I was not able to buy pure, dry lye in any store near me but I found a 1L bottle of Hair and Grease Drain Opener by Instant Power (http://www.scotchcorp.com/images/MSDS%201969-70.pdf) at Home Depot and saw that it only contained NaOH, KOH and water. So I thought I'd give it a try. So far all of my final product has been beautiful using Lazyman's tek. But my yield is only around .5% (going for a 4th nonpolar extraction now, so maybe more).

Is there a health problem with adding too much of this drain cleaner (crystals are pure white, so...)? If I use too much cleaner, because I am unsure of my water solution concentration, will it decrease my yield? My pH is definitely high enough.

That website lists the following percentages of ingredients in the cleaner:

38%-50% NaOH
0%-3% KOH
47%-62% water

Is it possible to figure out an average amount of solution needed to raise the pH of a 1L of water to ~13?

Any help is appreciated!

Seems OK to me as long as that is the only ingredients in the bottle. As for the pH, well 1L of water is 1kg (give or take due to temperature and salinity etc) so you could weigh the liquid and calculate the weight of water and therefore the weight of NaOH and just substitute the equivalent amount of dry Lye you need with a percentage of the mixture. Or even easier buy a PH meter/strips etc.

All sounds good. A 4% NaOH already gives a pH of 14 in theory. If the drain cleaner you used contained the ingredients you stated in the percentages you stated then it's absolutely fine for the tek, you could even dilute it 10 times and it would still be fine.

Liquid drain cleaners are usually not recommended since they can contain all sorts of other crap, hopefully in your case it does not seem to be the case.


Just for the record, pure white does not mean clean! How about impurities that are also pure white, like sodium hydroxide, surfactants, detergents (the last two can be found added in liquid drain cleaners and can be pulled with naphtha)

Inifinitas - I was also only able to find Instant Power, same bottle as you. The MSDS says H20, NaOH and KOH are the only ingredients, how did you measure your ratio of liquid NaOH to H2O? I poured around 150mL NaOH into 1.5 L of water roughly, and around 300mL NaOH into around 500mL of water, as this one did not turn as black as the first. and still won't, despite the higher concentration. Do not have pH strips

I'm new here but i really appreciate the great community in this forum!