Practical Alchemy - An Introduction

[Florius Frammel]

Thanks!

For liquids I think I read somewhere that they simply hanged a piece of cloth in it. The different components of a mixture soak in with different velocity. Under the cloth a bowl or flask is placed wherein the cloth is hanged to get the different fractions.

If I remeber correctly this method was as well called "distillation per descensum".

But as soot isn't liquid, French probably meant the other method you described. Would have been too easy.

Concerning your last described experiment: Have you sealed your setup (the one with the 250ml flask in the mouth of an one gallon jug) hermetically/airtight?

 

[theFool]

For liquids I think I read somewhere that they simply hanged a piece of cloth in it. The different components of a mixture soak in with different velocity. Under the cloth a bowl or flask is placed wherein the cloth is hanged to get the different fractions.

If I remeber correctly this method was as well called "distillation per descensum"

This is "distillation per filter" or something like that. (Here a description: http://www.alchemywebsite.com/lully_experiments.html )

 

[z0 K]

Thanks!

For liquids I think I read somewhere that they simply hanged a piece of cloth in it. The different components of a mixture soak in with different velocity. Under the cloth a bowl or flask is placed wherein the cloth is hanged to get the different fractions.

If I remeber correctly this method was as well called "distillation per descensum".

But as soot isn't liquid, French probably meant the other method you described. Would have been too easy.

Concerning your last described experiment: Have you sealed your setup (the one with the 250ml flask in the mouth of an one gallon jug) hermetically/airtight?

The flasks were wrapped with drywall paper tape to fill the gap between the jug mouths and the flask mouths making a tight seal so no vapors escaped. You have to rotate the flask when the vapors thin as direct heat of the gas stove burner heats the bottom of the flask hotter than the top.

 

[JDP]

The flasks were wrapped with drywall paper tape to fill the gap between the jug mouths and the flask mouths making a tight seal so no vapors escaped. You have to rotate the flask when the vapors thin as direct heat of the gas stove burner heats the bottom of the flask hotter than the top.

Or you could just use a hand-held propane torch and heat the top of the flask whenever needed.

 

[Florius Frammel]

The flasks were wrapped with drywall paper tape to fill the gap between the jug mouths and the flask mouths making a tight seal so no vapors escaped. You have to rotate the flask when the vapors thin as direct heat of the gas stove burner heats the bottom of the flask hotter than the top.

I guess you were using especially thick walled glassware right? Weren't you afraid of an explosion using tightly sealed setups when heating material that produce vapors when heated strongly?

 

[Kiorionis]

You cannot use descensum distillation with wet matter. I bought a second kiln with the idea to modify it for descensum distillation as well as for routine calcination.

When I started to work on retort designs for descensum there were a lot of technical problems I foresaw like how to keep the dry matter from falling down into the receiver. If the screen is fine enough to prevent material from falling through it will also clogg with soot and tar causing a smoky blowout.

Perhaps a variation of this design will work better?

-photo taken from Rasa Shastra by Andrew Mason

 

[z0 K]

I guess you were using especially thick walled glassware right? Weren't you afraid of an explosion using tightly sealed setups when heating material that produce vapors when heated strongly?

No, just cheap borosilicate glass. The receivers are much larger than the reaction flasks and they are sitting in a dish of water to cool them helping prevent the pressure from rising. The paper seal is tight enough to keep the vapors in the receiver but will fail if pressure in the system becomes too great. Before that happens an observant operator will put a cold water soaked cloth on the receiver to cool it further.

 

[z0 K]

Perhaps a variation of this design will work better?

-photo taken from Rasa Shastra by Andrew Mason

Looks pretty complicated to make compared to a horizontal distillation train. I like to keep things as simple as possible.

 

[Kiorionis]

Haha true. This setup is for the extraction of Mercury from Gold, however. It is probably a lot safer than a horizontal train when it comes to mercury fumes though.

But I agree, simplicity is much easier to deal with.

 

[Seraphim]

Literally looks how the Sages describe. That's a lot of cow dung.

 

[Blacksmith]

Yes, because without it there is no way of making the Stone.

Sorry but i don't understand how the secret solvent it's used n the process of make the stone, dissolve gold? Why?