Collected the steamer from my parents. The base is made from polypropylene so that should be fine for use with acetone. I can’t find what material the trays are made from. One problem might be that the liquid (acetone) needs to be put right against the heating element which I assume rockets way over 100°C. The boiling point of acetone is < 60°C so that’s causing some concern about flash fire and the end of the world scenarios in my shed.
I am wondering if I can steam a tray of acetone and suspend the acetone in water vapour.
Any suggestions? I am willing test anything just to see what happens.
Safety Note: I will be performing all testing OUTSIDE whilst wearing fire protective clothing and with a fire extinguisher close by.
I’d be inclined to put a temperature control loop around the whole works. Put a thermocouple in the acetone bath with an arduino monitoring it and switch the mains supply to the steamer using a relay. Look at some of the sous vide rigs people are building with arduinos and crock pots.
Acetone vapor autoignites at something like 400 degrees C, so I wouldn’t worry about that too much. I still think this looks remarkably like the deep fryer solution (http://solidoodletips.wordpress.com/2012/11/10/presto-part-finisher/), so it should work just fine.
Hot acetone will probably attack many materials that cold acetone won’t; I know that heated isopropyl alcohol acts that way. Putting a lid over the acetone container and leaving the steamer lid cracked would help to some extent.
On an unrelated note, I thought you had a knockoff of a T-Fal product - but it turns out that Tefal spells their name differently in the US.
