Lingering xylene smell

[Tony6Strings]

Hello! I pulled using xylene today. First time I've ever used the stuff. The pull is in an open Corningware in a spare/storage bedroom, on the sill of an open window. The room is closed up with towel under door. I'm hoping for quick evaporation, it is summer after all, and been hot...

In my kitchen, where I do my extracting, it smells like xylene. Like an auto body shop. Its not a horrible smell like I've heard some people go on about, but its also not suitable for the place I prepare my food. I didn't spill any, I was very careful. Container of solvent is closed. Jar I used for measure was rinsed. There is more residual smell in my kitchen than there is in the bedroom where I put the pull to evaporate. Is there anything I can do to get rid of the smell? Like, really get rid of. Not just cover up. Thank in advance.

 

[downwardsfromzero]

Xylene diffuses into all sorts of plastics, including (I would suggest) your kitchen surfaces. All I can suggest besides further ventilation is placing trays of absorbent/adsorbent material around the affected areas. You could try activated charcoal, silica gel and (not 'or'!) zeolite, for starters.

It was bad enough at Downwards Towers once when a small amount of naphtha diffused into a rubber gasket on one of my saucepan lids. Xylene is about a hundred times worse, hope you get it sorted soon!

 

[doubledog]

What tek do you use?
Xylene should not be Evaporated, the smell is horrible, active product should be salted with acidic water and xylene reused.

 

[Tony6Strings]

I do not use a tek per se, I extract with a standard A/B procedure most of the time. I'm just doing a xylene pull on an acrb extraction which has probably mostly been depleted by naphtha. Doing so to get ready for my next extraction, full spectrum mimosa "jungle" spice. Wanted to work with the xylene once before making my jungle.

You're not the first person to say xylene should not be evaporated. Downwards from zero can be read saying the same thing in an old thread.

On the other hand. Freebase jungle spice is obtained by pulling with an aromatic hydrocarbon, then evaporating the solvent. Spice can be (perhaps should be) redissolved in alcohol or acetone and re evapped. It's smelly, but that's the way its done.

My pull (100 ml) has almost completely evaporated. Smell in kitchen reduced quite a bit. I'm going to do this A/B with the mimosa, do my pulls, get them evaporated, and get everything cleaned up and airing out.

Is there a chance anyone knows how much xylene to pull all the alkaloids from 100 grams potent mimosa bark? Can I get it all in one pull? I thought I read that somewhere..

 

[doubledog]

Of course, you can evaporate it to obtain any dissolved product, no problem with that.
only reason for not doing it is the smell (if purity of solvent is ok)

For mimosa bark, I would say that STB is better, and time is your friend here.

Xylene dissolve spice much better than naphtha, so less is needed. 100 ml would be enough, I sometimes use less than 50 ml for 80g of bark.
But still you would need more pulls, at least with STB.

 

[null24]

Jeez Tony, that's some dedication- evapping xylene in an apt!

 

[Tony6Strings]

Endlessness wrote (somewhere) that doing STB yeilds a more oily product, while doing a A/B yeilds a waxy solid, when evaporating mhrb xylene pulls. I thought about STB just to make sure I got every single thing from the bark. I'm very thorough with my acetic boils, I should be OK.

Yep. Aromatics, no kidding. Good description. I have wanted to try red spice from xylene for a long time, I always put it off because of the xylene stench horror stories. Yes, it smells. No, its not that bad. My apartment is back to normal smell now, less than 48 hours after pulling. Took less than 24 hours to evaporate 100 ml on an open windowsill. Quicker than I thought really.

 

[null24]

So you did an stb on acrb?

I'm very happy with the results from acid boils and filtering with freeze precip. Most of the fat stayed suspended in the nps while the spice crashed out.

What interests me is how the clear goo lays down first, then a layer of xtal that seems matrixed into the wax. Reminds me a mineral crystal cluster in a stone matrix.

 

[Tony6Strings]

No, an A/B. My first acrb attempt several months back, I used a STB and got almost nothing. I think maybe it was an issue with the bark, it was from a different source than the stuff I've got now. Hey have you traveled with yours yet?

 

[Tony6Strings]

I have here some very cloudy xylene. When I think about there being an entire 100 grams worth of bark in this one pull, what would take me six to eight pulls to remove using naphtha, I get all excited.

 

[KuzeMaf]

I have here some very cloudy xylene. When I think about there being an entire 100 grams worth of bark in this one pull, what would take me six to eight pulls to remove using naphtha, I get all excited.

So how did the Jungle Spice turn out?

I'm interested to see what you were able to pull with only the 1 xylene pull...

 

[Tony6Strings]

The red amber goo I obtained from evaporation of the xylene pull from the acacia confusa extraction was amazing. I got several hundred milligrams goo from an extraction which was already exhausted with naphtha pulls. Smoking an unweighed glob just about knocked me out the window one day. Loved the stuff, I will make more full spectrum acacia goo.

The full spectrum from mimosa was also very good. I got most of the alkaloids in that first 100ml pull. Total yield was 1.6 grams. It is some of my favorite spice.

Photo of some of the mimosa extract.