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Home-made pine tar makes ammonia when mixed with NaOH solution. Why?
I made some pine tar using a home-made retort that allowed the wood to be heated in anoxic conditions for 2 1/2 hours at around 300 Celsius. A coffee tin sized pyrolisis chamber ended up producing about 250 ml of a nice goopy dark brown tar, with a pleasant campfire like scent. However, when attempting make a pine tar soap, the scent changes dramatically to a horrid ammonia like odor when the tar is mixed with lye solution. What chemical/compound in the tar would be reacting with the NaOH to make ammonia? Would it be some sort of phenol? Is there any way that phenols, or any other chemical responsible for the reaction, can be removed from the tar using a simple laboratory method? I recently discovered that a few vet-grade tars (such as Auson and a lesser known brand) do not develop this ammonia scent when mixed with lye, so obviously those tars are undergoing some sort of secondary processing to remove any problematic compounds. Either that, or their production method doesn’t produce the offending chemicals to begin with.
If there is a simple laboratory method to cleanse the tar of any impurities that cause this problem, and would it be feasible to perform this operation in one’s garage with modest lab gear?
Thank you for any insights that anyone could provide.
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1 Reply
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Adding lye to pine tar?
What is your recipe? Think pine tar is an additive to the oils/lard and then saponified.
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