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Thanks Sakkadelic. Good to hear your results merkin.

I went ahead and tried acidifying harmala FB with a pH meter;

- Freshly filtered harmala FB (~6g) was moved into a new jar (filter and all, didn't bother drying beyond squeezing).
- 400ml of water added
- pH measured 9.5
- Started adding vinegar. Withing a few seconds pH would drop, and then increase as harmalas went into solution. I didn't wait to reach equilibrium, I just added vinegar and verified pH dropped and continued to increase.
- This kept on happening, until I noticed the pH stopped increasing. The pH meter was at 5.5 at this point. I may have been able to end up a little higher. A possible approach is to go to pH~ 6, verify pH increases, and keep on adding vinegar until the pH stops bouncing back, trying to end with as high of a pH as possible.
- I filtered the solution. A lot of gunk was not dissolved and caught by the filter. The color of the solution was yellow/orange, not the typical red (left jar in image below).
- To test if some of the gunk in the filter could be a "new catch", I tried to dissolve it in vinegar (pH~2.7). A lot of it of it did. The solution it made looks brown (right jar on image below).

What could be going on is that in the pH region between 2.7 and 5.5 gunk that we don't want becomes soluble. Targeting the pH during the acid step as high as possible (~6) while not seeing the harmala "bounce back" (indicating harmalas are done dissolving) could be beneficial to separate more impurities.

<blockquote data-quote="Loveall" data-source="post: 3757301" data-attributes="member: 20">Thanks Sakkadelic. Good to hear your results merkin.I went ahead and tried acidifying harmala FB with a pH meter;- Freshly filtered harmala FB (~6g) was moved into a new jar (filter and all, didn&#039;t bother drying beyond squeezing).- 400ml of water added- pH measured 9.5- Started adding vinegar. Withing a few seconds pH would drop, and then increase as harmalas went into solution. I didn&#039;t wait to reach equilibrium, I just added vinegar and verified pH dropped and continued to increase.- This kept on happening, until I noticed the pH stopped increasing. The pH meter was at 5.5 at this point. I may have been able to end up a little higher. A possible approach is to go to pH~ 6, verify pH increases, and keep on adding vinegar until the pH stops bouncing back, trying to end with as high of a pH as possible.- I filtered the solution. A lot of gunk was not dissolved and caught by the filter. The color of the solution was yellow/orange, not the typical red (left jar in image below).- To test if some of the gunk in the filter could be a &quot;new catch&quot;, I tried to dissolve it in vinegar (pH~2.7). A lot of it of it did. The solution it made looks brown (right jar on image below).What could be going on is that in the pH region between 2.7 and 5.5 gunk that we don&#039;t want becomes soluble. Targeting the pH during the acid step as high as possible (~6) while not seeing the harmala &quot;bounce back&quot; (indicating harmalas are done dissolving) could be beneficial to separate more impurities.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Loveall, post: 3757301, member: 20"] Thanks Sakkadelic. Good to hear your results merkin. I went ahead and tried acidifying harmala FB with a pH meter; - Freshly filtered harmala FB (~6g) was moved into a new jar (filter and all, didn't bother drying beyond squeezing). - 400ml of water added - pH measured 9.5 - Started adding vinegar. Withing a few seconds pH would drop, and then increase as harmalas went into solution. I didn't wait to reach equilibrium, I just added vinegar and verified pH dropped and continued to increase. - This kept on happening, until I noticed the pH stopped increasing. The pH meter was at 5.5 at this point. I may have been able to end up a little higher. A possible approach is to go to pH~ 6, verify pH increases, and keep on adding vinegar until the pH stops bouncing back, trying to end with as high of a pH as possible. - I filtered the solution. A lot of gunk was not dissolved and caught by the filter. The color of the solution was yellow/orange, not the typical red (left jar in image below). - To test if some of the gunk in the filter could be a "new catch", I tried to dissolve it in vinegar (pH~2.7). A lot of it of it did. The solution it made looks brown (right jar on image below). What could be going on is that in the pH region between 2.7 and 5.5 gunk that we don't want becomes soluble. Targeting the pH during the acid step as high as possible (~6) while not seeing the harmala "bounce back" (indicating harmalas are done dissolving) could be beneficial to separate more impurities. [/QUOTE]