Keep getting emulsion?

[Back2Normal]

Did my batch at 15:1:1. 1st pull was fine. 2nd wasn’t separated and I added salt at a ration of .3 grams per gram of bark. It separated about halfway and then I had a yellow layer with about half my solvent trapped in it. I pulled all of that out of my bark/water mix. I put it in heat bath for several hours but it only separates like a couple milliliters at a time. I have to pull off like 5ml and put it back in and then it will separate another 5ml over like an hour, then repeat, repeat, etc. Went to throw my solvent back in and I didnt put any of that yellow layer back into the bark/water. I started by mixing it back and forth on its side. Did that twice and it separated fine. Did it a couple more times before bed and left it to settle all night and during work today. Got home and had some time to try pull and it was only like barely separated again. So now Im doing the dang heat bath thing again but it is sooooo slow. Am I agitating it too much? Im definitely agitating it more than usual but that was because I’d read people not having emulsion problems with so much Lye water. Was it because my bark was shredded this time and I normally powder it? Could I be terrible at identifying bark and I have ACRB instead of MHRB and my solvent is just full of fat? How do I break the cycle!?

 

[redbird]

Didnt you have another post i replied to? Cant find it.
Anyway, i'm assuming you mean 1.5L water, 100g lye, 100g source material. If so, you're right, getting that bad of an emulsion shouldnt be so likely.
First question is what's your mixing method? Are you doing the bike pedal method? Flipping end to end gently? Or shaking? Almost always this level of emulsion is from mixing too vigorously, but would need a description of your proces in order to help.
Second is, is that picture as dark as your soup gets? With the ratio I listed I would expect the water phase to be pitch black.

Either way, you'll need to wait that one out and it might take a few days or more. Hopefully your answers to the above can avoid it happening again.

 

[Back2Normal]

Didnt you have another post i replied to? Cant find it.
Anyway, i'm assuming you mean 1.5L water, 100g lye, 100g source material. If so, you're right, getting that bad of an emulsion shouldnt be so likely.
First question is what's your mixing method? Are you doing the bike pedal method? Flipping end to end gently? Or shaking? Almost always this level of emulsion is from mixing too vigorously, but would need a description of your proces in order to help.
Second is, is that picture as dark as your soup gets? With the ratio I listed I would expect the water phase to be pitch black.

Either way, you'll need to wait that one out and it might take a few days or more. Hopefully your answers to the above can avoid it happening again.

I did have another post but it was removed. I did appreciate your replies though!

What’s the bike pedal method? I normally flip end to end gently but this one I shook.

That picture actually has 4 layers (solvent, yellow, light brown, then black)but the glare covered the black layer in that jar thats only like the bottom 100ml. It’s because I just decanted into that jar to try to get that emulsion layer off. You can see the jar next to it is pitch black.

 

[fractals4life]

I normally flip end to end gently but this one I shook.

There's the issue right there ... it's like making mayo, you need to shake things up to make an emulsion.... so don't do that!

Do you really not know if you have ACRB or MHRB in there? Anyway plant fats will not become evident until you try and precipitate, before that they are in solution in the solvent and invisible ( I think, never tried ACRB myself ).

Also the amount of salt needed is about the amount of liquid in there, not the amount of bark, it acts to push solvent out of the water and does not interact with the bark.

I'd say shredded will be better at preventing emulsion vs powder.

So all in all it points to too much shaking in my opinion. The more you agitate the faster you get DMT into the solvent, but only up to the point where emulsions start to form, when you then end up wasting time waiting for the emulsion to break. So increase agitation slowly and watch how it separates each time so you can tell when you are starting to go too far.

FWIW I have no idea what the "bike pedal method" looks like either. To my understanding a bike pedal stays in the same horizontal orientation and just moves in a circle during pedalling, so that would hardly mix anything at all! I go for gentle end over end flips.