I recently REMOVED 500 grams worth of ACRB REMOVED which seems to be a bad idea, according to what some say) and tried doing Cyb's extraction with 50 grams worth. It was my first time, so my first failure was probably on me being a newbie to the whole operation, not soaking long enough, or whatever, but the yield was absolutely nothing, just a pinprick worth of some useless gunk.
My latest extraction I tried to do better, acid soak for an hour, basified mix soaked for an hour as well in the hot water bath. Naphtha pulls done while in the hot water bath, with the mix shaken around well enough (there were a lot of bubble within the naphtha for long after the separation). I did one pull to see if the bark was any good, since the first pulls have the most in them, and freeze precipitated it for 15+ hours with no crystals.
When I blew on the naphtha it produced white strands, and the whole thing was cloudy, which I took to be a good sign. Since no crystals formed at all, I resorted to evaporating the whole thing to see if any goo would be left. The whole thing, when evaporated, left absolutely nothing, and as before, when I scraped up what was in the container, just a pinprick of useless gunk remained.
One thing I should mention is that the only way in which I diverged from Cyb's tek was by using sodium carbonate (or at least I think it was sodium carbonate, it was a mix meant to raise alkalinity in pools, and the substance released noxious fumes when hot water was poured over it) instead of lye, and used just enough so that the litmus test showed that the ACRB mix was strongly basic.
Does this mean I started out with bad root bark? Has anyone had any experience with bad ACRB before and what did the extraction go like?
My latest extraction I tried to do better, acid soak for an hour, basified mix soaked for an hour as well in the hot water bath. Naphtha pulls done while in the hot water bath, with the mix shaken around well enough (there were a lot of bubble within the naphtha for long after the separation). I did one pull to see if the bark was any good, since the first pulls have the most in them, and freeze precipitated it for 15+ hours with no crystals.
When I blew on the naphtha it produced white strands, and the whole thing was cloudy, which I took to be a good sign. Since no crystals formed at all, I resorted to evaporating the whole thing to see if any goo would be left. The whole thing, when evaporated, left absolutely nothing, and as before, when I scraped up what was in the container, just a pinprick of useless gunk remained.
One thing I should mention is that the only way in which I diverged from Cyb's tek was by using sodium carbonate (or at least I think it was sodium carbonate, it was a mix meant to raise alkalinity in pools, and the substance released noxious fumes when hot water was poured over it) instead of lye, and used just enough so that the litmus test showed that the ACRB mix was strongly basic.
Does this mean I started out with bad root bark? Has anyone had any experience with bad ACRB before and what did the extraction go like?
