Kind of a weird situation here... I have already successfully used Q21Q21's vinegar/lime/naptha tek with great results last week, and decided to experiment a little this time around. I made side-by-side identical mixes of MHRB and went through all of the steps. The only difference between the two was that in one, I reused the leftover naptha I had from my extraction last week and the other one had clean fresh naptha.

I heat both jars, and the one with the fresh naptha is fine - worked like a charm. The one using the old naptha, however, absorbed 80% of the naptha into the MHRB and simply expanded its volume by about 400ML inside the jar. I've shaken. stirred, and heated it and can't seem to get the naptha to separate.

Any advice on this, or is it a lost cause?

The naphtha is most likely lost.

The thing with q21's tek is that it's best to have moist but crubly consistency, or anything that's not near bone dry.

Did you have moist or crubly consistency, how much MHRB was used and how much naphtha was added?

It could have been that the mhrb was dry inside and it absorbed the naphtha...

i use this same tek...q21q21,s 2...and i reuse naptha..i think tele is right... you mat have been too dry...but my reuse works fine everytime...odd? i keep the pics in front of me to mimic them and it works best for me

Nope, it wasn't dry in the least and it was exactly identical to the other jar which is still fine. Consistency was roughly like fine cement before naptha, so not soupy but not clumpy either - right in the middle. I used 333g MHRB, 333g Lime, and appropriate amounts of vinegar and water in the first step - again, identical in every way in each jar down to the gram. The only difference was that the one had used naptha and the other had new naptha. There wasn't any problem with the used naptha in my first batch at all.

Assuming that the naptha is gone, what should I do to salvage this? Just add more naptha and pull? So weird...

Oh, and it was about 400ml of naptha used in each... only got back maybe 50ml or so from the jar that ate the naptha.

If you add more water to the lost naphtha mixture, you might be able to pour the naphtha off. This is quite a weird situation.

I would also try smaller batches, 300g MHRB mix is quite alot

I am new to extractions so excuse my ignorance if this sounds silly.. buuuuut... why not just dump a bunch more naptha in the mixture until it cannot soak anymore, thus allowing you to pour it off? Since there will be a lot of naptha then, u can just evap until its concentrated enough to do a freeze precip.. just my hypothesis..