Hello all !
I'm rather new to the site and have not posted much thus far.
I have done a few extractions using the STB method. The product i get has been very dirty.
So i researched the soda wash. I have tried this with a small amount of dirty deem, fist to see if i can get it done correctly.
The problem i have been running into. When the saturated solvent, Naptha is mixed with the soda water i get a emultion that just don't want to brake. I get a clear seperation between the dirty water and the solvent. But between those two is the emultion. Last time i let the water and solvent seperate. then drain the bottom layer of water out of the sep funnel till the emultion layer. I let it sit for about a half hour. A little more water was released from the emultion, but the small emultion layer did not seperate. My question is, getting an emultion layer during a soda wash the does not brake normal ? The water was at 9PH. Is this too high ?
I did save the emultion and let it evaporate. there was a small amout of water and oils within the small amout if DMT crystals when it was totally dryed out.
Now the resulting freeze precip turned out a very clean white product. I'm not happy about the loss that occured within the mentioned emultion layer. Being it is my first few times doing the soda wash and all the times this was done, a emultion layer occured and did not seperate. Is there anything that can be done to get this to seperate all the way ? Could heat be applyed to the sep funnel to help the emultion brake ?
Thank you for those who were able to fallow along. I know my spelling and writing skills are horrible. Please excuse me !
Any thought and comments are welcome. Negitive or postive !
Peace !

It is ok to use heat to break up that emulsion. You can also try doing more washes, and generally, I find the more washes you do the less emulsions occur over time. PH 8-9 is completely fine.

I have the exact same problem: when doing a soda wash I get three layers. Bottom layer is dirty soda water, middle layer is yellow goo, top layer is naphtha. I'm speculating that the middle layer is actually DMT-oxide, as that is neither soluble in water nor in naphtha.. Hopefully some more knowledgeable member can confirm this. Last time I cleaned (soda wash) some rather old spice that wasn't kept airtight. I retrieved only about 50% in weight from the naphtha. Unfortunately I threw the goo away so I haven't had the chance to try to convert to DMT with zinc powder...

@DooDah man

I dont understand why you are doing a soda wash with product extracted doing STB.

STB, its a pretty simple tek that yeilds pretty clean product.

soda wash?

may I offer a suggestion?

keep it simple.

I would recommend cleaning up your STB procedure. There is no reason to extract "dirty deem" as you put it. STB yeilds clean product if done properly. If I were doing an STB extraction and afterwards felt that it needed to be cleaned up a bit, I would just do a simple Re-X.

You are making this simple procedure way more difficult than it needs to be. I recommend looking through the wiki and familiarizing yourself with basic extractions.

Keep it simple.