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TEK Ethyl acetate approach [CIELO]

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I think you'll easily hit that speed run, even when sticking with the old microwave step I could easily do the whole tek with decent yields in 40mins.

I do agree and still think excess water is the source of goo issues but as previously mentioned there is a certain leeway in moisture content either way.

Recently I did a run following the more recent updated tek, I tried to speed things up with a blender but aerated the paste into a dip like consistency, too hard to work with. Managed to rectify it with 2 quick bursts in the microwave for 3 mins.

Originally I use to microwave off 2/3rds of the water content, however with the newer results many here have reported I opted to try with a bit more moisture in the mix to achieve the desired consistency many have been reporting. So with the microwave I managed to rectify the dip consistency and turn it more into the desired consistency.

I managed to get a 25% increase in yield over the "drier older tek" with the same material. Just reinforcing the fact a bit of moisture is definitely key to facilitating a more efficient freebase pull.

Made me thing less water and a blender could work in achieving a good paste mix fast. Might be overkill too.
 
Congrats on your own project!

Re cielo:
A friend of mine uses an electric mixer (single beater) in his pulls. Sometime I may do side-by-sides of a few machine methods vs the std spoon method in both pastemaking and pulling. Machine-assist would definitely be easier for runs closer to the 100g powder level, may also reduce time for all powder levels.

As far as water goes, in a recent trial of the variables involved in pastemaking, in small runs at least, the amount of water in the pastemaking process can, range 33% on either side of the volume specified in the tek without affecting yield. Earlier microwaving results showed 2/3s water reduction, via microwave heating, reduces yield.
 
Update re used solvent washing:

I have 7 jars of used solvent, from various paste treatments being washed according to method in my earlier post. We already know that reused solvent works in this tek, but if cloudy, it also produces non-M precipitates after salting. So this part of the testing is to determine how to improve washing to get solvent that is as clear as possible, in a kitchen environment.

Today is 48 hrs, since the sodium carbonate addition/stirs. Getting excellent but sloooow clearing. Top ~1 inch crystal clear in all jars (will post pic later). At this rate, looks like clearing full 1-qt jars will take about a week after dumping & stirring in sodium carbonate.

Once this step is completed, two jars of washed solvent from standard runs will be separated and “dried”, from water-carbonate-sediment layer, using different methods: freezing vs pipetting-redosing with powdered sodium carbonate, then used in a side-by-side with fresh solvent, to determine yield effect.

After selecting the washing approach, I’ll finish washing the remaining jars, then run a series of tests repeating solvent reuse on the various pastemaking treatments, to get a feel for useful washed solvent life.
 
Cheelin, does your friend using a beater not get an emulsion in later pulls? I wonder how he avoided that problem. I would expect during the last pulls for the risk of emulsion to increase as the paste begins to stick to itself.
 
I saw a pic of the mixer, but not the product. He said it worked well. I do not know if that was wrt to mixing or product.
I’ll ask.

So, my friend uses the mixer for both Ephedra and Cactus, says works well for both. He made paste with mixer & likes that; and tested mixer out on the last pull of a set of cactus pulls, no emulsion. He doesn’t have enough powder atm to do runs comparing mixer on all pulls vs spoon method on all pulls.
 
Loveall said:
Sonic 30 minute run proposal:
- Make paste: 7 minutes (includes measuring ingredients and 5 minutes of stirring)
- Pulls: 9 minutes (6x1 + time to squeeze out with french press)
- Xtalize: 6 minutes (3 minutes to rest water drops out/decant, 3 minutes shaking hard with citric). While waiting for water dropplets for form, the next jar with citric in it can be prepared along with the filter assembly for the next step - so no time is wasted.
- Recover: 8 minutes to get xtals into filter, wash, dry outside of filter squeezing with paper towels and using a hair drier.
Click to expand...

Did you set a new PB?
 
Cheelin said:
Loveall said:
Sonic 30 minute run proposal:
- Make paste: 7 minutes (includes measuring ingredients and 5 minutes of stirring)
- Pulls: 9 minutes (6x1 + time to squeeze out with french press)
- Xtalize: 6 minutes (3 minutes to rest water drops out/decant, 3 minutes shaking hard with citric). While waiting for water dropplets for form, the next jar with citric in it can be prepared along with the filter assembly for the next step - so no time is wasted.
- Recover: 8 minutes to get xtals into filter, wash, dry outside of filter squeezing with paper towels and using a hair drier.
Click to expand...

Did you set a new PB?
Click to expand...

Yeah but not as good as I had hoped, 48 minutes. Actual times:

- Make paste: 6 minutes
- Pulls: 18 minutes (a lot longer than expected cause of the slow drip as I squeezed EA)
- Xtalize: 19 minutes (a lot longer than expected, I only used 1 tsp of citric, should have used 1 Tbsp)
- Recovery: 5 minutes, this was super smooth and the hair dryer removed the last of the EA almost instantly.

Anyone experienced in the TEK is welcome to try and beat this. Raw catus powder to mescaline xtals in the time it takes to bake a cake 🙂
 
I understand the need for speed urge, but prefer going for the gold without yield loss.

How’d your yield compare?

I’ll prob never break an elapsed time record, I really like seeing needles in my filter.

My speed goal is to reduce pastemaking and pulling time. I’m under 45 mins on those using std method.
 
Cheelin said:
I understand the need for speed urge, but prefer going for the gold without yield loss.

How’d your yield compare?

I’ll prob never break an elapsed time record, I really like seeing neefles in my filter.

My speed goal is to reduce pastemaking and pulling time. I’m under 45 mins on those using std method.
Click to expand...

Yield was not very good, 650mg. Should be more like 1.1g.
 
Loveall said:
Cheelin said:
I understand the need for speed urge, but prefer going for the gold without yield loss.

How’d your yield compare?

I’ll prob never break an elapsed time record, I really like seeing neefles in my filter.

My speed goal is to reduce pastemaking and pulling time. I’m under 45 mins on those using std method.
Click to expand...

Yield was not very good, 650mg. Should be more like 1.1g.
Click to expand...


I had a spill on the first pull, so not sure how much the low yield is related to going fast or the spill itself. I would not read too much into it because of this.
 
Cheelin said:
Lol, the problem with speed and chemistry. I hope no plastic was nearby.

Yep, that ruins yield comparison.
Click to expand...

Yep. Looking at the used solvent, a significant amount of xtals are still crashing. That is part of the yield loss too. I'll recover these and weigh them. Lesson is to definetly use 15g of citric per 100g of cactus to salt the quart of EA if doing a speed run. In my previous record (1 hour) I did not have this issue, and the difference was I used 15g (~1 Tbsp) instead of 5g (1 tsp).

With the higher amount of citric the solutions clears faster, so that should shave 10 minutes or more.
 
Lol, go for the gusto!

On a somewhat separate note, from the cloudiness/sediment/precipitation perspective, re solvent reuse, you might want to have separate collections of used std citrate solvent and higher concentration citrate solvents.
 
Just updated the Jan 10 post re 5g cactus powder recovery run, using: 0.9g pretty pure previously recovered needles, proportionately scaled-down std paste recipe, 5 min paste stir, 6 min rest, six 3-min pulls @ 20mL per pull, 5g citric equiv: 65.9% recovery

This is the run that Loveall suggested adding additional citric after the 48 hr filtering was done. It’s been about 5 days since then, total incremental yield from filter & jar wash 0.005g.

Will continue working to improve the crap recovery rate, as well as the general process for these tiny runs. They could be very useful for small sample assay runs. I have already demonstrated that Cielo can scale down to 5g runs, hoping to move it to test tubes soon.

This is such a fucking great tek!
 
Loveall, in my adventures, I have discovered that EA, one of the largest volume and rapidly growing commercial solvents, is not readily available to a lot of kitchen chemists. Since it is a rather simple organic molecule, made from ethanol (everclear) and acetic acid (vinagar), an obvious question is, can this be produced safely, efficiently, and effectively, for use in cielo, by lazy kitchen chemists?

Later: answered myself, doable, but is Advanced Kitchen Chemistry, due to ventilation, equipment, & 98% sulphuric acid requirements, see: Synthesis of Ethyl Acetate



Also, I have heard complaints about learning curve losses with 100g runs. Would it be possible to add a comment to the Tek/FAQ, that perhaps those learning the tek start with runs that are considerably smaller than 100g cactus powder, more like 15-20g? This would conserve ingredients, minimize regret, and potentially increase the number of learning runs for many who are new to cielo/chemical extraction.

I have found that the tek can be easily scaled down to this range by simply multiplying the recipe amounts by (grams of cactus powder to be used/100g). This includes EA volume, stated in mL rather than qt; with 25% of the calc’d volume going to 1st pull, the remainder split evenly between runs 2 through 6.

I don’t recommend learning with less than 15g of cactus powder, even though the tek does scale to at least 5g. With these very small amounts, the pulling container needs to be smaller, the total amount of solvent does not scale down proportionately (at least, not yet), and citric acid needs to be adjusted when solvent salting volume changes from tek levels.
 
Lmao, you out-lazied me!

Great job!



Btw, although the 5g runs were scaled down, the pulls were not scaled down proportionately (other ingredients were). However, I have a 5g run that will be filtered, @ 48 hrs, tomorrow, using proportionately reduced EA (47mL). If the yield does not match earlier runs that used 100 ml EA, I’ll mention this in the post you linked.

For grins, see attached volume of combined pulls, for 5g run, when proportionately scaled. I hope to move to these soon.
 

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Cheelin said:
Lmao, you out-lazied me!

Great job!



Btw, although the 5g runs were scaled down, the pulls were not scaled down proportionately (other ingredients were). However, I have a 5g run that will be filtered, @ 48 hrs, tomorrow, using proportionately reduced EA (47mL). If the yield does not match earlier runs that used 100 ml EA, I’ll mention this in the post you linked.

For grins, see attached volume of combined pulls, for 5g run, when proportionately scaled. I hope to move to these soon.
Click to expand...

Looks good. Are you going to sample small cacti pieces from the garden and check for potency? Seems like a good way to get data with minimal effort. The scaled down TEK could be useful to check a personal cacti collection and propagate the more potent plants.

I wonder if there is a better way to deal with fresh cacti (less work for the lazyman).
 
That’s been the plan.

I think the hope is that a chromatography method will be developed. I plan to learn more about that, but for now I’ll see how far I can take cielo.

If my math is correct, a 20g fresh sample will dry down to 1g, 1% of which is still measurable on common scales. You might not want to take a 20g chunk out of a plant, but you’d be willing to take 20g out of a log in your closet, to see when it’s ready to process.

[a 1 inch tall x 3” diam cross-section of 3-mos stored pach log, is about 80-100g]
 
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