Alcohol/surgical spirit?

[Gasman]

Hi guys
Been watching a few of Oliver’s YouTube’s and he mentions using pure alcohol to prepare samples but here in the UK a search for alcohol (apart from the stuff you drink) just throws up isopropyl alcohol or surgical spirit. Is it ok to use surgical spirit in place of alcohol when trying out the methods shown?.
Thanks
Steve

[BramHuntingNematodes]

Don't they call it methylated spirits over there?

[mrsonchus]

Hi, for all stages involving alcohol I use isopropanol - purchased a '99.99% pure' etc - actually it's about 95%. This is easily pure enough to be considered and used as 'pure' alcohol for all tasks.
I've been using it for 5 years+ now for plant histology, including all stages of dehydration and even as an antemedium pre wax-infiltration - it is perfect. It's impossible to buy pure ethanol in the U.K. as a private individual, probably because it's possible to mix your own spirits with it! Isopropanol on the other hand will kill you if you drink it.

I usually buy 5L plastic containers of it from a company called shiny hardware - be aware though that at present the cost of isopropanol has at least doubled, often trebled, it being an ingredient of sanitisers especially for those mixing and maybe selling their own at this time?
It is 'usually' about £17 for 5L, but now - well, a search on e-bay or Amazon will tell you the bad news....

In fact this link suggests that it's unavailable at the moment, fron SHL at least.....

[Gasman]

Excellent thanks for the info guys!
Steve

[MichaelG.]

... Is it ok to use surgical spirit in place of alcohol when trying out the methods shown?.

As John says, near-pure Isopropanol is usually the best choice.
Here’s a Material Safety Data Sheet for one brand of ‘Surgical Spirit’
https://jmloveridge.com/wp-content/uplo ... ion-06.pdf
... check the ingredients

MichaelG.

.

P.S. ___ Regarding Isopropanol: There are two excellent documents available for download, here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... management
It’s quite refreshing to see useful information so clearly presented.

[MicroBob]

Here in Germany "Brennspiritus", ethanol with badly tasting substances added, is sold everywhere. It contains 96% to 98% of ethanol. The different brands smell very differently depending on the type of chemical that is added. The better version can be used for many microscopy recipes. There is an even better (but still not drinking quality) ethanol available for technical purposes that in usually not sold to individuals. In the pharmacy you can buy pure alcohol but this is quite costly as it is taxed like drinking alcohol.
Many recipes can probably be mixed with ethanol, isopropanol ot methanol, but are just formulated with the ingredient the inventor had at hand. I use isopropanol (cheap "99,9%" ) and technical ethanol depending on what I do.

Bob

[Leitzcycler]

Isopropanol works fine. It is also usable in molecular biology instead of ethanol e.g. in DNA precipitation and plasmid prep kits.

For histology: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14534624/