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does a mixing jar need to be glass? can lye eat plastic?

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I've just acquired a 5L empty bottle of wine for extraction purposes. Now all i need is enough mhrb to make using it worth while. All donations welcome!!
 
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HDPE #2 works great.If you work in a restaurant(or know somebody who does) gallon dishwasher solution containers are very good :) Milk cartons are less robust but equally lye friendly.Jumbo washing conditioner bottles are also good.HDPE won't shatter and leave you coated in highly basic solution.
 
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are you using the container to mix the lye with water before putting it into the bark solution or are you talking about mixing the bark/lye solution in the container? naphtha is the other caustic chemical of concern, so glass is STRONGLY recommended. try to find a place that sells canning supplies. over time lye can etch and destroy glass.
 
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eeessh personally i'd NEVER use glass.. EVER i've heard too many stories of glass breaking due to droppage, repeated exposure to highly caustic solutions, large changes in temperature when basifying, and PRESSURE - have you added a significant amount of naptha to just basified water (ie: very hot) ? the amount of pressure buildup from that first shake is soooo fucking scary i'd never be using glass HDPE containers (some kind of special plastic - high-density polyethylene - work perfect for all kinds of extractions. It can handle pH 13 for weeks, boiling water is not an issue. Naptha certainly isn't an issue. And it allows for a little give regarding pressure buildup (and all other issues mentioned above) get a 4L or 5L distilled water from the hardware shop and most likely the container will be HDPE http://www.canamplastics.com/images/hdpe_group.jpg
 
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some good replies in here... i already started the extraction with some quart jars and i am just going to do it in small 30g portions... but i think i shall look for the HDPE containers since i agree that the pressure buildup and breaking is a concern.
 
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ive used plastic b4 to wake up in the morning to find my kitchen floor COVERED in root bark solution. GAH, it was so sad, and such a mess, I WILL ONLY USE GLASS. I WILL ONLY USE GLASS. I WILL ONLY USE GLASS.
 
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I had let the solution sit in the plastic for too long and it just ate away at the plastic in week spots. Any bends or cracks in the plastic will become a week spot eventually i think. From the looks of things the jug just became week at one point on the base and allowed the solution to seep out slowly over night. SUCKED SO BAD.
 
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lol fuck that, perhaps it wasn't HDPE ? from hdpe i've seen it can expand, contract, take large amounts of heat and pressure and stay well in tact without any compounding negative effects
 
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SWIM had a full 2-gallon glass jar break on him once. Try and imagine 2 gallons of that black lye/water and naptha spilled all over the floor. Not to mention the glass. It was a bad bad situation, and one's best bet is high-grade plastics such as polypropylene lab plasticware.
 
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[quote:7031455612="karma1485"]I had let the solution sit in the plastic for too long and it just ate away at the plastic in week spots. Any bends or cracks in the plastic will become a week spot eventually i think. From the looks of things the jug just became week at one point on the base and allowed the solution to seep out slowly over night. SUCKED SO BAD.[/quote:7031455612] someone I heard about did a large MHRB extraction in a 5 gallon water cooler jug. He didn't think about the pressure dropping as the basified solution cooled and he put the cap on it over night. It did indeed leak from the weak spots in the jug, but not from the lye eating through it. There was a vacuum that was created and it was the vacuum that cracked the weak spots.
 
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freedominphilly said:
someone I heard about did a large MHRB extraction in a 5 gallon water cooler jug. He didn't think about the pressure dropping as the basified solution cooled and he put the cap on it over night. It did indeed leak from the weak spots in the jug, but not from the lye eating through it. There was a vacuum that was created and it was the vacuum that cracked the weak spots.
Click to expand...

Would it the a good idea to leave the lid open slightly or maybe pierce a whole in the lid to stop either a vaccum or too much pressure? Maybe this would be a bad idea though as you'd get evaporation escaping if you're leaving it for longer periods of time?

I've not done an extraction myself yet, I had been planning on using a glass mixing jar but after reading this I'm thinking HDPE might be the way to go
 
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A friend works at a grocery store where it is his job to work milk loads. He can tell you from personal experience that milk jugs are not very strong, and physical abuse can weaken the plastic. Also, when the store gets the milk, usually there's a few leaking due to damaged containers. Definitely some are sold that have weak spots in the plastic but are not leaky.

swim would recommend using glass inside a larger metal or thick non-reactive plastic vessel. Too many horror stories of lye exploding glass containers to not have a backup plan. Hell, SWIM has had his own share of glass breakage, but it was mainly due to heat and only contained salting water with d-limo. Still sucked though, swim lost some actives and a good amount of limo.

Lye is corrosive to glass, it degrades it and adding heat/cool cycles to that where pressure may change too is just asking for problems. SWIM uses CaOH and its a fine base, especially for dryteks where all water is removed and a freebased resin powder is allowed to mix with a NP for maximum surface area. Uses less volume, acids and bases, extracts faster, and there is no risk of spillage of basic water. Maybe d-limo if you're not careful, but that's relatively safe in small amounts as long as you have good ventilation.

Just be smart and know the what-ifs and plan accordingly, you should have no-problems that way.
 
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