The context was:
to make FB alks in a sod-carb solution: NO fridging. TGO came up with a thread of someone who did that and reported anomalies in high yield. You are a free person to fridge at will.

After 8 hours true alks belong down with no fridge, certainly not in the middle, else something is off normal. If some drift on top, stir top layer with a spoon and they sink like a brick.


Why no fridging:
On room temp (20 deg C or 68F) a sod-carb saturated solution can hold 21gr SC / 100gr water.
Put that in a fridge (10 deg C or 50 F) and SC sat solution can hold 12 gr SC / 100 gr water.

Thus 9 gr of SC will drop out and mingle with the FB in the fridge, making one very happy with the high yield result.

Things will be not as bad when the solution wasn't fully saturated at the start, but with cooling down in fridge, chances are it will become saturated, and from there on the SC will drop out. Only if you started with less that 10 gr SC / 100 gr water you're safe upto like 10 deg C.

But as pointed out before, any remaining NaCL salt from a previous manske will worsen things and drop out SC sooner than expected.

That is great info, thanks Jees.

Would this sodium be white by any chance?

It is so strange that out of a very yellow translucent clear liquid comes the utmost horrible grey brown goo you have ever seen. If yes then your sodium theory is our culprit hands down.

Sodium isn't white. Here's (courtesy of wikipedia) a picture of sodium:


What you probably meant to say is "(aqueous) solvated ions of sodium". These are generally colorless.

In its pure form, finely powdered sodium carbonate is white. Precipitated sodium carbonate could be colored brown due to impurities sticking to it.

By the way, if a harmala freebase yield seems to be anomalously high, there is an easy test to see if some of it is indeed polluted with sodium carbonate: wash the precipitate with water. The sodium carbonate will dissolve, the harmala freebase will not (or negligibly) and the yield will adjust accordingly.

Great, thanks for the recomended wash.

I am curious how clear yellow water can create "impurities" like that as you suggest.

We'll see how the wash goes.