First of all, hello everybody! I am a new explorer of the spirit molecule and my exploration has yet to begin..

I am planning a theoretical extraction and I am very concerned about the purity of the final product. I need to be 110% sure that there is no lye or harmful substance contaminating the crystals (obviously!) I am not too proficient with the search feature on this site and it seems to keep freezing on me. I am searching for information about a sodium carbonate wash, but all I can find are references to it that assume the reader already knows how to carry out the procedure. If anyone could direct me towards a guide/tek/ explanation of it that would be great. I am especially interested in how much sodium carbonate to dissolve in distilled water and how much water should be used to wash the naphtha before freeze precipitation. Are there varying qualities of sodium carbonate? A brand suggestion would be invaluable. Also, lacking a separatory funnel, I am searching for some sort of tall narrow container to facilitate the separation of aqueous and organic layers. Would it be easy to procure a ~100 ml graduated cylinder in a major city, I'm not sure if hardware stores would carry such products, but I am about to go searching.

Thanks in advance for the help

If you're doing a naphtha extraction, then as long as you suck up only the top white naphtha layer and none of the brown layer (containing water, lye, and mimosa), then it's lye free. As far as the naphtha, just give it lots of time to dry until there is no more moisture and it's about as naphtha free as you're going to get. That's if you're using pure naphtha, I have no advice for lighter fuel products that don't evap with no trace.

Someone please correct if I'm wrong. I was going to ask about this myself. Until someone confirms, don't take this advice. Also, I only eat spice, I don't smoke.

fnog9 is right, but if you want to you can clean up more, check step 7 of vovins tek https://wiki.dmt-nexus.me/Vovin%27s_tek for detailed SC wash.

Each to their own when it comes to separation, some use pipettes some use turkey basters and some sep funnels.

Thanks, my friend will try that SC wash today before freeze precipitating. He is using ACE VM & P naphtha.

A separatory funnel would be amazing, but my friend is not sure how many times he will do this procedure, he just wants a little spice to venture into the spirit realms a few times to see what the experience is all about. Who knows what that might lead to, maybe more spice, in which case a sep funnel might be a good investment. My friend will probably just use a glass turkey baster for the separation from NaOH solution and then do a SC wash and re-separate. There will inevitably be some wasted naphtha but purity is more important than quantity.

Thanks for the help guys!