Swim finished extraction earlier today. Heptane pulls were combined, reduced and put in a fridge. The heptane containg beaker was wrapped in Parafilm.

In 10 hours swim picked up the beaker planning to move it to a freezer. All of sudden the layer of parafilm covering the beaker's top disintegrated. It feels very brittle and breaks after a slightest touch. Parafilm was not touching heptane, but swim is still worried that it may have reacted somehow with heptane and contaminated the product.

Earlier swim used food wrapping film with no ill effect.

it's not going to react with the product because heptane is nonpolar (neither acidic, nor basic) so it doesn't initiate reactions like protonated solutions.. but you could heat the heptane up again, and crash [spice] out

Then why the parafilm that was exposed to heptane vapor has deteriorated?

I simply removed the parafilm and wrapped the beaker with the food film as usual. Now it has been sitting in the freezer for 2 hours with no visible signs of precipitation.

Any reason I should heat it? It has already been reduced to 1/8th of the original volume.

Well, I have to confess that this heptane is a combination of pulls from my experimentation with different leavening agents in order to avoid my extractor clogging. I tried Vermiculite, Perlite, coarse sand, DE and various their combinations. The main purpose was to find a solution to extractor clogging. Some spice would be a bonus. I used 100 g of mhrb and would be glad to get half a gram of spice. The smell of spice and some hope is still there.

Another strange thing has happened during the basification stage. I could not rise the solution pH to over 12.5. Its pH and color (medium coffee with milk) remained the same regardless of how much lye I dumped into it. And starting pH was relatively high - 3.88.

Could that be that those leavening agents somehow reacted with vinegar, NaOH, heptane, or spice? I am not a chemist but they seem inactive.

OK. Let it sit for the night in the freezer.

Thank you.

parafilm is made of elastomers which are nonpolar. heptane is also nonpolar.

like dissolves like.

I can substitute heptane with octane right? (related to spice extractions, of course)

yes

it'll just have a higher boiling point, but will still freeze precip.