acetone substitute

[tropicalbuilder]

hey guys ..
here in Costa Rica they don't sell acetone anymore, as it's a product used to process drug now by law it's not available anymore....

so for the one of us that use it for other purposes what's the solution?

I'm wondering expecially for cleaning and degreasing a surface before applying epoxi.

[david@boatsmith]

Denatured alcohol will clean a surface and wil alo clean up uncured epoxy

[Herman]

ammonia will be effective as well, dilute 10:1 with water. The surface to be epoxied should be water resistant, however. It also is a good solution to wash off amines off the cured epoxy.

For other purposes: Cleaning epoxy from tools can be done with vinegar.

[waikikin]

We used to use "cold power" washing powder with boiling water on consolidating rollers, didn't seem to work so well on brushes though

Interesting that they would disallow a chemical because a bad guy could use it. Why not disallow the bad guy? A little like making spoons illegal because some people are fat. It seems that, everywhere, we are refusing to hold people truly accountable for their actions and instead blaming environmental factors, the things around them, for what they do. Next, someone will drink the alcohol and they will make it illegal, make a bomb with vinegar and peroxide and make them illegal. What is this world coming to?..

[Landlubber]

What is this world coming to?..
__________________

...a place where we would rather be on the water, away from them all.......

seriously crazy isn't it......

Alas, yes.

[CDK]

Alternatives for acetone are Methyl-ethyl-ketone, trichlorethylene, tetrachlorethylene and thinners for cellulose based paints (containing toluene, xylol etc).

All of these are more or less hazardous to your health, like carcinogenic or plain poisonous.

A safe product for cleaning and degreasing is isopropylalcohol, like all alcohols it attracts moisture.

[tunnels]

Any one use a solvent recycler to recover your acetone ??:
The company i worked at a while back bought a small recycler that was a hot oil tank with a double thermostat controlled heater . Held a 20 liter container and a condencer unit like a whisky still would have . I was able to recycle 80 liters a day with about a 80 % recovery on quite dirty acetone and more than 90+%if the acetone wasnt go full of crap . Why you might ask ! Well we went through about 44 gallons in two or 3 days normally during a 5 1/2 day working week . Had 150 workers drawing off the supply , So over the course of a month was a sizable amount so when you can cut your bill by 80% for a month the machine paid for its self in just 2 months . The acetone that was out of the recycler was pure and not polluted with any other thinners or anything and was fantastic to use .
Its just heat and condense simple as that . Just have to kow what temprature to stay at when its working ,The heat band for the temprature is quite narrow, over you get other stuff, under you get something else .

For what were you using that much acetone?

[tunnels]

It was a glass shop and really busy making a lot of stuff . Boats and every thing for them plus industrial stuff as well . 6 chopper guns went 6 hours a day , a pallet of glass lasted a couple of days usually had 6 rolles laced together at the begining of a day and another fill up by lunch time if we were on a big job , bought gel coats in 225 kg drums Had no time to cut cores bought them in complete pre cut kits plus all the glass pre cut to shape and length for each side of the hull all in rolls on rolls and in order when packed , open and use !!
24 laminaters and we worked Glide time , Tea breaks and lunch could be anytime during the day , This method of self regulation of the workers doing what they wanted to do increased production so much the assembly staff had to be increased there trades people by another 30 extra staff to keep up with the extra production but we still only worked the same number of hours with the same number of staff .
So how was the increase in work and production achieved ?? Anyone answer that ??
Just to note we did not have any cleaners employed or any rubbish containers in the whole Glass shop but the place was spotless 75% of the time .

[War Whoop]

I built my own recovery units and would get @75% back if they were used everyday and the tool buckets were covered.

They sell lacquer thinner down there ,use the fast one?

Here you can see the acetone flow when I moved the catch can away from the condenser pipe this was a pump less condensing unit on a 25 liter boiler.

[Neil Marine]

Do you know where they got this unit from and if they had smaller units. I am currently looking for such a recovery unit.

Thanks

[ondarvr]

http://www.acetone-recycling.com/

[rwatson]

and of course the perennial Vinegar.

I heard about it in these forums, and was very pleased to see how well it worked