Acid-base reaction is screwing up my synthesis I'm gonna get kicked all the way to the Moon, but whatever.

I am doing some nitroglycerin. I know the process, since the reaction itself is pretty basic. I know that it is an electrophilic substitution and that it releases a hell lot of energy. I've handled that with an ice bath and by doing the respective stoichiometry. I add around 5 ml of glycerol every 10 minutes.

All of that works great, until I have to do the wash. I've learned how to do washing and extractions from MIT's OCW. Nitroglycerin is insoluble in water, so I require water to wash the mixture and pull out the acid. &lt;- There's the problem. When I'm doing the wash, the temperature rises and a runway reaction begins.

Any advice, besides the usual: "Just… don't"?
Just do a decantation. Simply discard the acid layer and then do the wash.