Topic: Detect and/or Destroy Methanol in Water?

[Pinhead]

Long story short, I've acquired a few thousand feet of plastic pipe that used to have a mixture of methanol and water running through it. The methanol was used as an antifreeze beneath an ice rink (the MSDS states it is pure methanol and nothing else). I realize that the porous plastic pipe will have absorbed small amounts of methanol over the years, which will "leech" into the water.

I would like to run this pipe to our corrals and stock tanks so we can get water to horses and cattle. However, methanol is pretty toxic.

Since methanol is readily soluble in water, I am hoping I will be able to "flush" the pipe to get the mixture dilute enough to be safe. However, I won't KNOW if it's dilute enough without testing the water somehow. Does anyone know of any way to detect methanol in water??

If I can't easily and readily detect the methanol, what would be a good way to destroy the methanol in the pipe? I would suppose there is SOMETHING that I could flush the pipe with that would destroy the methanol and not leave toxic byproducts in the pipe. Any ideas there?

[BobbyR]

Methanol is probably gone. It is so volatile it has evaporated by now.

[Pinhead]

That's what I would have assumed as well... But what about leeching into and out of the plastic pipe?

[Duke McDukiedook]

It would have gassed out by now also.

[razor02097]

Your going to have to flush the pipes anyway after you install wouldn't you?  I would have to agree that if it was indeed pure methanol it would have evaporated by now.

[BobbyR]

Here ya go:

Methanol is readily biodegradable in both aerobic (oxygen present) and anaerobic (oxygen absent) environments. Methanol will not persist in the environment. The "half-life" for methanol in groundwater is just one to seven days, while many common gasoline components have half-lives in the hundreds of days (such as benzene at 10–730 days). Since methanol is miscible with water and biodegradable, methanol is unlikely to accumulate in groundwater, surface water, air or soil. (Reference: Evaluation of the Fate and Transport of Methanol in the Environment, Malcolm Pirnie, January 1999).

[Don R]

  I have a friend who raced on methanol and used some left over at the end of a season to kill weeds, it didn't even kill weeds.