My (very unreliable) school textbook tells me:
Lower alcohols form a solid derivative with certain metal salts.
and,
It is for this reason that ethanol cannot be dried/concentrated using anhydrous calcium chloride.
Nowhere else in the book, is there any reference to this supposed reaction between a lower alcohol (ethanol) and a metal salt (calcium chloride). So I couldn't read more about this from there...
Googling wasn't much help; though I did find this paper that seems to concur with my textbook (albeit, with more detail) ... the paper is dated all the way back to 1923, so I suspect the modern Chemist's view of the matter would be different (the paper makes use of the term "alcoholate", which no longer carries the same meaning).
Question:
Does ethanol really react with calcium chloride to form some "solid derivative"?
Additionally,
Do lower alcohols (methanol and ethanol to name a few) really react with "metal salts" (textbook didn't specify, so i would use the following examples: copper sulfate and magnesium chloride)?