Thanks for working on the idea Mydriasis! Hmmm, seems microwave extraction is *quite* efficient given the short time of exposure to it: four minutes total boiling time! Also, if i grasp correctly you do two "boiling" runs on each right? Im thinking maybe in the future i will employ microwave + pressure cooker, first microwaving it and then subjecting it to pressure cooking. I wonder also if treating the seeds without solvent could have any effect on the extraction. Another thought i have is propably shorter but more bursts in the micro for example 1 minute bursts x 5.
The base lysis was also quite interesting. I wonder if filtering can become easier if one uses whole seeds , of course here one has the question if the seeds can be thoroughly exausted. Maybe one could prewet the seeds and freeze-thaw cycle them couple of times.
Still, in the light of the above, pressure cooking seems to work very nicely so thats a thing to note.
On the other issue, i am very interested to look at the solubility data you might accumulate. If possible , the ones that seem not to dissolve harmala alkaloids (you will try only free bases?) try heating them. If it dissolves, then this could be a way of furtherly purifying harmalas by dissolving with the aid of heat, quickly filtering and... let the harmalas fall out of solution.
On the activated carbon issue : is the heat necessary? If not, try stirring activated carbon in a room temperature solution of harmalas. I have also thought of incorporating activated carbon in the coarse filtering : before any fine filtering is done , many people stuff a funnel with cotton balls as a first filter than can capture quite a lot of "mud". I thought an interesting idea would be to put a small cotton ball in the funnel, fill some space with activated carbon and stuff another cotton ball on top. Another idea of course would be redissolving your harmala freebase in acidic water (to make them go in solution) and filter it the proposed way.
Just throwing ideas out, you never know when one will find them useful!
Great work, once more!