[The-Differentiator]

Hi All, really excited to have made an account to join the community! I am wondering if I can get some help in trying to solve the problem I’m facing.


I am using an aqueous calcium bicarbonate solution to try and remove aluminum sulfate from my heptane layer....at least that’s what I think I’m trying to do. I must apologize as I’m still a student.

In any case, after my organic and aqueous layers have separated, There is a impurity that likes to adhere to the inside of the glass of the separatory funnel (I think Calcium Sulfate) and lives in both the water and heptane layer. It is dense so if it dislodges from the glass it will sink to the bottom.

What I’ve been doing is 1) drain as much of the impurity with the aqueous layer, 2) then shake the organic layer to dislodge as much of the impurity as possible, 3) let the dislodged impurity settle and then drain it. The fault with this method is I lose organic layer and not all of it settles and I don’t want to have to do 10 washes to remove it all.

I’ve tried filtering the organic layer through a coffee filter and it removes some of the impurity but definitely not all of it. I’m going to try to filter it through a bed of celite or a smaller micron sized filter but I’d like to ideally find a simpler solution that doesn’t require additional steps.