Respecting the plant, getting more Spice - wanting to try Xylene

[BobDobbs]

I've had a pleasant surprise at the purity of the Spice I've extracted with Q21Q21's Vinegar/Lime method. I've only used Naphtha as my non-polar solvent so far and I've seen how it slowly absorbs into the bark mush. Before I try Xylene should I completely dry the bark mush? That is, give the Naphtha a chance to evaporate? Or is it just fine to pour off the excess Naphtha and start stirring in some Xylene?

I'm really interested to see if I can extract something a bit more jungly.

 

[downwardsfromzero]

Xylene is so effective a solvent that you don't have to worry about the naphtha remnants, unless you have some overarching reason to avoid getting naphtha into your xylene (I can't think of any).

How will you be getting the product back out of the xylene? Evaporation is slow and xylene is really stinky (although I kind of like the smell).

To keep up the 'jungle-ness' a good option might be to backsalt into vinegar, evaporate, base with sodium carbonate, allow the paste to dry and then pull with acetone (or IPA, or ethanol) and evaporate once more. It seems worth mentioning that fumaric acid precipitation would likely clean things up too much.

 

[Cosmic Giggle]

I just performed my first xylene pulls on extraction vessels that had already been pulled with Naptha. ~3-5mL naphtha remained in all of them and I had no problems just pouring the xylene in there with the naphtha.

I tried to evap a couple dishes of it inside next to window with high powered fan blowing over it/out window but it still stank the room up. Cant do that anymore. Had to evap following attempts outdoors. Put a cheesecloth over evap dish to keep nature from getting into it.

Worked, but takes longer to evaporate, and humidity may have been a factor.

I’ll post in detail how I got the xylene to *completely* evap and turn the jungle into a more crystalline substance overnight instead of having goo. Using nothing but water. Gonna try to have it up by the weekend when I do all my write ups of the last months work.