An Australian teenager has died after drinking tainted alcohol in Laos in what Australia’s prime minister on Thursday called every parent’s nightmare. An American and two Danish tourists also died, officials said, following reports that several people had been sickened in a Laotian town popular with backpackers.
Industrial ethanol? It is still just ethanol. It is not more poisonous because it is “industrial”.
When referring to “industrial alcohol” it always means methanol in that context.
And for industrial purposes fermentation is still the way to make ethanol, rather than chemical synthesis.
Finally, what is denatured alcohol even supposed to mean? Proteins can denature, but they are complex molecules. Alcohol cannot denature.
I am sorry, but what you write does not make any sense.
By industrial alcohol, I meant ethanol intended for industrial purposes. And while it’s just as safe as alcohol intended for human consumption it’s usually much cheaper.
I looked in your profile and noticed some comments in German, so I guess this is how I find out “denatured alcohol” is a US centric term. In the United States denatured alcohol is a term for a high concentration ethanol mixed with enough methanol to make it poisonous (and maybe a few other things to make it even more unpalatable). It’s usually used for fuel or a solvent. Just throw “denatured alcohol” into the search engine of your choice and it should spit out a few examples.
Denatured ethanol has denatonium benzoate in it, yes it’s a strange word which I suspect primarily serves a legislative purpose. If it had been denatured alcohol, nobody would have died, it would have just tasted bitter.
Still what he said doesnt make sense as the compound is added specificqlly to make the ethanol undrinkable and therefore not eligble for alcohol taxes like you said.
Not disputing that, they have clearly muddled a few things up. Perhaps they mean methylated spirit - that has methanol and denatonium benzoate added to it, but I haven’t seen it for sale in many years as it kept killing homeless alcoholics.