My friend recently was in international waters on his private yacht, and SWIM was invited along with his camera. SWIM is a big fan of the FASA tek, but since he was on the boat and couldn't easily obtain the required materials for the tek on this day. SWIM was able to test this tek and report on the results, however due to a mishap with gravity SWIM told me he is without a MG scale at the moment, and is unable to accurately weigh the final product. SWIM did however take detailed notes of the procedure for me, and he allowed me to take pictures of the results.
Procedure:
1. 101.3 grams of atomized mimosa root bark from Mexico or South Africa (SWIM doesn't remember which batch this was from.) was added to a quart size mason jar.
2. The jar was placed in a bowl which will not dissolve with naptha.
3. The jar was then filled about an inch over the height of the powder with a solution of 5% acetic acid in H2O that had been heated to reflux for a couple of minutes. The solution was stirred with a wooden rod.
4. The bowl beneath the jar was filled with boiling H2O to keep the jar warm. The solution was stirred with a wooden rod.
5. The jar was left to sit for 60-90 minutes, during which time the water in the bowl was still kept close to boiling temperature via a recirculating feed from the boiler.
6. 50.7 grams of Ca(OH)2 was slowly but thoroughly mixed into the jar, with the addition of more H20 at reflux temperature as needed to keep the mix stir-able but not watery, during a change of the water (in the bowl the jar was in) during this procedure the mason jar decided to have a critical failure, however SWIM was able to transfer the contents to another bowl without more than a 1% loss of contents, the procedure will proceed as planned. The contents of the bowl was stirred with a wooden rod and left to sit for ~90 minutes with the bowl placed inside the bowl of boiling water with occasional stirring as needed.
Note: This is a good lesson in why borosilicate glass is the only kind you should ever use, SWIM been having terrible luck with mason jars lately and was even expecting this to happen fortunately!
7. a couple hundred milliliters of naptha was placed in an appropriate container and heated on the hot water bath until hot, the mixture in the top bowl was stirred thoroughly and then the naptha was added to the bowl. The entire mixture was "kneaded" for many minutes throughly allowing the naptha to contact most of the aqueous solution without forming an emulsion.
8. the naptha was placed in a borosilicate bowl and the bowl was placed on the peltier warm plate for a few hours to reduce the naptha to a more manageable volume, once the volume was sufficient to fit in the smaller glass bowl, the liquid was transfered to the bowl, the bowl covered with saran wrap, and placed in the freezer on the coldest setting for 10 hours.
9. Small holes were punched in the saran wrap on opposite sides of the bowl to allow the naptha to drain, and the naptha was poured out through a filtering funnel in case any solids were lost. The recovered liquid was placed back in the freezer to see if anything else will happen to it, while the bowl with crystals was placed on the peltier warm plate with an addition of a small fan to help dry out the rest of the crystals.
10. Pictures were taken of the result, and then it was thrown into international waters.
Pictures of this bowl are below:
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