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Question regarding dH2O and lye

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S

spiritbrewer

Rising Star
At the notes at Noman's tek, Noman states that more water is called for when the bark is powdered.
Does that mean more lye as well? (Not a problem, can get all I want)
Is there any significant difference in yields when using tap water instead of dH2O?
I have 3 kg's of powdered bark laying around and am going to use Noman's tek on it.
Thx in advance for your answers.
 
dH2O is dirt cheap, so I use it. Also, my tap water tastes awful, I'd rather not be smoking whatever generates that plasticy taste (Cl- probably).
 
Thanks for your answers!
I'm just going to go with tap water, very clean here I think.
I'll report back here with the results or when I have more questions!
Greets
 
SuperRad said:
dH2O is dirt cheap, so I use it. Also, my tap water tastes awful, I'd rather not be smoking whatever generates that plasticy taste (Cl- probably).
Click to expand...

tap water has a lot of Ca+ and Cl- ions, but it doesn't really matter, as all salts remain in the aqueuous phase anyway.
Click to expand...

As said, the cl- ions do not end up in the spice as they stay in the aqueous phase (ions do not mix well with nonpolar solvents). Besides DMT tastes plasticky anyway. I've had synthetic DMT which had the same plastic smell that extracted spice has.
 
Another question:
Can one combine the naphta pulls in collection jars (like 4 combined pulls in 1 jar)to put into the freezer or does this cause problems with crashing the spice out? I figured the first pulls would probably compensate the lower concentration in the last ones, thus actually making for a better chance it will all crash out.
And if not, just evap some and try try again right?
 
yes you can combine the pulls if you want. If your worried about it effecting the concentration of spice in the naptha you can always evaporate some of the naptha down to make sure its saturated then freeze. with my extraction i never had any problem with freezing even after more than 3 pulls. AFter the 3rd pull yeild dropped drastically.
 
I started off small.
9 Liters of water was put in a container and 300 grams of lye was added and stirred until dissolved.
300 grams of pre-powdered bark was added and the container was shaken thoroughly, then left to sit for an hour.
After an hour, opened the lid noticing it was a bit sudgy, added 250ml of naphta, turned the jar end over end and rolled it around a bit for a minute, waited for a while, then again, and again, and again.
After the final agitation the entire container was poured into a sep funnel (in 5 times)and layers were seperated (putting the bottem layer in another container for the next pull).

Notes: it sudged a lot and the naphta I got was still very clear, along with some goo.
When I took a combination of goo on the bottem and naphta on the top and heated it, at some point the naphta started pulling what I think would be spice trapped in goo (?) to the surface only for it to sink to the bottem again after a while.
I've done an A/B tek in the past (with less then spectacular yields, about 2 gr from a kg but ofc could have been the bark quality) but as I have a lot more bark to work with now and saw good results from other members I thought I'd give this one a try. As I remember the naphta in the A/B I did was more yellowish.
Also there was no sudging

Am I doing something wrong?

Edit: just took the entire container and let it sit in some hot water for a while. This seemed to smoothten things up (why I'd say that I don't know, the naphta seemed more yellowish). I'd hate to have to do this with all the extractions to come though and this shouldn't really be nescessary should it? I also tried just heating the naphta, but this didn't pose any sicnificant change.
 
I don't know if you need quite that much water.

I think a good amount of water per 100g bark is 1500–1700 mL.

With excessive water it could be that less of the naptha is getting in contact with the molecule than needed.
 
All right, well, we're talking pre-powdered bark here
As Noman mentioned 1.5 tot 2x as much I thought I'd just go safe and go with 2x as much
As of now this is my only clue so if nothing else, lowering the amount of water is what I'll do in the next extraction
I'll report back here
Thank you
 
My friend tells me he's only ever used pre-powdered and never had any problem with extraction using 1700mL water / 100g NaOH per 100g bark...

I reckon working with such large amounts of solution is a little cumbersome too.
 
when your pulling your naptha yoiu dont want any contaminant in it, nothing from yoiur basified solution.

If you get some of the lye solution into your naptha it just sinks to the bottom of your jar and when you freeze crystalls form on it contaminating them.

Best way i found of seperating naptha is to use a glass turkey baster. Using a jar thats tall and not to wide really helps as you have a large naptha layer compared to using a much wider container.
 
All right
I've completed the last pulls and gotten rid of the slight amount of sludge at the bottem of the collection jar leaving me with a collection jar of clear looking naphta
I've cleaned everything up for the next round

This time I'll try a water/bark/lye ratio of 800ml/50gr/50gr doing 150 grams of bark
I'll stir instead of shake the solution to hopefully prevent this horrible sugding
Thx for all your advice
I'll report back here

Edit: The above mentioned extraction was also completed. The same kind of clear naphta was received and the collection jars are in the freezer right now. I'll compare yields before continuing on larger extractions
 
Back with the results! Wich proved less then satisfactory.. in total, 1,2 grams of very nice white spice was collected. The method in wich less water was used proved to yield higher, however this may also be due to the fact that I let that one sit overnight instead of just one hour.

I still got a lot left. Hopefully I will get good results!

2 jars are filled up right now with 300 grams lye / 4,8 L water / 300 grams bark to sit overnight
Tommorow I will perform extractions
Will report back here

Edit: extraction performed today on 600 grs bark total
Skipped the last (4th) pull, not that much time on my hands today and I wanted to finsh it up
This time the naphta was considerably more yellowish
Hopefully the results will be better then the previous
 
Back with the results

After only sitting for about 20 hours in the freezer, the yield was approx. 4 grams of spice (!!)
I took it out then put it back in the freezer for hopefully even more.
I'll move on to larger extractions from here.

Another question:

When performing large extractions, is it really nescessary to extract with 100mL per 100grs of bark every pull?
Not really a problem, it would just be more convenient if less would be sufficient considering an extraction of 1kg would leave me with 4L's of naphta this way.
However I don't want to sacrifice yield, so if this is wat's needed this is what I'll do.
 
Ok, as an example, would I get all the spice out of a kg extraction with 4 pulls of 0,5L of naphta each? Or would I need more?
 
Who knows, there's a lot of factors there. Composition of naphta, heat, how fine the bark is shredded, shape of jar, shaking technique...
I would just do pulls until they give no yield anymore.
 
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