I've been using the quick Vortex Tek with good yields but often while doing pulls, the naptha seems to disappear after stirring the "soup." I use about 500ml of naptha for 1kg of MHRB and sometimes after stirring for 30 mins, there is barely any naptha left on top (less than 50ml). Sometimes I'll add another 500ml of naptha and stir again before separating the layers and while I'm seperating the lost naptha will seemingly appear out of nowhere and I'll be able to separate a full 1L of naptha. Other times, I can add up to a litre of naptha before stirring again, and after seperating the layers after sometimes an hour of stirring I will only be able to pull out 300ml of the original 1.5L I put in.

What's happening to my naptha?

Thanks in advance for your replies,

Info

If the naphta is trapped in the organic layer there are a few options I know of :

- Adding lye
- Heat bath
- Vibrations (motorcycle, subwoofer blasting dubstep, ...)

By the way, are you stirring or shaking ?

To be honest if your doing multile batches, just leave it for a day r two.

i do stb's all the time, and after 1 batch left for a little will produce lost naphtha onh top even if emulsions havent occured

Justine, I have been stirring. How much lye should I add to the soup?

Vibrancy3, I've tried leaving the soup sit for a day or two and was able to retrieve minimal naptha (less than 50ml).

I will try giving it some vibrations next to see if this helps.

With 1g of lye for 1g of mhrb (and around 15ml of water) you shouldn't have emulsion so just add enough to meet these criteria.

I am so glad this thread is on page one - I have just been having the same problems with my latest batch of mimosa - the 1st pull took way longer than half an hour; the 2nd took HOURS, and this 3rd pull I've had to add more solvent (another 50ml on top of the 150ml already in there, recycled and still slightly saturated) and also around 70-80g more NaOH.

Waiting game again let's see how long it takes to seperate... I hope this is a good yield - the 1st pull started yielding fat crystals in the jar, before I'd even put it in the fridge or freezer! Room temp!!

How much water do you add?
I had solvent disappear when added to a muddy mixture like in a drytek. Adding more water allowed me to regain the solvent.

I was also thinking the same thing as alzabo. Maybe you did not add enough water causing your naphtha to get "trapped" in the thickness of the mix. I have never had that problem using 10:1 ratio of water to bark.

Yup, definitely sounds like too little water was added, it can happen when using powdered bark. Adding more lye works, but SWIM uses a combo of a hot water bath, and gently rolling the jars to make it reappear. Hot water bath for 10 minutes, take out and roll jar gently for a minute or two, back to a fresh hot water bath, roll. After a couple times of doing this SWIM has usually recovered his solvent layer and eliminated any emulsions that may have occurred. If all else fails, patience is the only answer.

That's some good insight about the amount of water used - for this extraction I used less water than usual for some reason - for 145g bark I used 160cl water - think I did the math as 12ml to 1g. Just a bit of experimenting to see if I could use less than 15ml to every gram of bark.