There is a thread on mycotopia with some comments/questions about our process. I cannot get their site to work properly (validation email never gets to me). I'll try to answer here, I imagine other folks will have similar questions.

I don't know why it hasn't been mentioned before (or at least why we haven't found mention of it). There is a related example with acetone, citric acid, and bufotenine and I believe that mostly unknow until fairly recently. Perhaps it is because standard LLE A/B works on general, and these specific shortcut plant-dependent TEKs take a lot of trial and error to find (it's 95% errors for me ). For example this same process is not working well for DMT from root bark. It makes sense for a research to just apply a more general approach and not spin their wheels optimizing for one compound in one type of plant. I could be wrong though, this is all speculation.

I received the same feedback here. Process details have been added in response. It was my mistake to not include those, I thought the TEK would be easier to read if it was less "wordy", moving the details elsewhere for those interested, but I was wrong based on people's feedback.

Not sure this is a very hard question to answer, but we can say a few things. Tried acetone and it did not work well. Also tried IPA and several other solvent/salt combinations. Could be because it is infinitely soluble with water and a lot of plant stuff comes through interfering with xtalization. Limonene and Xylene would pull mescaline, but cannot be salted directly with citric acid since it is not soluble. Limonene + FASI have worked for some in the past and that process is similar to this one, but in my experience and biased opinion CIELO is less work and more robust (main issue I found with limonene + FASI was product being unfilterable/undefeatable wisp. MEK was tested briefly, but it absorbs more water than ethyl acetate and focus of experiments shifter towards ethyl acetate (MEK may also work ?).

I disagree with this. Citric acid has 3 protons with pKa < mescaline's pKa, so three mescaline molecules should react with one molecule of citric acid. This makes it 90% as strong as mescaline HCl and just as strong as mescaline sulfate dihydrate. Note that this is an assumption and we could be wrong, but the bioassay matches this for that it's worth

We are also assuming that mescaline citrate is anhydrous and that could be wrong (however, no significant weight change was noted in an oven dry test).

Edit: Actually, the citric acid may not fully react. If the dihydrate salt precipitates immediately then we could have a product that is 62% less potent by weight.

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There where questions about other acids. Shroombee tested malic acid and it did not work. Sulfuric sort of worked, but a separate layer forms, so we have been avoiding acids that carry water. There were also questions/concerns about stronger non-organic acids (e.g. HCl) breaking down ehtyl acetate - it is relatively easy to hydrolyze into ethanol and acetic acid. Sticking to citric acid seems to work well.

There were also some comments about the motivation behind the TEK. It is harm reduction/health maximization. Accurate dosing is part of the setting and important for responsible use and a pure product provides that. Also, use of toxic/more "dangerous" chemicals is minimized. Reuse of ethyl acetate is emphasized to make the TEK green. Scientists and indigenous people agree that use of psychedelics can enhance feelings of connectedness to nature (scientists add that  psychedelics may improve brain health through neuroplasticity). These effects in turn could help people make better choices for themselves and for the future of the planet. Developing another process to isolate clean mescaline is an attempt to add a small grain of sand in that general direction.

Cheers and happy to try to answer any other relevant questions.