I made the mistake of not checking MSDS for the lye I used and it turns out it has all kinds of other undesirable stuff in it. I got some proper 100% lye and I have another 50g of ACRB so I can try again. I still have the soup though and I'm wondering if I should bother trying more pulls, I did 3 and got goo, I think my soup wasn't hot enough and I might have overmixed too, I'd like to aim for crystals of course. Does the purity of lye make a big difference? I might try it just to compare for myself...

Thanks in advance

Thought about a sodium carbonate wash after you pull?

If some of the not so pure lye is naphtha soluble, then I deffo would not use what you got from the not so pure lye, since it means you probably pulled some of the naphtha soluble stuff.

So, what is the other stuff?

Anyway, don't panic if your first extractions don't produce beautiful white snowflakes in the more than stellar yields sometimes boasted about on this forum.

from the MSDS, not much lye in this "lye"!

sodium hydroxide 40% by weight
sodium nitrate 30%
sodium chloride 5-15%
sodium carbonate 1-10%
Aluminium powder (pyrophoric) 1-10%
Distillates (petroleum), hydrotreated
heavy napthenic 1 - 5%

I started my 2nd soup, the color is totally different and quite attractive, I'll try it as a dye when I'm done pulling! I actually had a few tiny white crystals but they melted

I use caustic soda for lye here in oz so I wouldn't worry to much about chemicals unless you do the whole food safe route !

Earthwalker, "caustic soda" is often synonymous with sodium hydroxide.

Aumbra, if I were you I would make damn sure that none of the ingredients in the lye are soluble in the solvent you intend to use. One way this could be done would be to add a small amount of the lye to a small volume of solvent, mix it up for a while, maybe even heat it just a little bit in a warm water bath, let it cool back to room-temperature, thoroughly filter out all of the undissolved chemicals in the mixture, then evaporate the solvent. If there is anything left after the solvent is completely evaporated, dispose of that "lye" and your extraction and start from scratch. It is imperative that you filter out every single little bit of the undissolved matter in order for this test to be accurate.

I do not know whether or not any of those ingredients could do anything else to cause problems in your extraction, but if they are not soluble in your solvent then I don't see how they could contaminate your final product.