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Emulsion problem...

Migrated topic.

Begreen0

Rising Star
So a friend of mine told me his pet tortilla is doing a Lazy Man's extraction. He apparently already got two successful but small pulls, so for the third pull he decided to stir the mixture really vigorously for 30 minutes straight to make sure a large amount of goodies get into the naptha. However, my friend's tortilla now reports that the entire solution has become one black homogeneous liquidy mass, which no discernible naptha layer whatsoever. He did some reading and decided to try adding some water and a BUNCH of salt and let it sit overnight, but this morning it's apparently not much better at all.

Do you guys have any suggestions for my friend's poor, struggling tortilla? =) Should he just let it sit for a week and hope it separates out, or is there anything else he can do?
 
And if heat or increased pH don't help, adding a bit more naphtha with gentle rolling can help remind the emulsified solvent of the way things should be.
 
So he has now added a bunch of salt, water, and a BUNCH more lye, and left it to sit for a day or two with only very light stirring. Now there is a huge black layer on the bottom-middle, then the top layer is a thick brown layer....still no clear naptha layer =(. And there's no room to add anything else to it at the moment...should he transfer it into two containers and add naptha?
 
Alright, so he told me he went ahead and added more naptha, stirred lightly and let it sit for another day. The following day, the naptha layer was pretty clear, but had a yellowish/brownish tint to it...do you think it's safe for him to go ahead and take this slightly yellowish/brownish naptha layer and do the evaporation, or could it be contaminated with lye or something?

Thanks for helping him
 
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