Limonene to pull spice from mhrb tea

[hydrocarbon]

Ok, I know this is pretty basic but I am unclear on how much limonene one would use to pull from mhrb tea, rather than the powdered bark like so many of the stb teks describe.

Theoretical situation:

An individual has 250mL of very clean (as in chilled for 24 hours, decanted, and suction filtered x4) tea made from 100g of root bark. The last filtration left zero residue on the paper, simply staining it a bit pink. Individual is convinced that there is insignificant amount of insoluble left in the tea at this point.

Basification and nonpolar solvent pull

Tea is now sitting at room temperature awaiting basification and limonene pulls.

Q: How much of which base should be used? Individual has NaOH, CaOH, and NaCO3. Individual would like to use CaOH or NaCO3 but has discovered conflicting opinions over whether these are effective enough. Individual does have a pH meter so is not so concerned with opinions on exact amount of said base, but a rough estimate would be nice.

Q: Once the tea has been based, how much limonene should be used per pull? 100mL seems about right based on his research, and would be a decent size amount to make solvent separation easy enough in a 1L funnel.

Q: Since there is an insignificant amount of insoluble substance left in the tea that could possibly form an emulsion, can he stir the limonene briskly into the tea rather than using the gentle end-over-end method that stb teks recommend?

If any of these questions have already been answered in another thread, please let me know. There is a lot of information covering the use of limonene in stb teks, but I can find little clarification on using limonene to pull from tea.

 

[ChickenTikka]

just add a bit of sodium hydroxide at a time until you get a ph around 13.

Use an amount of d-limonene that you think you could happily work with, so 100ml in your case, although i don't think you'd have to use that much. It doesn't matter though since you can do multiple pulls with the same batch of solvent, and wash it for use with later batches of tea.

Probably just best to go easy on the mixing/shaking to be safe, unless you are patient or can get your hands on a vibrator you can use for this purpose, i hear they get rid of emulsions like nothing else. Probably worth buying one if you get emulsion issues.

 

[endlessness]

If CaOH, then you need to do a dry tek (like q21q21 or amorfati's tek), so since you already have a filtered tea, you need to use NaOH

Just add NaOH till it's all black, and add a bit more for good measure, and you're good to go.

Limonene can form emulsions, yeah... Stir in round motions, dont shake too strongly.. If emulsions form, same tricks as always apply (all you can find in the FAQ ) : warm bath, adding plenty of salt, adding more lye, vibrations.

100ml limonene sounds fine yeah.. you could use more if you wanted.. Remember after you pulled with limonene, you cant evaporate nor freeze precipitate it, so you need to salt out. Check BLAB tek (in our wiki) for different ways to salt out and convert the alkaloids back to freebase if you want.

 

[hydrocarbon]

ChickenTikka and endlessness, thank you both for the replies! Exactly what I needed to hear re: the NaOH recommendation and the definite risk of emulsions while using limonene.