good morning everybody, if it is indeed morning where you are!
have just attempted my second A/B extraction, sadly i appear to have fallen into the trap of being over confident having had excellent results from the first go last september. it would seem i haven't paid enough attention to detail and i've ended up with a jerry can half full of basified bark soup which wont seperate with the naphtha i've added.
i used 1kg of bark, boiled it 3 times and then reduced in theory down to 1 litre although in actual fact i think i may well have messed up a bit and only reduced it to a litre and a half before adding the 100gs of sodium hydroxide/water solution.
could it be that i needed to add more lye as i didn't reduce enough in the first place?
another possible error is that i may have added the lye to the not so reduced bark tea while it was still too hot??
anyway....
what i've ended up with is about 2 litres of liquid ( a combination of bark tea/the water used to disolve the lye/and 150ml of naphtha) which isn't seperating properly.
there is a distinct layer at the top but it isn't anywhere near the clear solution i achieved during my last successful extraction. it isn't that much lighter in actual fact than the basified bark tea beneath it, despite it having stood all njght.
i haven't attempted to siphon this off yet and would greatly appreciate any advice as to how to proceed.
take it easy and thanks in anticipation.
have just attempted my second A/B extraction, sadly i appear to have fallen into the trap of being over confident having had excellent results from the first go last september. it would seem i haven't paid enough attention to detail and i've ended up with a jerry can half full of basified bark soup which wont seperate with the naphtha i've added.
i used 1kg of bark, boiled it 3 times and then reduced in theory down to 1 litre although in actual fact i think i may well have messed up a bit and only reduced it to a litre and a half before adding the 100gs of sodium hydroxide/water solution.
could it be that i needed to add more lye as i didn't reduce enough in the first place?
another possible error is that i may have added the lye to the not so reduced bark tea while it was still too hot??
anyway....
what i've ended up with is about 2 litres of liquid ( a combination of bark tea/the water used to disolve the lye/and 150ml of naphtha) which isn't seperating properly.
there is a distinct layer at the top but it isn't anywhere near the clear solution i achieved during my last successful extraction. it isn't that much lighter in actual fact than the basified bark tea beneath it, despite it having stood all njght.
i haven't attempted to siphon this off yet and would greatly appreciate any advice as to how to proceed.
take it easy and thanks in anticipation.
