Originally Posted by cyccommute

You are misunderstanding what is happening when you use a solvent. When you use it on your chain, you'll get a mixture of solvent, oil and particulates. In chemistry we call this a heterogeneous mixture. You can separate the particulates from the solvent/lubricant mixture with the coffee filter. Now you'll have a homogenous mixture. A homogeneous mixture can't be separated by simple filtration. You could distill it but that's not easy to do at home nor would I suggest it, even if you had the training. And, if you had the training to do a distillation, you'd know enough not to do it at home.

The good news is that a mineral spirits will carry a lot of chain lubricant and still be very effective.