Roll your own "naphtha" mix?

[merkin]

For us who have no such thing as naphtha available as such and mixed to poor to awful results with random industry solvents whose msds indicate "naphtha hydrotreated" / "aliphatic" etc as contents. Even newport lighter fluid (lord knows what is in there) and n-Heptane have given very low yields (with heptane the best). I am thinking so how to best make an equivalent of your US VM&P from regularly available lab grade solvents.

any ideas on a DIY mix of solvents to improve yields from Heptane alone?

tx

 

[jiva]

i am not a chemist, but i think if you have access to any solvent you would want to put into the mix, you could also just use that solvent.
also a mix of solvent would surely pull unwanted stuff from your base material.

 

[merkin]

Yes, and sure that works. But I find that when using for instance, pure n-heptane its much less overall yield, xylene its much more but lots more oils and yellow etc.
So I am just curious as to what an "ideal" solvent composition might be - pretty much what VM&P seems to be - even just as a theoretical thought process?

 

[Jees]

You can make your heptane more catchy by warming it a bit, like max 40 deg C (100F).
Indirect heating by means of a warm water bath.

 

[blue.magic]

I would be shooting for something like higher boiling petroleum ether. It should be cheaper than isolated hydrocarbons (heptane, hexane etc.).

I once analyzed Zippo lighter fluid the the b.p. range was somtehing like 70-120 °C.

BTW I never had problems with yields using n-heptane, as Jees said, just make it warm (not hot), as hot pulls out oils just like Zippo's naphtha. I heat the mother liquor as the water has much higher heat capacity than heptane, it will heat it up easily.

Some people have success with toluene but this pulls too much compounds and you would need to backsalt.

 

[merkin]

Thanks for the input. Trying a trial of 4x 50g using various mixes of hex/hept/80-120 PetEther but honestly doesn't seem to be much diff at the moment. Maybe about .05g in favour of the 80-120 but not consistent enough to make it certain (prolly me tho) - generally the results are very clean, just a hint of yellow crystals at the edges of the dried zone. Main issue is yields are not great (less than .22 per pull and avg around .16-1.8 using Gordotek w/lime. When heating (got up to around 60°C at one point I suspect) I tend to get more yellow. But a nice mellow kinda yellow

Got some Zippo Premium black can. Will try that, not sure how it compares to the VM&P everyone here seems to use.

Out of this same bark I got around 1.8g of faintly yellow crystals using a solvent from a printing ink company but it was very tricky in the freeze precip and melted fast after decanting so I had to juggle like a maniac to get solvent off the precipitate before it reabsorbed the spice. Nevertheless I still got more than double what I am getting now. Hence my quest for something better solvent-wise? I got more from print co but it was different, clear not yellow colour and froze in the freezer :/ so I gave up on that. But part of me wishes I knew what the magic component in that was that pulled all that spice.

I know its in there somewhere and theres always a xylene pull to try at the end but somehow that doesnt really help much lately.