Comment by sivizius

KOH is not soap, it is used in the production of soap and KOH will make your skin to soap. Destroying anything organic by cooking it in strong lye at 120 °C with quite polar solvent is not something unexpected. It might be optimised with crown ethers or other phase-transfer catalysts, but I cannot see how this is a milder treatment than simple heating it until decomposition. To make this reaction affordable one has to extract/purify these forever-chemicals first. Otherwise, mostly other stuff will be destroyed. Lime (Ca(OH)₂) is somewhat cheaper in this quantities, maybe this reaction can be done with it. This will also bind any fluoride ions, which would make this way less toxic.