So I have been walking 6 friends through an extraction from 333g of MHRB. Why 333? 1/3 of a kilo, which is the total of what we have, and 333 is the simplest fraction to extract given the size of the container I have.
Everything proceeded perfectly, and I freeze precipitated the first two pulls, and then pulls 3 and 4 separately. I separate them in order to see the progress, and in twos so that my final 5th pull is also separate so that I can evaluate if more pulls are necessary (they never have been). This time, however, each pull batch was very different:
The first (pulls 1 & 2) left a thin white crispy film (photos 1 & 2 below) and made me a little nervous - really didn't look like much product, and no visible crystallization.
The second (pulls 3 & 4) was replete with fluffy white crystals and seemed to have a much higher yield than pulls 1 & 2... (pics 3 & 4)
The third little bowl (pics 5 & 6) I put on the stove (not on, of course!) so that I could use the hood fan to ventilate the fumes (as I did with all the pulls as I decanted and collected them in the final pyrex dish) and within 10 minutes it had gone the milky yellow you can see in the pic! (I must note that this pull was from the recycled naptha from pulls 1 & 2, so may have had some prior saturation). When I freeze precipitated this bowl (in the same freezer, same temp), yellowish crystals crusted the bottom of the bowl, giving by visual estimation maybe half to two-thirds the yield from pulls 3 & 4, and quite a bit more than pulls 1 & 2! The yellow colour may be normal from a later pull, or from the reused NPS I suppose...
Of course, now I am going to do at LEAST a 6th pull, which I have never needed to do before. And maybe even a 7th!
So the mysteries are:
-why did pulls 1 & 2 yield a thin powdery crust, with very little yield?
-why were pulls 3 & 4 (and 5) superior yields (by eye, of course, nothing has been scraped and weighed yet) to the first two pulls? I have never seen this...
-why did pull 5 go milky so fast, with very little solution lost to evaporation? (there was no temperature change either...)
-why the yellow in only pull 5? The reused NPS? Is it pulling more alkoloids now in the later pulls? I suspect it may be for both these reasons.
I don't know if anyone has any cogent answers, but if not, this thread will at the very least be a curiosity for others!
Cheers,
JBArk
EDIT: I should note the pulls were all done with 175 mls of naptha, scaled up to compensate for the large amount of MHRB and the volume of solution (roughly 4-5 litres); and that all pulls were done at room temp, with NPS at room temp.
Everything proceeded perfectly, and I freeze precipitated the first two pulls, and then pulls 3 and 4 separately. I separate them in order to see the progress, and in twos so that my final 5th pull is also separate so that I can evaluate if more pulls are necessary (they never have been). This time, however, each pull batch was very different:
The first (pulls 1 & 2) left a thin white crispy film (photos 1 & 2 below) and made me a little nervous - really didn't look like much product, and no visible crystallization.
The second (pulls 3 & 4) was replete with fluffy white crystals and seemed to have a much higher yield than pulls 1 & 2... (pics 3 & 4)
The third little bowl (pics 5 & 6) I put on the stove (not on, of course!) so that I could use the hood fan to ventilate the fumes (as I did with all the pulls as I decanted and collected them in the final pyrex dish) and within 10 minutes it had gone the milky yellow you can see in the pic! (I must note that this pull was from the recycled naptha from pulls 1 & 2, so may have had some prior saturation). When I freeze precipitated this bowl (in the same freezer, same temp), yellowish crystals crusted the bottom of the bowl, giving by visual estimation maybe half to two-thirds the yield from pulls 3 & 4, and quite a bit more than pulls 1 & 2! The yellow colour may be normal from a later pull, or from the reused NPS I suppose...
Of course, now I am going to do at LEAST a 6th pull, which I have never needed to do before. And maybe even a 7th!
So the mysteries are:
-why did pulls 1 & 2 yield a thin powdery crust, with very little yield?
-why were pulls 3 & 4 (and 5) superior yields (by eye, of course, nothing has been scraped and weighed yet) to the first two pulls? I have never seen this...
-why did pull 5 go milky so fast, with very little solution lost to evaporation? (there was no temperature change either...)
-why the yellow in only pull 5? The reused NPS? Is it pulling more alkoloids now in the later pulls? I suspect it may be for both these reasons.
I don't know if anyone has any cogent answers, but if not, this thread will at the very least be a curiosity for others!
Cheers,
JBArk
EDIT: I should note the pulls were all done with 175 mls of naptha, scaled up to compensate for the large amount of MHRB and the volume of solution (roughly 4-5 litres); and that all pulls were done at room temp, with NPS at room temp.