Some un-denatured azeotropic ethanol (wouldn't drink it mind you, diluted or otherwise to be on the safe side and because I don't much enjoy being drunk in the first place, but the label is mostly in russian, and I just about know enough to figure out whats in there, after a little confusion because the stuff looked bright orange, but its the bottle itself thats colored, not the 95% EtOH inside.)
cost about 20 euros. Still need to wait for some quicklime and some calcium carbide to dry it properly (its for a beaveault-blanc reduction, which uses sodium metal in anhydrous ethanol to reduce various compounds, in this case a ketoxime to the corresponding primary amine) and it needs to be very, very dry, drying over a conventional dessicant first to avoid the potentially violent heating associated with calcium oxide (quicklime) hydrating, followed by distillation w/drying tubes of CaCl2 anywhere the system is open to the air, and finally a second stage of redistillation of the collected distillate after reflux over calcium carbide, which reacts with water to generate acetylene gas, followed by sparging with dry argon, or perhaps putting it under vacuum for a short time. Or both, to get the acetylene out such as might be dissolved in the EtOH)
Quite a handy way to do it since acetylene is gaseous and as such the decomposition products that have any volatility can be driven off before the result is finally distilled once again to free it from the calcium salts left by the decomposition of the CaC2. The alternative for the very last bit of drying to be to sacrifice a little of the alcohol and some sodium, forming sodium ethoxide (not without its own uses) and distilling from a few chips of Na. The carbide method is cheaper though since CaC2 is far cheaper than sodium metal and none of the alcohol being dried is consumed in the process.
Bought 250ml 2-pyrrollidone, 2.5 liters of THF, 2 new 1l erlenmeyer flasks (24/40 joint size) and quite a few other bits and pieces.
