Steve Mould Instagram – If you boil alcohol in an electric kettle, will it ever turn itself off?
Electric kettles turn off automatically when water reaches boiling point. But alcohol has a lower boiling point than water. So theoretically, you may think the mechanism that turns the kettle off automatically will never kick in because it’s based on temperature. Let’s look into this.
I tried putting vodka in a kettle. Vodka is about 40% ethanol and 60% water. Water’s boiling point is 100 Degrees Celsius and Ethanol’s boiling point is 78 Degrees Celsius. The mixture has a boiling point at about 83 Degrees Celsius.
When a mix of water and ethanol boils, the concentration of ethanol in the liquid goes down and is getting closer to pure water so the boiling point gets closer to 100c. The concentration then reaches a point that turns the kettle off.
Now let’s try this with pure alcohol or more like 99% ethanol. The boiling point of ethanol is 78c, but the kettle still turns off. How does this happen?
When You boil a liquid you can’t physically get it to reach a hotter temperature, the energy goes into turning that liquid to gas. The electric kettle detects the presence of boiling liquid not based on its temperature. The vapour produced by a boiling liquid creates pressure to force vapour through the tube to the bio metallic strip that turns the kettle off. | Posted on 16/Apr/2024 21:36:18
