WET VS DRY spice wash + multi-batch question.

[hamhurricane]

do you all do the wash on the spice while its still wet in the filter, or wait for it to dry out either in the collection dish (or on the filter) and then do the sodium bicarbonate wash?
i think the wash would be more effective on dry crystal, but could also loose more product, no?

ALSO

if swim has a couple of pulls some of high purity (unwashed or recrystallized) white spice, as well as some dingy yellowish spice, and some REALLY dingy brownish spice can they all be mixed together and will the spice sort itself out, or should the batches be segregated?

thanks!

 

[acolon_5]

ok acolon my friend has finished the procedure, the two main difficulties were deciding how much solvent to use, you said so much that it would not fog upon freezing, which would be more than in the initial pulls meaning for a gram i would be working with approx. 500ml seems like way too much?

my other problem was when melting down the unwashed dmt a fatty oil immediatly would settle to the bottom should swim just keep pouring off from the oil or dump it in as well, how much dmt does this oily crud contain? i poured in as much as wouldent stick to the sides of the beaker (its really sticky) and it fell to the botom of the sep funnel, then stuck btw the water and the naptha layer, the naptha did not become clear after washing nor did the sodium bicarb soln turn cloudy...
its in the freezer now, will update

EDIT: the amount of solvent used was perhaps too little as the soln fogged after about an hour of freezing, acolon do you think this might have reduced the yields, i still have the water, is sodium bicarb insoluable in naptha?

NO!!!! WAIT!!!!

I don't think I was clear enough. During recrystalization the naphtha is heated up quite a bit to dissolve the spice. What I was saying is that when the naphtha/bestine cools down to ROOM TEMPERATURE it should not precipitate out any spice. 150mL of bestine per gram of spice has worked well for me. 500mL is way, way too much. The reason for this is that we don't want the spice the to precipitate out into the wash layer. At no point in this wash should anything go in the freezer.

With the oil layer, you can dissolve most of it if you want, but some of it will end up in your final product. I would leave about 1/2 of the oil puddle.

You are going to need to reduce the amount of solvent you have or not much will precipitate out.

After my wash I usually let my spice recrystalize at room temperature. It allows much larger crystal growth and thus gives a cleaner product. I then melt it down.

 

[hamhurricane]

ah too late, but my friend did not use a full 500ml probably somewhere closer to 250ml (still overkill) will this eliminate any benefit of the wash? at the very least half the yellow goo is gone and my friend would imagine that the potential excess sodium hydroxide is now neutralized by the low pH of the sodium bicarbonate...not a total waste?
my friend is not annoyed by the increased time it will take the naptha to evaporate because he was leaving town for a couple of days anyway, he will make sure to update should their be any changes in yield, color, or general crystal appearance.
thanks acolon.

also my firend was looking over the quicktek provided on the main dmt nexus page and he was curious as to why more people dont defat the MHRB powder at neutral ph?

 

[acolon_5]

ah too late, but my friend did not use a full 500ml probably somewhere closer to 250ml (still overkill) will this eliminate any benefit of the wash? at the very least half the yellow goo is gone and my friend would imagine that the potential excess sodium hydroxide is now neutralized by the low pH of the sodium bicarbonate...not a total waste?
my friend is not annoyed by the increased time it will take the naptha to evaporate because he was leaving town for a couple of days anyway, he will make sure to update should their be any changes in yield, color, or general crystal appearance.
thanks acolon.

also my firend was looking over the quicktek provided on the main dmt nexus page and he was curious as to why more people dont defat the MHRB powder at neutral ph?

Glad to hear it is working out ok. I'm sure that most if not all residual NaOH was neutralized, and probably most of your oils were removed.

I think alot of people don't understand how easy and quick a defat is. If you goal is for crystal clear spice, a 10 minute defat will pretty much always give amazing results. It should however, be done while the spice is still in acidic conditions. I frequently do this. I also experiment around with trying to grow different crystal formations and try and see if there is any difference in oily vs clear spice.