Hey guys, I've been a long time follower on the nexus and really love the site and community from the outside. Glad to now join in. Anyways Ill give a more detailed introduction later, for now SWIM has a question.
SWIM is doing his first extraction, and he is doing a very simple STB tek. But something interesting has occured and im not sure what to make of it. SWIM has a jar with everything normal (Water/lye/MHRB) mixture at bottom and the layer of naptha has separated yellowish at the top. But there is a very thin layer of the dark base(water/lye/MHRB) mixture on top of the naptha. Do you guys every run into this? Or know what to make of it?
Thanks

Hey there englishmelting, glad you stopped by. I am looking forward to reading your introduction soon! I understand the need to figure out a fun chemistry project, though ;]

I have seen what you are talking about before. I wondered if it was just an illusion the solvent was giving off, or indeed another layer on top of the non polar solvent.

If you want, you add a pinch of salt, and a touch of basic solution to the jar and stir to see if that breaks up the emulsion. If it doesn't, I wouldn't worry too much about it. Extract as planned. Just make sure you wind up recrystallizing (a technique that can be found in our Wiki) or do a sodium carbonate wash on your solvent pulls, which can be found in the Wiki under Vovin tek, step 7.

Thank you! I just posted my introduction so feel free to check that out. I will take your recommendation, so just table salt and some extra lye? Or should I use a special kind of salt? I did also wonder whether it was an illusion but upon closer inspection it appears to be a separate layer. Hopefully that will clear it up!

IIRC, you do not want iodized salt. Here's how the trick works: By adding the sodium chloride to the solution it allows the lye to take all of those ions and bring them to a higher pH, rather than just adding the lye, which you can still do if you don't have any salt. It's just an old technique for help breaking emulsions. And like I said, if it's still there, it can be taken care of in the next steps.

In just one post you stopped using SWIM. Thank you.

And, Welcome to the DMT-Nexus!

haha thanks a1pha

I couldn't suck any of the top layer up, seems like it is just an illusion!