TEK Ethyl acetate approach [CIELO]

[Introspection]

The mucilage in a still-hydrated piece of cactus would risk making an utter mess with this first step, although early addition of CaCl₂ might possibly calm it down a bit. This is if San Pedro mucilage behaves similarly to Opuntia mucilage, which it might do.

If it works it would makethe beginnings of a nice CWE approach for cactus extraction, but I'd anticipate further technical hurdles.

It would be helpful to see the salient technical quotes from the opuntia paper appended to your post for greater ease of appraisal.

To be honest there is no direct evidence that it is easier to filter, but there is strong evidence that physical properties of the mucilage are impacted. And some of these physical changes might make it easier to filter, which is why I found this an interesting approach to try. I did also find some additional studies. Unfortunately they used alginate hydrogels instead of cactus mucilage, but here they reported syneresis (the expulsion of water from the gel) that increased as the concentration of Ca2+ ions was increased:

• https://nprlab.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Nunamaker_JMBBM2011.pdf
• https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0268005X18315595

I understand it's a long shot, but I believe there is enough evidence that it's bound to do something. Whether that something makes it easier to filter is really difficult to predict, but I might be worthwhile to give it a shot.

Interesting idea

One issue is in step 5: you would have quite a lot of liquid with dissolved CaCl2 in it and drying it would be more difficult than drying cactus itself.

Honestly the CaCl2 approach would probably be easiest for testing different Ca2+ concentrations, as it readily dissolves into water. Just to test if the idea itself can work to make the pulp filterable. Once that has been validated, the actual better compound to use would probably be Calcium Carbonate. Either by itself, if it is able to provide enough Ca2+ ions as-is, or by combining it with CO2 to create Calcium Bicarbonate to improve solubility. Excess could be filtered out by letting the CO2 escape, which would turn it back into Calcium Carbonate which should precipitate out of solution. You would then have a full alkaloid extraction with some Calcium Carbonate, but since Calcium Carbonate barely dissolves it wouldn't be a lot. The result could be ingested as-is, or be used for further extraction through TEKs such as CIELO.

Edit: Isopropyl alcohol & Acetone definitely work to cause the cactus mucilage to precipitate, making it possible to easily filter. The downside is the enormous amounts you need. You need ~3 times the volume in water as solvent, which makes this impractical. But perhaps Ca2+ would make the threshold for precipitation much lower?

Edit 2: The second advantage of Calcium Carbonate + CO2, is that dissolved Calcium Bicarbonate might precipitate as Calcium Carbonate as CO2 bubbles off inside the Mucilage matrix, pulling it out of solution. Not sure if that's what would actually happen, but hey, you never know.

 

[Quetzal7]

I had thought about fresh cactus approach before ;
I placed a nice chunk in the vitamix to see how it goes. It get surprisingly liquid... very liquid ( last time i checked, the cactus was 96% water, so it makes sense).
I tried drying it as is : slower and very messy ! ( the intent was to see if i could grind it fresh rather than dry, and if it would possibly be easier)

I also tried to add directly Calcium hydorxide to the wet soup , dry it and then extract ; this helped a lot to let it dry ; the results were inconclusive but i didn't insisted because at that point i wasn"t sure there was any benefit to this approach.
Now, i have a slowjuicer ; i could try to pass the cactus through it... you think the alkaloids would be mostly in the juice???
But i doubt this would be efficient approach :/

 

[Quetzal7]

also, grinder fresh cactus seems easier ; but the quantity is much bigger.

 

[Loveall]

I read reports of good results with freeze drying and grinding that to a powder. The grinding is nearly instant.

BUT a freeze dryer is needed. With that monetary investment the process could be streamlined to get to the wet crumbs.

I didn't add this to the TEK as it has not been extensively tested. I can't do it myself either.