Freezing in plastic bottle

[amvitamine]

Swim has been experimenting with several techniques of extraction and different containers in which to FP
One time swim used a small plastic bucket with lid and when he went to look at the crystals he noticed none stuck to the side but instead just floated around in the naphtha.
Swim was pleased with this because he doesn't like to scrape crystals.
Now he just swirls it around and then immediately pours it in a coffee filter to get all the crystals inside the filter
To prevent the naphtha from heating up while it drops through the filter he puts his mouth over the filter, sealing it and gently blows so there is a pressure build up inside the filter.
This way all of the naphtha goes through the filter in a matter of seconds much like a Büchner filtration and all that was left were semi dry crystals.
Note: Naphtha dissolves a lot of plastics. Swim has a one of these:

Which can even hold acetone. The little plastic bucket swim used could handle the naphtha but it had a small seal which dissolved.
Swim advices any clear plastic bottle and thinks a PET bottle should do the trick but isn't sure

Hope this was helpful

 

[dontworryaboutgod]

So the salt will not freeze to plastic under normal freezer conditions.
SWIM is thinking a plastic naphtha bottle and a coffee filter could do the trick.
How long would one freeze for in plastic?

 

[amvitamine]

Swim recommends a clear plastic bottle so its visible if any crystals have formed yet.
No extra freezer time is needed as far as swim nows

 

[The Day Tripper]

My advice would be glass only when freeze precipitating. Not worth the risk imho of getting some nasty plastic byproduct in your spice. I typically use a shotglass with tinfoil taped over the top, then sealed tight with some kind of tape. A better option would be a glass reagent bottle that has a ground glass lid, so theres nothing but glass that could come into contact with the naptha/bestine/np solution.

 

[amvitamine]

There are plenty of plastics available that are as inert as glass.
A lot of people make the soup in milk jugs and that goes perfectly fine.

 

[The Day Tripper]

That may be true, but non-polars are very reactive with alot of different plastics, more than you would think. I've had limonene make bottles designed for isporopyl and acetone (hdpe, or milkjug plastic) thinner and much weaker, to me that means they're reacting with the plastic in some way, and you can't be sure if its contaminating the solvent.

There's prob some one more qualified chemistry wise on the nexus that could speak more about this, but ime, and from everything I've heard its never a good idea to mix plastics and non-polars. Alcohols are ok with some plastics, but non-polars are much more reactive to plastics than alcohols.

And there has been cases where people have had extraction vessel failure in hdpe milk jugs. imo its not work the risk of either spilling caustic soup or non-polar solvents when glass is cheap and just as available as plastic 99% of the time.

EDIT- after a bit of googling, its seems hdpe is safe with naptha, but tolulene and limonene could have issues. Still, you can't go wrong with glass.

 

[amvitamine]

I find the crystals growing on glass a bit hard to remove. It needs to be scraped off.
With a plastic bottle they just come off with a bit of shaking, therefore I prefer plastic.

 

[The Day Tripper]

I find the crystals growing on glass a bit hard to remove. It needs to be scraped off.
With a plastic bottle they just come off with a bit of shaking, therefore I prefer plastic.

That makes sense, I'll admit its a bit difficult to scrape up the xtyls at the bottom of a shot glass, and i prob lose a few mgs here or there when doing so. I'll have to give hdpe a try next time i do a bestine freeze precipitation. Good to know. :d

 

[amvitamine]

I don't know for sure if this works as well on reX.
I use this method on the first FP since thats the one where you have the most solvent and most wide spread crystal growth.
Next time I will add steel ball bearings for extra scraping.
Don't forget the blowing in the filter step

 

[The Day Tripper]

Yeah i'm more of a dlimo/fasw kind of guy myself, so I'll prob never try it with an initial naptha freeze precipitation, but i did do my first bestine re-x today with fantastic results. I only had prob 5ml bestine for about 180mg of spice, since i did not want to f it up on my first try, but it was kind of a hassle scraping up the xtyals from the bottom of the shot glass, if they don't stick to hdpe, then that would make it much easier to grab/scoop them up with some tweezers or something.

Don't really see myself running it through a filter, (though i do have a vac apparatus) with the size of the xtyals i got they could easily just be scooped out of the heptane with the right tool. I'll try hdpe on my next bestine re-xtyal, which i guess is just an xtyalization since I'm pulling with warm heptane from a lime/fumarate paste. Still if it helps keep the xtyals from sticking to the side of the container it would be totally worth it.

 

[amvitamine]

If you have such large crystals I think slightly pushing and bending the plastic will cause the crystal to break away from the plastic, then you can just pick it out

 

[chemisch]

geting a glass jar is super simple why try and compensate most grocery stores have them