Will a Kettle Full Of Alcohol Stay On Forever?

I wonder if it’s part of the safety mechanism for if the kettle is dry

Auto witch off by steam air–push when boiled,.

My prediction before watching is no, it'll turn off, simply because at 7500 feet my kettle stops when it gets stuck at 203F (boiling at this altitude), indicating that there is some kind of failsafe.

You can't get ethanol from distillation above about 96%, although other methods can get you pure ethanol, it's probably not what you're getting off the chemist/drugstore shelves -- that type of purity is in the realm of industrial and chemical suppliers.

Man boils vodka and goes crazy over kettles and how they work

It's an energy flow problem with the white kettle. The amount of heat being dumped into the liquid is a constant rate, and whilst the ethanol is a lower temp it has a lower delta t than the heat exchange, thus facilitating faster heat transfer.

As the temperature of the ethanol increases the delta t decreases, reducing the heat transfer whilst the amount of heat being added to the system remains constant. The extra heat then would automatically be transferred through conduction into the sensor, which would detect the anomalous heat build up within the kettle. I imagine this is a fail safe in case the tube leading to the bimetallic strip fails for whatever reason.

Breathing that in is a great way to get drunk fast with no vomiting.

I thought the original design of a kettle was based on the pressure of the vapour exiting the spout. Once enough vapour is forcing it's way out of the spout, it pushes a switch that's hidden in there to turn it off. So no matter what liquid you put in there, as long as it's boiling, it would turn the kettle off.

I will admit that's an old design, so I'm not surprised most manufacturers have moved beyond it, but I've never heard of a kettle literally working off temperature and expecting to hit 100°C

Theory, the temperature of the liquid in the kettle is not what triggers the kettle turning off. It is the temperature of the thermometer in the kettle that matters, so even if the alcohol never reaches 100 degrees, the thermometer can still reach that temperature, and the kettle turns off. That seems pretty intuitive to me, but I going to see what is in the rest of the video. I'm writing this comment at 4 minutes in.
Edit: I was only partly correct, though I assume there may be other types of kettles that work the way I explained.

imagine the number of alcoholics in the area that raised their heads like hunting dogs and tried to sense where the smell of boiling vodka was coming from

Alternative title - Steve trying and failing to understand how kettles work

I knew alcohol had a lower freezing point, so I assumed it had a higher boiling point. Obviously wrong, but is the intuition sensible? Perhaps not haha

I thought the kettle shuts off when the vapor is deteckted

They say you always learn more being wrong. I enjoyed the journey from hypothesis to summary. Cheers 🍻

My idea would be that the underlying plate recieves much higher temperature than the alcohol above it thats why the sensor shuts it off prematurely. Just my take on the 2nd kettle tho. For the first one i still havent the slightest idea since it didnt boil and it shut off😕

I like his videos, but he is stretching out a video beyond what is important. And solute dissolved in a solvent will come to the temperature of a solvent. Furthermore EtOH and H2O hydrogen bond. Therefore the temperature for boiling point is greatly increased. EtOH boils before it’s H2O solvent, so the solute boils off as the solute reaches appropriate temperature…

In the beginning of the video he basically just discovered distillation. I had expected the white kettle to work by measuring the change in temperature over time and to shut off when the temperature stays consistent at boiling. But I suppose the physical nature of the metal disc is more reliable and therefore safer than additional electronics.

Americans thinking now: Only the British can "happen to have" two separate kettles at home.
But they are wrong. I'm not British, but also have two kettles and an immersion heater at home. 😄

I bought a kettle with no filter in place at the spout. It didn't turn off. I took it back to the shop, and after found the filter in the plastic bag. The next one turned off, so I removed the little filter and it didn't switch off. I realised the first kettle was alright, just put together wrongly. So it was the pressure inside that switched it off.

No.

Just starting the video, but my understanding is many kettles run on pressure not temperature - precisely because they would be dangerous at high altitude otherwise.

Another thermal switch is inside the the handle of the white kettle.

God the taste of tea from that kettle is gonna be rancid.

little confused at the "how boiling works" bit because I have definitely heard its possible to get liquid water to temperatures above 100C, the last place I heard this was in a game called "steam engine simulator" where the dev makes a note explicitly saying believe me its possible to get liquid water above 100C maybe it has something to do with the pressure dynamics or something? i doubt that you aren't both right in some way.

If it works via steam pressure, then it will turn off.
If it works by measuring temperature, then it will not turn off until all of the alcohol has evaporated.

Wow. I am in the same "wrong" boat.

In my first college chemistry class we did this with mixed liquids. and separating and identifying them. If you raise the temp slow enough with control, you can catch the temp plateau for each chemical in the liquid and collect and recondense the liquids to see what ya got.

"Latent heat" is the term you're looking for. It's how your refrigerator or air con works.

My kettle never turns off if I keep the lid off. It's great for making steap to clear up my sinuses when they clog.

If I were to design a kettle with a sensor, I would be trying to measure the derivative of the temperature over time, not the temperature itself.
Once the sensor measures zero (ie: the temperature is stable) then it will turn off. That would mean that it will work for any liquid.
Even with something like Peanut Oil, with a boiling temperature of 230c: suppose the heating element is only able to heat the liquid to 200c, it will then reach a stable temp at that time, well below boiling, and the kettle will switch off.

That's not pure alcohol

I have some probable solution in the unlikely case it is not solved by now.
Gas is usually not a good heat conductor, while liquid is, and the switches, don't really shut down by the liquid temperature but the heating plate temperature.

Now if the liquid is not boiling it has full contact and cools the heating plate down, now if it gets hot enough to boil the liquid, the liquid itself is still well below boiling temperature but the liquid directly touching the plate reaches this boiling temperature and changes its state.
And now this now gas isolates the plate a bit, and if the boiling increases the plate gets more and more isolated and goes quite a lot over that boiling temperature and throws the switch.

And because of that the kettle turns of regardless of the boiling point of the liquid (high boiling point liquids will take longer though). And this will also throw the switch faster if the boiling point is lower.

that's why when you keep the kettle lid open, it never stops working

Try to turn it on without water or any liquid, that's maybe why it is thermally coupled

I always think that kettles turn off when the temperature cease to increase, because of the same argument of boiling water in high altitudes. I lived a couple of years in La Paz Bolivia mora than 3000 m over sea level, anyway I never actually understand how that kind of mechanism could be done 🤔

I came to learn chemestry

Left with the knowledge of engineering

This video begs for a collab with Technology Connections

Being wrong is most of science.

I was right and Steve Mould was wrong. I'm better design engineer than Steve Mould.

😮‍💨

It’s illegal to make a still buddy.

My kettle turns off by detecting water vapor.

Why the fuck would a kettle full of alcohol not turn off

Being wrong is a big part of science, but the stuff you learn from being wrong makes up for it!

ruzzian shit

My understanding is that Ethanol burns clear. You only see the heat wave dispersion.

My non-scientific brain ran away with the idea that the sensor underneath was able to pick up and discern the vibrations of the boiling liquids, whichever they were . Would that be possible ?

the difference in specific heat was my initial guess when the first one didn't work, but wow the steam-sensitive design is so clever and efficient !