Distilling Naphtha from Car Degreaser

Naphtha is a very useful low boiling hydrocarbon solvent, usually containing carbon chains of C5-C10. Uses include: degreasing, dissolving wax, removing adhesives, thinning oil based paint, lighter fuel, spot cleaning and many others. In the United States, naphtha can easily be obtained as VM&P Naphtha (Varnish Makers' and Painters') or camping fuel. However, in China it is much more difficult to obtain, and therefore I will have to distill it from an OTC product which contains it. Luckily, while looking around I discovered this brand of car degreaser, for use before spray painting a car that contains between 50-75% of naphtha. This was therefore a great source for my purposes.

Here is a photo showing the ingredients in the can:

To translate, it contains by percentage:
Light hydrotreated naphtha: 50-75%
Xylene: 2.5-10%
Ethyl Acetate: 2.5-10%
Ethylbenzene: 1-2.5%

The boiling points are as follows:
Naphtha: 50-120°C
Xylene: ~140°C
Ethyl Acetate: 77.1°C
Ethylbenzene: 136°C

Therefore, because most components have a boiling point above that of the naphtha, it can be separated by simple distillation. Since I want to have a large reserve of naphtha, a 2L flask was used to process a 1L batch of the degreaser.

1L of Degreaser in Flask

Process Breakdown:
1. Heating was started and the mixture began to boil within a few minutes.
2. First drops of distillate made it over at a still-head temperature of 56°C.
3. The fraction boiling all the way up to 120°C was collected in one container.
4. Heating was stopped after this point and everything allowed to cool.
5. The yield was approximately 800ml, with 150ml left in the flask and 50ml lost due to evaporation.

Entire Distillation Setup

Conclusion:
The process went extremely smoothly and without any major issues. The process should have effectively separated the naphtha from the ethylbenzene and the xylene due to the large difference in boiling point, but it will not have separated the ethyl acetate much if at all, since its boiling point lies right in the middle of the collected fraction. However, since there was no noticeable pause at the boiling point of the ethyl acetate, and the product has no significant smell of the ester, it was likely present in the lower range of percentages, less than 5%. This is not a significant contamination for my intended purposes and thus no further purification was attempted.