Solving The Super Weird Chemical Mystery Of Powdered Alcohol Drinks

Lots of ink is spilling and hands are wringing over the government approval of powdered alcohol drinks Palcohol and if you paid attention in chemistry class, you might feel something sounds wrong. I dont mean wrong in some societal way involving drunken minors. I mean that something sounds scientifically and chemically amiss.

Heres NPRs Michaeleen Doucleff:

The idea behind Palcohol is simple: dehydrated vodka or rum inside a little air-tight package.

Tear open the package, sprinkle the powder into tonic water and voila! Youve got a vodka tonic with an alcohol concentration about the same as a regular cocktail (about 20 proof but the exact alcohol concentration will depend on how much liquid you add).

In other words, its like an adult version of Kool Aid or Country Time Lemonade.

Walter White wouldnt believe this. In fact anyone with any recollection of middle school chemistry might suspect this explanation is too simple. If you take all the water from vodka you would be left with mostly ethanol, which is a liquid. At least, its liquid until you get down below about -114 degrees C. It was cold in New England this winter but not that cold. If you were going to make vodka into a powder that way youd need a solid.

Mr Higgs Says: The alcoholic ice cream idea could work. Make mine a double scoop

The key point here is that ethanol is not water with stuff dissolved in it. Its a compound in its own right with its own chemical composition. CH3CH2OH.

Now you may notice there are enough hydrogen and oxygen atoms in ethanol to add up to a molecule of water, so in theory there might be a reaction that removes a molecule of water from each molecule of ethanol. Not that this would be easy, since were talking about chemical bonds being broken. But there are chemistry sites, such as this one, that explain how, indeed, ethanol can be dehydrated by heating it with concentrated sulphuric acid. You end up with ethene, which is also known as ethylene.

There are multiple problems with this. Even if you go to all that trouble (dont try it at home) ethene is not a solid substance that can be turned into a powder: Its apparently a hydrocarbon, which comes in the form of a colorless, flammable gas. Youre not going to be sneaking a tank of that into a club and turning it into an instant daiquiri. This raises the question: How is Palcohol really made?

See more here:
Solving The Super Weird Chemical Mystery Of Powdered Alcohol Drinks