I was at a friwends house recently when he was about finished processing and starting his menthaol recovery. When he first turned the heat off, temp was around 145 or so,the liquid started flowing out the bottom of the condenser at a good clip, it was so good a flow we both looked at each other an wondered. How do you know for sure it's methanol that's coming out??? He has a rig for a condenser and I wondered if he had a water leak from the 2" pvc going into the copper crimped tubing inside it. To make this short and to the question, how can you tell this is methanol??? How much does methanol weigh as opposed to water???

I think folks test with a hydrometer used for booze brewing.

Pure methanol has a specific gravity of 0.7913 kg/l and weighs right at 6.6 pounds per gallon.

By comparison, water weighs 8.3 pounds per gallon. One liter of water weighs one kilogram.

HTH,

troy

With that said methanol weighs 791.3 grams/liter.

If your clever you can tell from the weight of your results what percentage of methanol you have. Assuming water is the only other component.

Bob