Hi everyone, if this has already been answered, I'm sorry. I had a bit of a look using the search engine but didn't retrieve anything usefull.

So I'm getting a bit of a build up of used shellite from defatting acacia. My question is, would I have to use distillation to clean it back to a usable state, or would the fats and oils crash out/stick to the glass bottle if I were to leave it in the freezer for a few days?.

It seems a terrible waste to just have it sitting there and would sure beat buying more fresh stuff if I can recycle it. I'm hoping that freezing will be enough to clean it, as the only distilation equipment I've got is a 25L T-500 still for ethanol which I'm not sure would be suitable for naphtha as there are plastics and copper etc involved. (Would probably ruin the still for ethanol afterwards also)

If there were no interaction with naphtha and copper, maybe I could rig up a small pot still with a copper condensing coil like I used to do for ethanol before I got the T500.

Any help appreciated, thanks

Try a sodium carbonate wash.

Mix a small pinch of sodium carbonate with 50ml water until the sodium carbonate is dissolved, then mix this solution with the naphtha you want to clean up. Mix it well and allow to separate several times. Retrieve your naphtha from the top and repeat this process twice more with plain distilled water.

Thanks for the reply, a few questions.

- Is this going to be enough to clean 1L+ solvent?
- Would NaOH work, or should I make the sodium carbonate
- Could you explain how that will work, ie what is happeneing in the precess to separate out fats and oils

Cheers

To clean your solvent, you can do a couple acidic and basic water washes(as Dmnstr8 mentioned) to dissolve the soluble impurities. The order doesn't really matter. Some even recommend activated charcoal to pick up what other methods might miss. I highly recommend reading through the following discussion:

On reusing non polar solvents

Also this:

Ratios for sodium carb wash

Note: this sodium carb wash is used on DMT saturated naphtha, but the idea is the same just that your solvent has no more DMT in it when washing, presumably.

Ah hah! Thanks very much ill have a read

Bear in mind, an acid wash may contain compounds of interest - check it before you chuck it!