Anhydrous Magnesium Sulfate

[halcyon]

SWIM's been trying to gather a bunch of different yellow goo dishes together, dissolve them, filter them (everything from lint to ? in some dishes), and then evap. The problem is that while using the buchner funnel, there was still some water in it. SWIM just noticed this (the evap has been at room-temp for 2 days). SWIM made up some anhydrous mag. sulfate via epsom salts and would like to use it to get rid of the water. However, when this is done, there will be xtals, solvent, and the hydrated salt. SWIM thinks it would be best to add more solvent, make sure everything is dissolved, add the mag. sulfate and then filter. And back to square one. That would be ideal, yes. But a pain in the ass. So, what would SWIY do? Again, SWIY has a evap dish full of some xtals, very heavily saturated naptha, and drops of water.

Any help would be super appreciated.
h

 

[halcyon]

Alright so SWIM had a go with this anhydrous magnesium sulfate. The epsom salt was cooked for about 1.5 hours and then cooled (in the oven). Since the aforementioned solvent had already begun forming xtals (but had nasty water pools that were terribly disolored), SWIM decided to just to the deed, add more solvent, and dissolve all the xtals and goo once again. SWIM tells me this big batch of n-oxide is taking forever. Anyway, SWIM then dropped in a gram or two of salt (might as well use too much SWIM felt). This was an error. SWIM should have guestimated exactly how much water was in with the solvent and added the "right" amount. The reason.. when the solvent was decanted out, lots of oily solvent covered the mag. sulfate. It pulled the water - but the surface area of all of those granules also helped a lot of solvent catch a ride out. SWIM supposes the salt could have been dried out, be as I said, SWIM is getting very sick of the expirement. After decanting - the solvent was filtered through a buchner. Again, I bet SWIM incurred a loss here. Finally the solvent was free of water and salt. The solvent can now evap on its own time. Just an update.

h