Hi fellows,

I'd like to recycle my NPS and I'm planning to buy myself a small distillation unit. Do you think that this kind of tool will do the job?
If yes, can someone explain to me the way to perform efficiently the distillation? Is that really that simple: warm the used NPS and recover the clean distillate?

I have no experience with distillation, so I cannot recommend any specific setup.

Other than the obvious choice of Chinese glassware (AliExpress, eBay), with its hit or miss quality, if you live in Europe, I can recommend this Dutch store selling second-hand glassware. They have brand name glassware for a fraction of the retail price.

The set up pictured has a spirit burner for heating the flask. Using a naked flame of incandescent material is a huge no-no for heating flammable solvents - you would need to get a hotplate (preferably with magnetic stirrer function) or a heating mantle for safe heating of combustible solvents. At a push you could rig up some kind of water bath or sand bath - but again, absolutely no naked flames.

By the looks of it you'd need a thermometer or thermocouple to put in the top of the still head above the distillation flask depicted. The other thing the set up requires is some means of circulating solvent through the cooling jacket of the condenser. To save water you would best rig up an aquarium water pump with some tubing and a small tank of water which is cooled by adding ice packs. If you're feeling fancy a wort chiller would be a 'cool' addition as well.

Most of all, safety is absolutely paramount so familiarise yourself with the correct procedures by diligent amounts of background reading. Try looking on some of the home distillation forums for tips and ideas (if you're handy with copperwork, building your own still is a nice thing to do).

Your first distillation should be of water only. Then you might want to progress onto fractional distillation of white wine to produce grappa. If you don't blow yourself up you should then be fit to have a go at purifying used naphtha.

One thing to watch out for is residual DMT co-distilling with heavy naphtha, should there happen to be an appreciable heavy component in your mix. This can be avoided, of course, by washing the naphtha with vinegar a couple of times and then once with sodium carbonate solution before distilling.

Oh, and if you're considering distilling limonene then steam distillation would be a good idea. This would require a few more bits and pieces but that would be money well spent. It would open up possibilities of producing essential oils from plant material.

Thanks M4estr0, I took a look on the website that you recommend and indeed, that is pretty interesting.

Downwardsfromzero, thank you very much for your answer.
I was not aiming to use a spirit burner, as I already own a hotplate with magnetic stirrer !
I'll follow your advice and start from water distillation till I get the hand before trying with solvent.
You're right my first goal was to distillate D limonene, but learning the basics of distillation also sounds really exiting to me! Even if I'm still a newbie, I learnt more about chemistry since I pay interest to DMT than during all my school years. And I find it fascinating, despite my weak level!