A jaunt with CIELO. Eventually others...

[Transform]

Looking back at your photo of the mother plant, there's some floppy, overgrown PC specimens in my own collection that are just begging for a nice lie down in some obliging compost.

 

[DetritusTheEgo]

Did my second CIELO extract today. I am going to do the slow crystallization method again so won't know the yields until later in the week. I did save all the values associated with the calculator this time which I will throw up in the other thread Loveall created for it. This time the process was on 100g of Bouncing Bear Botanical bridgesii instead of the no name PC in my first.

How do you think this wet crumb is versus last time? I did the 130ml primary and then 10% aka 7ml of the reserve, mixed and mixed, then 7ml again, and repeated until my 70ml reserve was fully exhausted. It was not dropping any water when squeezed hard and had a feeling I could add another 7ml or more to it but stopped at 70ml. The pull process was easier with this amount of water as I didn't get sediment when I collected from the french press. This translated to less time and less solvent evaporation.


I was curious what would happen if I used a tool that is capable of squeezing with greater intensity than the french press. I already had one of these hand juicer presses. I pulled half the cacti material out of the french press and dumped it into a coffee filter. I then put the loaded filter into the press and squeezed. Then did the other half. I got another 25-30g of liquid out of it. There is for sure some water contamination in it which is totally fine:


I decanted off the ethyl acetate and am going to figure out how the tek suggests handling water. I'm guessing it is sodium carbonate since the solvent reuse process adds water and sodium carbonate. For now I've left it in a separate container. If I can recoup a tad more ethyl acetate with some decanting and water removal I'll take it.

 

[Loveall]

Did my second CIELO extract today. I am going to do the slow crystallization method again so won't know the yields until later in the week. I did save all the values associated with the calculator this time which I will throw up in the other thread Loveall created for it. This time the process was on 100g of Bouncing Bear Botanical bridgesii instead of the no name PC in my first.

How do you think this wet crumb is versus last time? I did the 130ml primary and then 10% aka 7ml of the reserve, mixed and mixed, then 7ml again, and repeated until my 70ml reserve was fully exhausted. It was not dropping any water when squeezed hard and had a feeling I could add another 7ml or more to it but stopped at 70ml. The pull process was easier with this amount of water as I didn't get sediment when I collected from the french press. This translated to less time and less solvent evaporation.
View attachment 110621View attachment 110620View attachment 110619

I was curious what would happen if I used a tool that is capable of squeezing with greater intensity than the french press. I already had one of these hand juicer presses. I pulled half the cacti material out of the french press and dumped it into a coffee filter. I then put the loaded filter into the press and squeezed. Then did the other half. I got another 25-30g of liquid out of it. There is for sure some water contamination in it which is totally fine:
View attachment 110618View attachment 110617

I decanted off the ethyl acetate and am going to figure out how the tek suggests handling water. I'm guessing it is sodium carbonate since the solvent reuse process adds water and sodium carbonate. For now I've left it in a separate container. If I can recoup a tad more ethyl acetate with some decanting and water removal I'll take it.

Those wet crumbs look much better It's really just a little bit of practice, and once you aquire the skill you got it forever.

What I would do with the decanted EA is simply add it to your main extraction jar. As long as you are salting with fumaric you do not need to worry about the EA being more wet. Avoid citric if doing this.

I think you found a way to recover more EA from the ~100g that gets stuck in the crumbs. You can use you juicer after all the pulls are done and add that extra decanded EA to the main jar.

Curious as to how much EA is stuck in the crumbs with your method (~= weight of wet of crumbs after juicer squeeze - weigh of wet crumbs before first pull).

 

[DetritusTheEgo]

Those wet crumbs look much better It's really just a little bit of practice, and once you aquire the skill you got it forever.

Thanks, I have a bit of practice doing field capacity mixing for mushroom substrates which came in handy but for sure just need to do it a few times to get the feel. I do have a stand mixer so may give that a shot next as I saw it called out as an optional process upgrade.

Curious as to how much EA is stuck in the crumbs with your method (~= weight of wet of crumbs after juicer squeeze - weigh of wet crumbs before first pull).

I will do a proper before / after calculation on the next extract. I was pretty thorough with recording weights but of course lapsed doing a specific before and after the pressing since I ended up doing it in the kitchen instead of the area I had setup for the tek. I may be able to infer it based on other data points I have written down and will take a more thorough look later.

Edit with some math:
-----------------------------
Total EA In: 1,700g
Total EA Out: 1,621g
EA trapped in cacti: 79g
EA + Water from press: 36g
Decanted EA: 27g
EA trapped in cacti after press: ~52g


One item I did notice with the calculator when you use the 1xEA method it uses 3g of fumaric and 850g ethyl acetate. When you do the 2xEA method your doing 1700g ethyl acetate but maintaining 3g fumaric. Both are prior to ~100g ethyl acetate loss. I didn't have issues crashing the mescaline out of the ethyl acetate and I used 2xEA method both times. I'm assuming scaling fumaric with total ethyl acetate usage isn't necessary? How / why is that, from a scientific perspective, the case?

 

[Transform]

I'm assuming scaling fumaric with total ethyl acetate usage isn't necessary? How / why is that, from a scientific perspective, the case?

I'd assume FA scales to the amount of cactus, plus a tiny amount extra to account for any trace solubility of M fumarate. The excess acid should help push that MF out of solution.

 

[DetritusTheEgo]

I took a look at the calculator javascript and the related math it's doing. Seems like it is indeed scaling the fumaric acid @ .03g per 1g of cacti powder ( .05g of citric per ), you start the tek with and not at all associated with the scaled amount of ethyl acetate. Figured it may be pH related which in my assumption would scale based on solvent. I'll have to look more at the acid salting work to get a better understanding of the nuance.

Thanks to _Trip_ for replying to Lazy alkaloid salting combos (CISLO) today I found the related thread to read which likely will enlighten me to more of the how.