Chemical Engineering in Daily Life – Question 58: Is it effective to drink vinegar when drinking too much?
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This post was last edited by yjqin1 on 2015-8-30 at 14:46. While doing some deep cleaning over the weekend, I saw a box of Hengshui Lao Baigan sent by a local leader, and that led to an idea for a question. If, on some occasion, you are forced to drink 8 liang of Lao Baigan (with 57% alcohol content), then according to some people’s experience, when you get home you should drink a bottle of aged vinegar first, in order to prevent your wife from getting jealous (she might be jealous because you’re about to go see someone else). Aged vinegar, fragrant vinegar, or Zhejiang vinegar will all do. From the perspective of a chemist or chemical engineer, the basic chemical components of the liquid in the stomach are as follows: 10-30% ethanol in water, with an acetic acid concentration of around 3%; the temperature is 37.5 degrees, and the pH value is 1.0 (the salt and acid concentrations in the stomach maintain a pH level of around 1.0). Assume that under these conditions, ethanol and acetic acid produce ethyl acetate under salt-acid catalysis. What will be the conversion rate of ethanol in half an hour? In 1 hour, then? In 2 hours, then? After 4 hours, then? As a professional in chemistry and chemical engineering, you should already have the answer, right?
There’s salt in the stomach; the sound of acid is scary------------------------------------- This speed isn’t fast; there are also cases of hangovers from the previous day
This is too complicated; there are various tubes inside the abdomen that lead to different places – some for detoxification, some for elimination, some for reactions and digestion, and some for exhalation. It’s difficult to calculate
There are reactions inside the abdomen, and the human organs also have the capacity to process things.
There are also various enzymes in the body that directly oxidize ethanol
The problem is: 1. Drinking too much alcohol results in too high an ethanol level in the body (at least in the stomach). The ethanol concentration is high, and ethanol itself is harmful to the body ； 2. The problem lies in the presence of enzymes in the body, especially those that catalyze the oxidation of ethanol to acetaldehyde; the toxicity of the intermediate product acetaldehyde is much greater than that of ethanol. Therefore, some smart people started by reducing the substrate for the enzymatic oxidation of ethanol, aiming to convert ethanol into ethyl acetate first in order to slow things down. This question is aimed at such ideas and even practices, and it explores them from the perspective of esterification reaction kinetics; or to put it more simply, would that work?
I know this conversion rate. PS: I’m still looking forward to the release of this answer, study*study*
Based on my own personal experience, I can tell you that all theoretical calculations are nonsense; drinking too much just makes you feel bad, and nothing else helps
I wonder too if this will work
It seems this netizen’s hangover hasn’t gone away yet :P Those who post on chemical engineering forums should be professionals, at least front-line workers in chemical plants; surely they can’t think that all theoretical calculations are nonsense. Such words are more fitting to come from a person of the Great Qing Dynasty. The theoretical calculations I asked you to do were meant to show you that trying to use jealousy as a way to sober up after drinking too much is nonsense.