Greetings
I recently bought myself a soxhlet extractor, except I don't know the first thing about thimbles. There's a whole world of them. Glass and quartz fiber, cellulite, etc. Very confusing. I have a few ideas of how I wish to use it. First, I plan on trying to extract that oil I once got from potassium carbonate using ethanol (see my other post). So I will be putting potassium carbonate crystals into the thimble and cycling ethanol through the system. Any idea what kind of thimble to use?
Second, I would like to find a way to filter out very finely minced plant matter (pulped in a food processor) from an aqueous solution of potassium carbonate. You think this would be easy, but the extract I am trying to get is very rich in chlorophyll and is readily absorbed in fiber or cloth, like a coffee filter. I tried a plastic mesh screen, but it wasn't fine enough and fine plant particles were left behind in a kind of gelatinous-looking mass. So I need something that won't absorb the chlorophyll extract but fine enough to catch all the tiny plant particulate. I thought maybe a glass fiber filter would work, but have no idea what pore size to use. Any ideas?
Thanks!
Frater EIE