So I had a couple of rather dark pulls of my naptha, using an stb tek. I decided to do a sodium carbonate wash on the naptha to try and clear it up a bit but when everything settled in my jar it settled into 3 distinct layers. On the bottom was a light brown layer, the middle is a rather chunky, milky colored layer, and then on top lies my now yellow tinted naptha layer. I've pulled the naptha off the top but an reluctant to get rid of the other two layers for fear that I may be missing something in possibly the middle layer. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Do you have a picture by any chance? How much sodium carbonate did you use and what was the pH of your sodium carbonate solution? I have had some strange things happen a few times when preforming sodium carbonate washes on dark naphtha pulls. I would imagine the brown, bottom layer is probably just tiny particles of plant matter or some other undesirable that isn't soluble in the aqueous solution. But if you end up with a really low yield, or if you are just really worried about losing some of your yield in the sodium carbonate/ water layer, you could always do one or two clean naphtha pulls on the sodium carbonate solution.

Welcome to The Nexus by the way. I would encourage you to post an introduction essay and please be sure to read the Attitude Page, the FAQ, and at least skim through the Wiki, if you haven't already.

Heating it up in hot water bath or so, shake again, see if it helps.

The middle milky-coloured layer (which I presume is puzzling you) is an emulsion; please look it up further in the forum and you will find tips on how to get rid of it.

But fear not - there will be a tiny amount of alkaloids trapped there, but not much to impede your yield.

Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of it that I can throw up right at this moment but as of 72 hours of letting it rest, the emulsion has subsided a bit and I now feel more comfortable pulling out my naptha. Admittedly, I did probably use a little too much sodium carbonate, about a gram eyeballed is what I presume it was. My pH tester is currently MIA so I wasn't able to get an accurate reading on the pH of the solution, but it seemed rather saturated so for my best guess, around 11 would seem fairly close.

Also, thanks for the welcome and I'll be sure to head on over to the introduction forum and introduce myself.



The milky layer did end up being mostly something of an emulsion. The thing that was getting me was that most of the topics I found in the forum stated that with the sodium carbonate wash, there would be next to no emulsion, but with following some of the tips and tricks on reducing emulsions, the layer did subside most of the way. Just being patient and letting time takes It's course seems to be the most productive of the methods however.