Expert: Henry Boyter - 4/29/2004

Question
HI!  My name is James Rogers.  I am a haz mat technician with the Sedgwick County Fire Dept Haz Mat Team.  We recently had a call that involved Petroleum Ether.  In haz mat, we are trained to treat old containers of ether as potential bombs.  But it turns out that petroleum ether is not a true ether.  Can you tell me how it got its name?  Does it have an IUPAC name now?  
Respectfully,
James Rogers

Answer
The term ether just means volatile, from the Greek work for ignite.  Since ether is a mixture like gasoline,kerosene,  or Stoddard solvent, it has many IUPAC names. The mixture will depend on the boiling range.


From the website

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/sci/chem-faq/part6/section-1.html



27.4  What is petroleum ether?.

Petroleum ether ( aka petroleum spirits ) is a narrow alkane hydrocarbon
distillate fraction from crude oil. The names "ether" and "spirit" refer
to the very volatile nature of the solvent, and petroleum ether does not
have the ether ( Cx-O-Cy ) linkage, but solely consists of hydrocarbons.
Petroleum ethers are defined by their boiling range, and that is typically
20C. Typical fractions are 20-40C, 40-60C, 60-80C, 80-100C, 100-120C etc.
up to 200C. There are specially refined grades that have any aromatic
hydrocarbons removed, and there are specially named grades, eg pentane
fraction (30-40C), hexane fraction (60-80C, 67-70C). It is important to
note that most "hexane" fractions are mixtures of hydrocarbons, and pure
normal hexane is usually described as "n-hexane".