Using a STB extraction similar to Kash a/b - Salting question?

[CactusRyan]

Hey everyone! I am working with a decent amount of cacti. Been reading through @antichode posts who has covered this tek (shoutout to this dude). I see in Kash A/B and other teks that, after you add and mix your solvent and put into another container in order to salt it with acid, many comments and the tek tell you to add water to this solvent (I am using Xylene).

How necessary is adding water? I would imagine that it would hinder the process of the salting acid in this phase?

 

[dreamer042]

I assume you are using hydrocholoric acid to salt? The water layer is necessary to ensure consistent and effective conversion to the salt. If you wanted to salt crystals directly from the solvent without an aqueous layer you'd want to look at bubbling HCl gas into the solvent, but that's quite a bit more risky enterprise than just adding a little water and evapping it off in the end.

For future endeavors I'd recommend checking out CIELO. It's so much faster, simpler, and more effective. Really a revolution in mescaline extraction methodology.

Haapi Cactusing

 

[CactusRyan]

I assume you are using hydrocholoric acid to salt? The water layer is necessary to ensure consistent and effective conversion to the salt. If you wanted to salt crystals directly from the solvent without an aqueous layer you'd want to look at bubbling HCl gas into the solvent, but that's quite a bit more risky enterprise than just adding a little water and evapping it off in the end.

For future endeavors I'd recommend checking out CIELO. It's so much faster, simpler, and more effective. Really a revolution in mescaline extraction methodology.

Haapi Cactusing

Im salting with sulfuric acid. From my research, crystals precipitate out of sulfuric acid very quickly

 

[Transform]

Im salting with sulfuric acid. From my research, crystals precipitate out of sulfuric acid very quickly

The one drawback of using sulfuric acid is that it's non-volatile, so ideally you'll titrate the precipitation very exactly. It would be highly advantageous to have an analytical burette for this, and to be familiar with the ins and outs of titration along with the associated arithmetic.

Idea: as a sort of 'insurance' getaround for accidentally overshooting the neutralisation point, you may want to consider reserving a small amount of the freebase solution. Then you could add a drop or two - in accordance with your calculations - to bring the pH back up a bit. [Edit: I did actually mention a variant of that in the other thread↓ .]

Here's a recent discussion of this, along with a good selection of general tips:

mescaline sulfate - questions

825g of green pulp with skin and bones in 5 liters of water and 800g of NaOH. 5 pulls of 200ml of xylene were made. And then 5 pulls with 100ml of 35% sulfuric acid solution. When I salted it with sulfuric acid, my funnel that I bought as "stainless steel" peeled and turned black! This made...

forum.dmt-nexus.me

Sulfate crystals are very nice, but - as everyone says - CIELO

 

[CactusRyan]

The one drawback of using sulfuric acid is that it's non-volatile, so ideally you'll titrate the precipitation very exactly. It would be highly advantageous to have an analytical burette for this, and to be familiar with the ins and outs of titration along with the associated arithmetic.

Idea: as a sort of 'insurance' getaround for accidentally overshooting the neutralisation point, you may want to consider reserving a small amount of the freebase solution. Then you could add a drop or two - in accordance with your calculations - to bring the pH back up a bit.

Here's a recent discussion of this, (albeit not my last suggestion here, it having only just occurred to me) along with a good selection of general tips:

mescaline sulfate - questions

825g of green pulp with skin and bones in 5 liters of water and 800g of NaOH. 5 pulls of 200ml of xylene were made. And then 5 pulls with 100ml of 35% sulfuric acid solution. When I salted it with sulfuric acid, my funnel that I bought as "stainless steel" peeled and turned black! This made...

forum.dmt-nexus.me

Sulfate crystals are very nice, but - as everyone says - CIELO

I appreciate the resource you linked and the info. I plan to titrate very carefully.

The reason I am going STB and not Cielo is because I need to process A LOT of cactus. Cielo is just really hard to scale

 

[Transform]

I appreciate the resource you linked and the info. I plan to titrate very carefully.

The reason I am going STB and not Cielo is because I need to process A LOT of cactus. Cielo is just really hard to scale

If you don't mind me asking, how much is a lot? Will that really be so unwieldy if scaled down by 95% from the fresh material to the dry powder? And have you considered the utility of multiple, simultaneous, smaller extractions?

 

[CactusRyan]

If you don't mind me asking, how much is a lot? Will that really be so unwieldy if scaled down by 95% from the fresh material to the dry powder? And have you considered the utility of multiple, simultaneous, smaller extractions?

I haven't weighed it all out yet but I would need a really large food dehydrator to get all this fresh cactus to powder form. Getting the paste consistency correct with Cielo with that much material would be difficult. STB salting step is also operationally easier than Cielo.

And lastly, Cielo can leave a lot of mescaline behind from my research. I would likely go Kash A/B over Cielo

 

[Transform]

I haven't weighed it all out yet but I would need a really large food dehydrator to get all this fresh cactus to powder form. Getting the paste consistency correct with Cielo with that much material would be difficult. STB salting step is also operationally easier than Cielo.

And lastly, Cielo can leave a lot of mescaline behind from my research. I would likely go Kash A/B over Cielo

Something I've been meaning to try is using a spiraliser to cut the cactus into long strips for air-drying. If the cactus has an appreciably woody core the device would have to be pretty heavy duty, but younger stems of a high-yielding variety may yet work. I actually came up with this idea while nibbling spiral (helical, actually) strips of fresh cactus, although I left the core behind, then used it as a pipe

A good number of us would be interested to see comparative results regarding yield for STB vs. CIELO. How did you determine that material was left behind? Wouldn't additional pulls take care of that?

 

[CactusRyan]

Something I've been meaning to try is using a spiraliser to cut the cactus into long strips for air-drying. If the cactus has an appreciably woody core the device would have to be pretty heavy duty, but younger stems of a high-yielding variety may yet work. I actually came up with this idea while nibbling spiral (helical, actually) strips of fresh cactus, although I left the core behind, then used it as a pipe

A good number of us would be interested to see comparative results regarding yield for STB vs. CIELO. How did you determine that material was left behind? Wouldn't additional pulls take care of that?

So my assumption that Cielo leaves a decent amount behind is just from reports I have read. Cutting the cactus into strips and removing core is all way to much processing work at scale. It might sound lazy to say that, but I have processed cactus before and it is time consuming and honestly a waste of time.

With STB, you just throw the cactus in the lye. None of this freeze thaw, despining, defeating nonsense. Lye does a great job of breaking down the cell walls. Also, Despining is a great way to throw away active cactus.

 

[Transform]

Despining is a great way to throw away active cactus

I just blast the spines off with a blowtorch Not much lost there.

Cutting the cactus into strips and removing core is all way to much processing work at scale.

You really should cut to the chase, though, and just ram whole cactus straight into a mixture of solid lye and xylene Maybe use a cement mixer

reports I have read

But where? The poor yield could easily have been down to bad technique for all we know.

 

[CactusRyan]

I just blast the spines off with a blowtorch Not much lost there.

You really should cut to the chase, though, and just ram whole cactus straight into a mixture of solid lye and xylene Maybe use a cement mixer

But where? The poor yield could easily have been down to bad technique for all we know.

I do plan to blend the cactus before basifying. The blowtorch idea does sound very convenient.

I have don't have links to the ppl complaining about lower yields. Youre right, it could just be user error.

 

[Transform]

The blowtorch idea does sound very convenient

Yeah, it's super easy. I can't remember if I picked up from the writings of Jim DeKorne, or accounts of cardón (T. terscheckii) usage in Argentina. Something like that. Terscheckii definitely needs the spines taming before getting too close to it. (The number of times I've prickled my butt on one while working in the conservatory, I'd hate to think )