links are questionable; some have changed more appropriately specific links to ones pointing to the new article, such as changing ones specifically about the chemical reactions of fermentation to not point to this article, which covers the general chemistry. I guess that's why it's a questionable split to me; the name and placement almost treats it as a separate substance, instead of just being coverage of the effects of ethyl alcohol, for which we already have short-term effects of alcohol and long-term effects of alcohol. And there's also the article alcohol (medicine) created early this year just for the medical uses. I wonder if we now have too many redundant articles, one of which has a very questionable title and questionably placed links. oknazevad (talk) 02:24, 16 September 2017 (UTC)
 * The alcohol (medicine) article is about the broader use of alcohols in medicine, not just ethanol (although the infobox apparently needs fixing to reflect this). It is more of a fork from alcohol.
 * I don't watch too many articles in the chemicals space. When discussing ethanol in an industrial context the wikilinks should definitely point here.
 * The articles on the effects of alcohol (whoops, there's another one) can cover content on the health and psychological effects of ethanol. Content on pharmocokinetics, pharmocodynamics, society and culture is mostly out of their scope though. I do agree we probably can merge some of the alcohol related articles. I also believe an alcohol related article we should keep is one with scope similar to alcohol (drug). I'm not stuck on that name but I can't think of a better one. We're currently discussing a similar issue at Talk:Cannabis (drug). Sizeofint (talk) 04:41, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

I believe, with good evidence, that their is no connection between David and MedGirl. The split that was made is very reasonable. Ethanol has a lot of non drug uses. Having an article on the drug uses of ethanol is a reasonable split. Medical uses of alcohol are very different from drug uses (no overlap really). Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:39, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 4 external links on Ethanol. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added tag to http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uva.x002457887%3Bview%3D1up%3Bseq%3D13
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20140114075515/http://mtfca.com.au/ to http://www.mtfca.com.au/
 * Added archive http://arquivo.pt/wayback/20160518140942/http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/598475 to http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/598475
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20130514151711/http://www.webanswers.com/science/what-is-the-triple-point-of-alcohol-a821b3 to http://www.webanswers.com/science/what-is-the-triple-point-of-alcohol-a821b3
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20071127095510/http://www.procurement.umich.edu/Contracts/Denatured_Alchohol.pdf to http://www.procurement.umich.edu/Contracts/Denatured_Alchohol.pdf

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 03:00, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

pKb
I have [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ethanol&diff=805811526&oldid=805804062 deleted] claimed pKb value, because it has just been [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ethanol&diff=805804062&oldid=805198738 changed] from −1.9 to 19, both values just plain without any reference or explanation. I'd get the former value as correct basicity constant of ethanol's cunjugated base, ethoxide anion, EtO−. However, since this value can be easily obtained as pKb = 14 − pKa, such value would be somewhat redundant. One would expect pKb to be basicity constant of ethanol itself, i.e. of a different equilibrium reaction, between EtOH and EtOH$+ 2$ (in water). Some sources state oxonium H3O+ pKa = −1.7 and (some others) ethyloxonium EtOH$+ 2$ = −2 (which is close, as should be), so the expected pKb would be around 16. If i'm not blatantly wrong somewhere. —Mykhal (talk) 20:50, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Ethanol. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20150924050511/http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/analysispaper/pdf/biomass.pdf to http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/analysispaper/pdf/biomass.pdf

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 03:53, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

Recreational drug?
I read the discussion above, and don't have a problem with ethanol being considered a drug by at least some definitions, and personally don't have any difficulties in accepting that some foods contain drugs. However, the bare statement in the lead that ethanol "is most commonly consumed as a popular recreational drug" is not supported by the article itself which reads just "As a central nervous system depressant, ethanol is one of the most commonly consumed psychoactive drugs." Recreational drug use is defined as "the use of a psychoactive drug to induce an altered state of consciousness for pleasure". In other words, it introduces a motivational element, and while it is undoubtedly true that that is the motivation for some drinkers of alcohol, no source is given to justify "most commonly consumed..." Are there reliable sources that address this issue? Davidships (talk) 23:24, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Section on toxicity is inadequate
The section on "safety" should give us more informations than is currently provided -- just like with any other chemical. Acute toxicity should be mentioned -- with risk of death -- not just the long-term risk. How much pure ethanol will lead to hospitalization or death? Are the fumes harmful? The given link to "alcohol and toxicity" is not sufficient because that article is about all alcohols (in the chemical sense), not specifically ethanol, and has little specific information. 84.226.214.17 (talk) 17:00, 28 September 2019 (UTC)


 * Incidentally I got interested in this because I inadvertently got started using 96% ethanol instead of 70% isopropyl alcohol for cleaning electronics and other things, and I wondered about the health effects. It seems "intuitively" obvious that ethanol is safer, but the fumes are nonetheless rather irritating at that concentration. 84.226.214.17 (talk) 17:16, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

"Alcare Hand Degermer" listed at Redirects for discussion
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Alcare Hand Degermer. The discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 April 16 until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Hog Farm Talk 06:17, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

Rubbing alcohol
Until recently, like maybe around 1995, "rubbing alcohol" (at least in the U.S.) typically referred to a solution of about 70% ethanol (denatured).

In fact, ethanol is still used as rubbing alcohol. This ought to be mentioned in the article.

Also, if anyone knows the reason that propanol has largely replaced ethanol for sale in pharmacies (at least in the U.S.), this is also worth mentioning in the article. 2601:200:C000:1A0:ED1E:1751:7048:7DE9 (talk) 06:09, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

IARC Group 1 carcinogens
That ingesting ethanol constitutes a health hazard to humans is undisputed, as reflected by its classification as a group 1 carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. To quote a recent source on the matter, a 2021 study published in the Lancet on July 13 titled “Global burden of cancer in 2020 attributable to alcohol consumption: a population-based study” supports the fact that alcoholic drinks, and specifically the molecule of ethanol and one of its metabolised byproducts acetaldehyde, are linked to multiple cancers of the oesophagus, liver, breast including under moderate drinking of less than one standard drink per day. This carcinogenic property of ethanol is briefly mentioned on two instances within the article, however it does not appear in the introductory table listing the properties of the molecule.

There are other languages whose linked article on ethanol lists an IARC classification alongside the other chemical properties of the substance. That it was left out on the anglophone Wikipedia appears deliberate. After reading through the debates that have been held on the talk pages of this article as well as derivative articles on alcoholic drinks, there even seems to be reserves on qualifying ethanol as a drug in the sense of a psychoactive substance highly susceptible of inducing addiction. The consensus of the World Health Organisation is to regard alcohol as the vector of a major public health crisis, as reflected in the 2010 “Global strategy to reduce the harmful use of alcohol”.

I recognise the paramount importance of preserving a neutral encyclopaedic tone throughout the website for all entries, regardless of their connotations. This article treats the substance of ethanol, rather than alcoholic drinks themselves. Nevertheless, it also mentions cancer, albeit very cursorily. Should the fact that consuming ethanol causes cancer appear more clearly on the table's list of properties in this article, as is the case on the same article in some other languages linked in the sidebar, or are other related articles the proper place for displaying this information? Philosopheress (talk) 17:18, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

Ethanol
What is the single O in the chemical formation 67.55.202.213 (talk) 12:44, 31 March 2022 (UTC)
 * An oxygen atom. DMacks (talk) 12:12, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

C₂H₆O copy-paste the 2 and 6 subscripts
When I tried to copy-paste C₂H₆O formula from Wikipedia I got C2H6O on my clipboard.

Perhaps if we copy from here: C₂H₆O this will be fixed?

ee1518 (talk) 10:45, 11 December 2022 (UTC)


 * It's true. Wikipedia's style-guide strongly instructs articles to use HTML markup to make subscripts and superscripts of regular text characters rather than using the the special Unicode subscript and superscript characters or the analogous HTML entities. See Manual of Style/Superscripts and subscripts. DMacks (talk) 12:12, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

Azeotrope
In section "Chemistry", sub-section "Solvent properties", there is the following sentence: "Mixtures of ethanol and water form an azeotrope at about 89 mole-% ethanol and 11 mole-% water or a mixture of 95.6% ethanol by mass (or about 97% alcohol by volume) at normal pressure, which boils at 351 K (78 °C). This azeotropic composition is strongly temperature- and pressure-dependent and vanishes at temperatures below 303 K". Now, to my knowledge, at temperatures below 303 K (30 °C) and at ambient pressure, the azeotrope water-ethanol does not vanish, but exists, with a composition of about 95% ethanol. In addition, in the web it is reported that the water-ethanol azeotrope disappears (100% ethanol) at pressures lower than about 70 torr. There is something that I cannot understand; or perhaps some data are incorrectly reported. Ekisbares (talk) 06:51, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

Flash Point
The table shows ethanol flash points in "Ethanol mass fraction, %". However, in at least the first two entries, they should be in mol% since the original source shows the values as molar fraction. See: https://docplayer.net/333993-Flash-point-determination-of-binary-mixtures-of-alcohols-ketones-and-water-p-j-martinez-e-rus-and-j-m-compana.html. Molar fraction is not the same as mass fraction. 2601:643:4300:4720:525:CEA9:38E3:9A67 (talk) 21:33, 20 December 2023 (UTC)