In Vovin's A/B tek it calls for naphtha for defat before basifying, but I've seen heptane frequently mentioned elsewhere in the nexus for defat.

Would heptane would do any better for defatting in this situation? Can someone verify it will not pull any DMT while MHRB solution is acidic?

I have both naphtha and n-heptane so if there is a difference in performance between the two, I want to use best one for the job.

With MHRB you really shouldn't have to defat. There's much less plant fat than compared to acacia.

However, more to the point, it may be best to defeat with naphtha and do your pulls with hectare.

And while in salt form, the solvent will not grab any of the DMT.

One love

There may be less but I know there's some. I'm doing pulls with xylene.

I want to understand why hexane is mentioned elsewhere for optimal solvent to defat.

Yup, there is an Itty bit. I generally don't end up getting any my pulls.

Anyway, that's a good question. With a defat idk that it matters too much, though it is more selective which is why people recommend it for pulls.

Hopefully a Chem expert can educate us.

One love

My guess is that naphtha as a mixed hydrocarbon will be less specific than hexane. It will also have a boiling range rather than a boiling point unlike the pure solvent compounds. The low boiling point of hexane could be viewed as advantageous, especially since it's a good solvent for fats at room temperature, whereas DMT only really starts to dissolve in alkanes once they've been warmed up a fair bit.

Something something, entropy, something (it's still the holidays, I hereby reserve the right not to make sense).

You could evaporate your defat solvent after use to see whether it was really worth the bother. If there is a residue, check what it does with NaOH and so on.

DF0, as far as I'm concerned, you have the right to not make sense on every new moon, full moon, and everything in between! The only people that appear to make sense 100% of the time are the occasional character in someone's fiction, or a curtailed non-fiction, either way - boring.

Anyway, I've not had noticeable issues with fats in my final product, but I always defat before basifying, and it always seems to make visual difference somehow with reduction in foam, but I could have imagined it I suppose.

I could see how fats being soluble at room temperature with heptane would be desired over having to heat naphtha to get same results. I'd like to try it, I just don't want it to somehow botch next extraction.