Yesterday, I ran into something that I haven't seen happen yet.
7 jars of NaOH solution were made by using 1500mL of distilled water and 100g of NaOH. pH of 6/7 jars read 12.2-12.3. The jar in question had a pH of 11.9. I figured that it was close enough to a pH of 12 that it would be fine to continue. 100g of MHRB was added to each jar and all jars were shaken well and left to rest over night.
10 hours later, 100mL of VM&P Naphtha was added to each jar and jars were turned end over end, left to separate and repeated a total of 3 times. After the third separation I began pulling the solvent from the jars. There was a slight emulsion in the jar with the lowest pH so Without checking pH, a small amount of NaOH solution was added to the jar. The jar was turned end over end a few times and left to separate.
The emulsion had started to break apart and yellow crystals began appearing on top of the emulsion.
The first solvent pull was retrieved from this jar and placed into a separation funnel with the first second and third pulls from the other 6 jars.
Today, the emulsion is gone and and there appears to be a lot more of these yellow crystals suspended between the solvent and basified extract. The pictures don't show it but it looks like a layer of gold flake.
A small amount of baseified extract was retrieved and pH measured reading 12.1
Some of these salts(?) carried over from the first pull and into the extraction.
Yesterday, when I asked a good friend I was told to carry on with the procedure and while I trust his advice and the advice that was given to them, I'm still left with a few questions.
1. What is this? It looks like a very shiny salt.
2. Do I need to get this out of the extraction? I'm confident that I can remove this either during or before washing the solvent if I need to.
3. Why did this happen?
Thanks for taking the time to read this and thank you for any insight you may have.