Hello all!
I am doing Earthwalker's 100g Acacia extraction today. I plan on using sodium hydroxide as my first base during the step when you add the base mixture to the recently salted acidic brew, but for the mini acid base clean up I was thinking about using sodium carbonate, because it seems like a safer alternative and I would not like to do a recrystallization afterwards due to possible NaOH contamination.

Does anyone have experience directly using sodium carbonate in this step or possibly in both steps where you add your base? If so, do you know how much this affects total yield? If yield loss is negligible then I will definitely go with sodium carbonate as it is much cheaper and safer.

I got this idea from the Tao of Rue extraction because sodium carbonate is the base used in the final basing step instead of NaOH.

Thanks,
Mondo

You just need something that gets pH high enough to break down plant material. You need pH of around twelve, I think that's amount EW said in his tek.

Now, can sodium carbonate raise pH that much? I think it can, or is at least very close to that.

(*sigh* very close, the pH scale is logarithmic. Sorry about this stupidness).

Thanks for the reply. For the mini acid base I am not breaking down any plant material. The mini acid base step is used mainly to remove oils from the NPS. The step where I will be breaking down the plant material is when I add my base after doing the salt step and for this step I will be using NaOH.

I think it should be just fine for that.

One sodium carb msds sheet I saw stated 11.10 on saturation, yet I was able to base a backsalted solution with very pure sodium carb to 11.55 using a good calibrated meter. I failed with that attempt but was very likely because of error in previous steps of the process, so can't testimony a positive outcome so far.

Thanks for the info Jees! I am currently soaking my basic (NaOH) soup in a warm water bath. I am thinking for the mini acid base I will just divide my acidic solution into 2 equal volumes and then base using the two different bases so I can have side by side results on the differences in yield.

Sodium carbonate is fine as a basing agent so long as an it is preceded by an acid step. A ph of 12+ is only required for stb extractions. That said, i still recommend using naoh for your first base stage and then switching to the milder na2co3 for your second. Personally, I always use naoh because it's faster and easier (and probably cheaper in terms of pOH per dollar at about $8 a kilo in Australia). Your yield *should* be the same regardless of what base you use for your mini a/b, though I'm interested to see the results if your side by side test. Please make sure you thoroughly mix the acid phase before you split it so you get accurate results.

Post back with what you find.

I use sodium carbonate without any problems for A/B extractions and get decent results. But you have to be careful, sodium carbonate forms a foam in contact with acidic water. The foam will eventually go away but add it very slowly until the solution becomes neutral or it can make a huge mess...

This is because it rapidly devolves CO2 upon neutralisation and the excess Na2CO3 serves to soften the water, allowing it to exist in a finer membrane (makes it easier to lather), thus holding the developed gas. Hence it's use as washing soda and water softener. Just one more reason I like NaOH, given it neutralises to salt and water (because I typically use HCl), which further assists in pushing the the DMT out of solution.