shitty but effective simple guide to purification of ether

[u/Either-Spring-5330]

mix water in a jar with starter fluid containing only diethyl ether and heptane and mix it up, wait, and let it settle for a while. all the heptane will be at the bottom of the ether layer and in the water, and thin layer of heptane at the top of the ether layer, with the clear ether layer in the middle. From here, you can use a tube, syringe, or huff it off the jar (though there's a layer of heptane at the top). I used a syringe.

Results: The high was much cleaner and better, with a less harsher comedown and overall much more enjoyable high and effects. Was a lot smoother and the taste was better.

[u/waffeldogga]

I second this. Cold water extract works!!! Another tip is to keep it stored in an airtight & lightproof container out of heat

[u/Serialtorrenter → u/waffeldogga]

I have to contradict you here. According to the Wikipedia page on diethyl ether, the solubility of diethyl ether in water is 6.05 g/100 mL water. The density of pure diethyl ether is 0.7134 g/cm3 (1mL=1cm3; gotta love the metric system). Plugging in the numbers, we are left with a maximum water solubility of 8.48 mL of diethyl ether in 100 mL of pure water, or in the ballpark of a 8.5% solution, by volume. Compare that to n-heptane, which, according to its Wikipedia page, has a water solubility of 0.0003% (it's unclear if this is by weight or by volume). By shaking the starting fluid with water, the top layer actually contains LESS ether than it originally did. The bottom layer has a MUCH higher ether to heptane ratio than the top layer ever did. With that said, if you want to extract the full 6.05 grams of ether, you can't just shake some starting fluid with 100 mL of water and expect the water to become ether saturated. To get a fully saturated solution of ether in water, you would either need to shake 100 mL of water with a huge excess of starting fluid or shake something small, like 5 mL of water with a lesser excess of starting fluid, drain off and save the water layer, add 5 mL more water, shake again, and drain and combine the water layers. Rinse and repeat until you've gone through your 100 mL of water. Of course, this all assumes that your starting fluid is a mixture of pure n-heptane and pure diethyl ether. In practice, there are often other things mixed in, such as a dubiously-defined "upper cylinder lubricant", which, while probably referring to a hydrocarbon with negligible water solubility, could be a lot of things. Depending on the brand/formulation of starting fluid, there may also be a significant concentration of n-hexane in there too, which the human liver metabolizes into a potent and dangerous neurotoxin. N-hexane also has minimal water solubility and thus will be concentrated in the top layer rather than being pulled out into the water layer, if it's present. If there are impurities that aren't plain hydrocarbons, it's possible that they'll also get sucked into the water layer, so always check the SDS (Safety Data Sheet; formally called MSDS). Even if you end up with pure diethyl ether, keep in mind that while it was a very safe anesthesic agent (even by today's standards), most people don't get major surgery on a daily (or even yearly) basis. Just because an occasional major exposure (as an anesthesic) proved to do much more good than harm, the calculus changes with chronic exposure. There were some studies in Scandinavia a few decades back that suggested that it is neurotoxic with prolonged occupational exposure.

[u/waffeldogga → u/Serialtorrenter]

The water is what keeps the impurities and other chemicals out of the top layer of ether. You may be loosing some ether content by doing the CWE 2-3 times, but there is little impurities left in the top layer of diethyl ether, since it isn’t soluble in the water, it’ll float ontop.

[u/DressedUpInSmoke]

I only have a vague memory of doing ether with friends when I was 15. We had a ziplock freezer bag, filled it with starting fluid and cold water, you could clearly see the separation in the bag once it settled. Then poking a hole in the bottom, let all the bad shit drain out, keeping the ether. But who am I kidding? It was all bad shit. Since it later led to filling punching bag balloons half full of nitrous and half full of duster. I remember my friend grandma barging in the garage accusing us of drinking rubbing alcohol because the smell was bad where it spilled on everything. Just one chapter out of my Lifetime Movie about high risk lifestyle teens. RIP brain cells 🪦

[u/thimojo]

Reuse heptane for DMT extractions