Hey,
I used Q21Q21 naphtha tek initially, it seemed quite attractive in using only food-safe substrates (apart from naphtha).
1. 100 g MHRB from a reputable source (people reporting 2% yields in comments there).
2. Added 100 ml 5% white vinegar + 100 ml hot water; let it sit for an hour stirring occasionally.
3. I then added 75 g CaOH, and left the mix for 1 hour or so.
4. Then added 100 ml naphtha, but almost all of it disappeared into the mix, with no separation. Maybe I might've mixed too fast?
5. I read that for the mix to separate I need to add more base and salt (but this was for wet STB and A/B teks...). So I added more CaOH, and around 100 g of salt.
6. Obviously it didn't cause the mix to separate... So then I decided to evaporate all the water and naphtha in a pan, the mix got very dry.
7. I added some water to make it crumbly again.
8. And then another 100 ml of naphtha, this time stirring slowly.
9. It didn't freeze-precipitate a lot… maybe 100 mg (0.1%) after 3 such pulls.
So something was off...
9. I decided to turn it into a STB tek, looking at Noman's wiki instructions.
10. I added 1500 ml of water and 100 g of proper lye (NaOH).
11. Let it sit for 2 days, some old naphtha emerged as a top layer.
12. I then proceeded to pull with new naphtha, this time getting another 300 mg.
13. And then, the next day, another 200 mg (albeit yellow).
14. And then some more…
15. After re-crystallization, there's 765 mg total of white powder.
So this is 0.77% total yield so far.
16. I tried adding more lye, more salt... But now only very-very small amounts of yellow fats are pulled (even at 60°C). Almost unnoticeable. I even evapped all the solvent to see, but there's nothing inside.
The final mix is:
* 100 g MHRB
* 100 ml 5% white vinegar
* 230 g lime (Ca(OH)₂)
* 320 g salt (NaCl, non-iodised, no anti-caking agents)
* 520 g lye (NaOH — I know… a lot… that’s not a typo)
* 1600 ml distilled water
… minus 765 mg of extracted pure white crystals, and some yellow fats.
So can anything more be done to it? More salt perhaps?
Halp... and thank you all!
P.S. Next time I’ll just use Cyb's "MAX ION" tek... ^.^