So nonpolar molecules dissolve very well, but a lot with polar moieties get chewed up by this super acid-super base mix (the pH scale os like -2 to 26 or something bizarre like that).

Your heated water is only a tiny tad towards that, but you have lots of room to play (an accelerated solvent extraction system modified just so might make a good device for crystallizing stuff).

Yesterday I had to form HBr to react with an intermediate to form a triphenylcyclopropenium cation. First (for the first time in years) I had to flame some glass tubing found in the old chem building. After tweaking with it for the best part of an hour it was just the right shape and the total equipment was spread across three heater stirrers in a six-foot hood. Any day that starts with having to make your own apparatus is a good one.

Cooled bromine drops into tetralin which is piped through the glass tubing to a second tetralin trap to catch any residual Br2. Then through another set of tubes into the reaction solution in benzene. (Displacement of the o-Bu side chain for those interested).

Naturally I wanted the bromine to stay cool and not fume, so a splash of LN2 should fix that. Alas it fixed it too well, I should have checked the melting point of bromine first.

Nevertheless “all’s well that end’s well” as the Bard used to say. After a few minutes of defrosting with a hair dryer the bromine dropped in, the HBr was formed and finally the desired product started to drop out… and out… and out! Seven grams later, I have enough cationic complex to be in business for years.

There is also no other good way of showing you still have synthetic chops to the grads and undergrads by construction monstrous glassware apparatus that actually work.