Can I double the acetic acid percent of vinegar by boiling it?

Question

I'm using the vinegar to try to remove a mole and want stronger acid to make it work faster.

I tried evaporating the water by leaving the cap off the vinegar bottle, but after 3 days the vinegar is at the same level as when I started! So now I want to try boiling it. Will this work? Will it harm my plastic electric kettle that seems to have a teflon coated heating element? Thanks.

Answer 1

Acetic acid boils at 118 degrees C, so as long as you keep the temperature below (100 degrees C would work) you should be alright. I dunno how great an idea it is though with removing a mole, but that's not my field.

Answer 2

Vinegar is an aqueous solution of acetic acid in water. By selective distillation (not simple boiling) you will be able to effect some degree of separation of the two.

However, acetic acid has a boiling point of 118C, somewhat higher than water. As such, attempts to separate it from solution with water by boiling are difficult, since both boil off together (look up "azeotrope").

In fact, there are patents that deal with exactly this problem:
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5167774.html

Also, see a DOCTOR about the mole. Seriously.

Done.

Answer 3

Why don't you just go out and buy mole-removal medicine? I imagine that you can boil off some water, but the amount of water to boil can be very high. For example, if you had 50 cc of 5% HOAc (the usual vinegar), you would have to boil off half the water to raise the HOAc level to 10 percent.

Answer 4

HC2H3O2 = acetic acid = 60g/mole 60 g/mole x 0.78moles/L = 46.8g/L 46.8g / 1000ml x 100% = 4.68%

Answer 5

Yes, you can by fractionate distillation not by simply boiling it. But to remove the mole I would rather go for Scholl mole removal cream (pharmacy or drugstore). It is much less adventurous but safe and easy. Good luck!