ijahdan said:
Just tried this CIELO tek for the first time. All went smoothly till the salting stage. I went with the 'dropping 2.5g citric acid into the EA, no stirring' option to start with. A few clouds formed as the citric acid crystals descended through the solution, but, on reaching the bottom of the jar, they refused to dissolve. After a few hours, I added another 2.5g and stirred till all acid crystals had dissolved (only a few minutes of stirring with a spoon). The solution was now cloudy.
Checked the next day, and still cloudy solution, but no sign of crystal formation on the bottom or sides of the jar.
After 72 hours, the solution was clear. I poured it off through a coffee filter into another jar, swirling the last bit around. I now had a new jar of clear solution, a coffee filter with nothing visible in it, and my original jar with a tiny bit of off-white sediment stuck to the bottom.
Decided to add another 10g citric acid to the filtered solution, mix till dissolved and set aside. This seemed to work, lots of needle-shaped crystals were forming and floating to the bottom of the jar. The next day there appeared to be a nice amount of these settled on the bottom. Meanwhile, the first jar had now dried fully and quite a few crystals had formed on the inside walls and base. Ill collect these with hot water, and try to catch the ones from the other jar with a filter paper again. Will compare weights of each batch.
Just thought Id mention this, in case anyone tries the first method without much success. Maybe it would be better to just go straight to the '15g plus stirring till dissolved' method of salting?
On a side note, does anyone know if mescaline citrate can be cleaned with anhydrous ice cold acetone, the same method as for mescaline hcl? I'm asking because I did an evaporation test on my supposedly 99.7% pure ethyl acetate and it left a small amount of oily residue...
I noticed the tek has been changed to the method you mentioned. When doing the passive crystallization option, I generally salt with the 5g rate, though i generally run smaller batches and adjust proportionately. And, I always stir until cloudy, then let settle. Additionally, I have tested settling time (results in an earlier post): 48 hrs for passive, and 3 hours for active, seem to be the points of significant diminishing returns.
I have over 60 runs under my belt since nailing the tek, using both passive and active salting methods, and every single one of them, has ended up with almost 100% in the filter, the first time, at the expected quality level.
I have done tests, in a recent post on this thread, comparing passive and active salting methods, including running the active method at both 5g and 15g citrate rates. My results showed no difference in quantity or quality between passive 5g, active 5g, snd active 15g rates. Although the forms are different, with passive producing needles and active producing powder.
One thing that is important in avoiding getting crappy product, is to wash the salting jar with fresh EA after pouring the product into the filter, and washing the product in the filter with fresh EA to remove the last bits of color. Additionally, before washing the jar with water, the EA must be completely evaporated from it, or the wash will be contaminated and will not subsequently evaporate cleanly.
I have also posted some preliminary work, a few pages back, on rehabbing product that was crappy from a few early runs before i fully nailed the tek. The product is cleanable with anhydrous acetone (it does not seem to dissolve the crystallized M, or at least not completely, but does remove colored molecules to some extent), but my run only had an 18% recovery, which was likely because there was not much
mescaline in it to begin with, and it did not result in the white needles that i expected. An alternative that does work well quality-wise, i have no basis to judge quantity performance of 15-20% recovery, is to re-run the crappy product as part of another powder run. This method works with a run that uses as little as 5g fresh powder, with all other ingredients reduced proportionately.
This tek has a learning curve. Sounds like you actually did well for your first run. Took me 6 runs to nail it.
Looking forward to hearing about your future successes.
. Economics are OK: in bulk it's ~$7 a pound, enough to clear up a lot of EA I think.
