Detect and/or Destroy Methanol in Water?

Yep. Dosage is everything.

Soak it for a few days, flush it out and repeat.

There are small amounts of methanol in red wine. Around 200 ppm.

If you are really keen, you can pay a couple of hundred dollars to a lab who do wine analyses and get a methanol analysis done.

But don't get too carried away with the the horror stories on msds sheets. Your horses are unlikely to get exposed to damaging doses. The drinking troughs will be exposed to the air as well, so any traces of methanol will tend to dissipate to the air.

I'll probably use automotive antifreeze in the heat exchanger due to availability and cost. The stock water will not be treated in any way, as it is safe rural tap water. The tanks themselves are usually pretty dirty by our water standards, though they're much cleaner than the creeks and ponds that the horses and cattle are used to drinking out of.

Solvents diffuse slowly into polymers, and diffuse slowly out again, so you can't get rid of it quickly without destroying the pipe. If you cap the ends of a length of pipe for a few days, and then sniff the air inside, you may or may not smell methanol. If you don't smell it, the pipe is okay. If you can pump air through the pipe, perhaps by leaving a stack of it out in the wind, it might remove more of the methanol. The warmer the temperature, the faster this will happen.

Methanol isn't so toxic that a trace of it will kill your animals. It takes about four ounces to kill or blind a human being, which is a lot compared with other poisons. IT doesn't accumulate in the body either.

Methanol isn't that simple to detect in water, because there are always other organic compounds that will interfere with simple measurements. Normally, compounds like methanol would be absorbed from large volumes of water into beads of a polymer and then separated using gas chromatography, which is time consuming and expensive.

Dangerous Bill

The permeation of PVC pipe to methanol is less than 100 ppm per year. Don't worry to much for your project. And if you want to flush it out - go to the hot water temp. specs and pressure flow it out. Methanol will smell in water, but evaporates easy with higher temp.

If you stir the water methanol will decrease foaming.

Methanol is toxic to most biological systems. Use fresh pipe for the livestock watering project.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanol

The lethal dose of pure methanol is estimates to be 1-2 mL/kg (Jacobsen 1986); however, permanent blindness and death have been reported with as little as 0.1 mL/kg (6-10 mL in adults) (ATSDR 1993).

taken from link below

http://www.antizol.com/mpoisono.htm

http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=105655

http://safety-council.org/workplace-safety/methanol/

Effects of Methanol Poisoning

As little as four milliliters can cause blindness and 80 to 150 milliliters can be fatal; about half a milliliter per kilogram of weight is deadly.

Drinking methanol causes effects similar to common alcohol, such as an upset stomach and dizziness, with the addition of pronounced vision problems. After these effects disappear, they reappear six to 30 hours later, only with much greater severity. severe symptoms tend to appear 18 to 24 hours after consumption. the relapse time makes it imperative to seek medical help as soon as possible.

The most seriously poisoned lose consciousness and die of respiratory or heart failure. those who do not die may stay in a coma for as long as a week and may be left blinded.

taken from this link http://safety-council.org/workplace-safety/methanol/

http://www.wrongdiagnosis.com/m/methanol_poisoning/intro.htm

How to test for methanol

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=how+to+test+for++methanol+&sourceid=ie7&rls=com.microsoft:en-gb:IE-SearchBox&ie=&oe=&redir_esc=&ei=8TXZS5-gFJj60wSRmM1R

information on methanol

http://www.hpa.org.uk/web/HPAwebFile/HPAweb_C/1194947310643

The Methanol Institute (MI) today released a Methanol Safe Handling Manual to be shared across the global methanol distribution chain to increase awareness of the chemical and promote safe handing in order to protect workers, consumers, and the environment. This manual will be accessible to everyone who comes into contact with methanol, from research engineers to shipping managers, from tank truck drivers to plant operators and will be available throughout the world. The manual will also be a valuable resource for emergency first responders looking for information on the physical properties of methanol and incident management.

Taken from

http://www.biodieselmagazine.com/article.jsp?article_id=3591

See if a standard police breathalyzer will detect methanol. They are made to detect ethanol, but may work with both.

Yes it will

I used a cheap breathalyzer to determine when biodiesel had been dryed [methanol removed] enough for sale

make sure to but one that doesn't require positive pressure [blowing into it] to detect

the cost is around $30

I've found really cheap breathalyzers on the 'net for $4 to $5... Are these generally accurate enough for this basically one-time use?