These are VERY basic questions from an old post, so I'm sorry to bother my more erudite companions, but I would like the help.
These are taken from the seminal (and most excellent) post of this thread since many posts have come since then.
>Materials:
>25g MHRB
>Hydrochloric acid
>Lye
>Methanol
>Solvent(Naptha,Toulene,Xylene etc)
>Filter papers
>A few glass jars
>Sep funnel
Q1: The lye intended in this lye is Red Devil Lye a.k.a. NaOH, correct? Can I just use the NaOH from a lab without any modifications to the procedure?
>Okay, basically you grind your bark in a blender - it'll >end up as mostly a fine pink dust and a fibrous material, >the pink dust is where the goodies are at, but the elves >chucked the whole shebang in a glass jar and filled with >methanol, which instantly turned burgendy. This
>was allowed to settle and decanted into a funnel with >doubled up filter papers and repeated several times until >the colour had faded to almost clear again. The combined >extracts were evaporated down to a very crystalline dark >purple/black substance, scraped off and set aside.
Q2: Alright, here is where my complete ignorance shines. This is how I understand this tep, please correct or confirm (I'm guessing the former). So I run the powder/methanol solution through the funnel and discard the solids that the filters keep out. Then I keep running the methanol through the filter papers (new ones each time, I presume) until it turns clear again.
>Pour jar contents into sep funnel and seperate (and Keep!) >the bottom layer. Rinse with distilled water at least >three times or until the water is clean.
Q3: What do I rinse with water here? And to separate the two layers what is the physical procedure I need to do?
>Add another 100ml of solvent to the saved bottom layer and >let sit overnight
>Pour solvent into pyrex pan and very slowly evap the >solvent off.
Q4: For this procedure, I could use generic re/crystallization techniques with ice baths, etc., right?
>Go back to your saved jar and see if any more base has >migrated when convenient.
Q5: The saved jar is the one that was originally the thick bottom layer, right?
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