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Rising Star
My uncle (who lives in a tree) decided to try his hand in extracting mimosa..
Since he had prepowdered bark, he used "revised noman's tek" i.e. higher amount of water and lye.
He used: 50 g MHRB, 1400ml water, about 75g of lye.
He decided to use 2 evaporation trays, 2 small amounts of naphta that were reused two times.
So there were 4 pulls with ~50 ml of naphta (ronsonol) each, followed by freeze precip, 24 hours in -25C.
The first pull was evaporated down a little, freeze precipated, and gave ~110mg of elfdust. Bliss!
However the next pull with new naphta was not evapped and yielded almost nothing, so naphta from pulls #3 and #4 was evaporated with hairdryer to a minuscule puddle that hardly covered the bottom of the dish.
But the yields were just as disappointingly tiny, even though in last pull, my uncle warmed naphta in waterbath (boiling water).
At last he evaporated all the naphta he had, but got only a thin oily layer at the bottom.
Well my uncle is happy with the small amount he has, but suspects that there might be some more left in that jug of bark-lye-mixture. So before he uses it as a drain opener, he might be trying one last pull with xylene (though he's scared of fumes)
He would be interested in knowing whether his naphta to lye/bark-mixture - ratio was just wrong. Should he use more solvent?
Was the hairdryer a bad idea? Can the hot air burn away the magic?
Since he had prepowdered bark, he used "revised noman's tek" i.e. higher amount of water and lye.
He used: 50 g MHRB, 1400ml water, about 75g of lye.
He decided to use 2 evaporation trays, 2 small amounts of naphta that were reused two times.
So there were 4 pulls with ~50 ml of naphta (ronsonol) each, followed by freeze precip, 24 hours in -25C.
The first pull was evaporated down a little, freeze precipated, and gave ~110mg of elfdust. Bliss!
However the next pull with new naphta was not evapped and yielded almost nothing, so naphta from pulls #3 and #4 was evaporated with hairdryer to a minuscule puddle that hardly covered the bottom of the dish.
But the yields were just as disappointingly tiny, even though in last pull, my uncle warmed naphta in waterbath (boiling water).
At last he evaporated all the naphta he had, but got only a thin oily layer at the bottom.
Well my uncle is happy with the small amount he has, but suspects that there might be some more left in that jug of bark-lye-mixture. So before he uses it as a drain opener, he might be trying one last pull with xylene (though he's scared of fumes)
He would be interested in knowing whether his naphta to lye/bark-mixture - ratio was just wrong. Should he use more solvent?
Was the hairdryer a bad idea? Can the hot air burn away the magic?