Which HCL Percentage & PH Value? I'm confused...

[EverGreen]

I'm doing Ron69's tek to extract mescaline, but instead of vinegar I'm using dilluted HCL.

From what I've read this HCL solution should be around PH6, but mine is only PH 0.1...
I used 1 part 10% HCL to 5 parts water which is the ratio that someone else reported success with (Poekus).

But Poekus also said the PH should be around 6...

So I'm kind of confused... Can anyone tell me if my is PH 0.1 HCL solution suitable for extraction? I don't want to ruin my batch.

 

[EverGreen]

Just did some more reading and testing...

Here I read:

1% HCl is more than sufficient for salting mesc out of limonene, a 1% solution of HCl has a pH of 0.7.

And then here I read:

100ml of distilled water, and around 4 DROPS of 10% HCL, that is 4 DROPS, then test on ph paper reads like 3.

So the instructions are different everywhere I look...

Why all these different confliction instructions?

I just added 8 drops of 10% HCL to 200ML of distilled water and ended up with a PH of 1.9 (distilled water by itself was PH6).
So now I guess I just need to know what PH to aim for.

Can anyone enlighten me?

 

[EverGreen]

Just did some more reading...

In this post (liked to from 69Ron's tek) it says:

The ideal PH where all the mesc hcl comes out is 6.6-7.0

But I don't get that... I mean the distilled water I have is PH6 and the tap water I have is PH7.5...

So what about adding HCL then? If I add any the PH will lower, but according to the tek it's already at the right PH...

So should I just not add HCL? I don't get it...

 

[Particle]

I have found that adding about 1 to 1.5 drops of 15% HCl per 10mL of water works very well. If you add more acid, you will pull more of the other alkaloids from the limonene and a less acidic solution will result in mostly only mescaline. With the stronger solution, you are more likely to extract all the mescaline from the limonene but it may require more clean up to obtain pure mescaline if that's what you are looking for. You want the PH of the dilute HCl to be around 2-3 before adding it to the limonene. After the alkaloids form HCl salts, the PH of the water will rise, ideally to around 6 or 7, as stated in the tek. But this is after the limonene and the HCl are added together.

Try using a HCl solution with a PH of around 2-3 to start and see what gets pulled from the limonene. If its mostly white/tan mescaline crystals, try doing another salting with a slightly stronger acidic solution and you will then start getting a more reddish/brown color yield indicating that all the mescaline has been salted out. The exact numbers aren't terribly important; try doing a little experimenting and see what works out.

 

[EverGreen]

Awsome, great advise JL, thanks. And thanks for crearing up that PH thing, I thought it was supposed to be PH 6-7 before the salting.