OK, so after boiling a new tea extract I'm still not getting great elution with baking soda (confirmed no significant activity from eleute) or washing soda.

However, I did a test with a little bit of ammonia. A lot of stuff eluted based on color changes (????).

This is confusing to me since it does not seem only pH driven. Why would the ammonia elute so much more (assuming color and UV change means elution here)?

I'm confused by this, but it is what I see happening. Any help to understand is appreciated.

I'll need to find a safe way to bioassay the ammonia elute, perhaps evaping until the smell goes away and then neutralizing it. Or I could try to elute with dilute NaOH and skip ammonia (could the carbonate ion be getting in the way?). Will be doing more testing in the near future.