I wanted to mention here quickly that I am in the middle of a STB tek where I follow the same proportions of Lye:Naptha:Water:MHRB. In this case I am using 100 g MHRB. I had recently been thinking about the effect of the ionic strength of the aqueous layer in the efficiency of the reaction. I decided to add 150g of crude salt to the mix to see if more spice is pushed into the NPS. I havent yet added the Naptha, but I just checked the jars and in each of them there is a very thin(about a half of a millimeter) layer of oil floating on top of the solution. This leads me to believe that the plant oils are being forced out of the solution. It stands to reason then that all non-polar molecules are less soluble in the aqueous mix. I hope this translates into more efficient pulls but now fear an issue with the oil content. I will let all of you know how my pulls turn out, but think this may be a valuable addition to the already simple to use STB tek. With an A/B tek where no oil is present, I think adding salt to the mix may turn out to be even more beneficial. I have done this before with much smaller amounts of salt but never enough to raise the ionic strength enough to make a considerable difference. Thoughts?


Edit: I should have left a few jars without the salt just to compare. The closest thing to a control that I have is the last few jars I only added 90 to 100g instead of the 150g I added to the rest of them.

I also forgot to mention that the salt I used was crude which means the crystals are very lare, like those used on roadways to melt ice. In several of the jars I have I can still hear some of those crystals moving around a day later. This may mean that the solution is as saturated as it is going to get and hence as unfriendly to non-polar molecules as possible. I'm hoping this translates into more efficient pulls. The only concern I have is that oils may be forced out too. I think however that since fatty acids are charged at basic ph that increasing the ionic strength may increase their solubility in water. If this is true it would stand to reason that adding salt to saturate the caustic mimosa mix would be quite beneficial in increasing the amount of spice per pull as well as decreasing the fat content. I will post my findings when my "project" is finished.

Im not sure if yields will increase, theory sounds right, but at least you will certainly have much smaller chance of having any emulsions.

And yeah, a 'control' jar is a must! Side-by-side tests are incredibly important to increase knowledge in this community so be sure to share results of your future experiments

Thanks for experimenting!

My first pulls have now been in the freezer overnight and wow is all I can say. It looks as if I have pulled well over fifty percent of the spice and it is pure white on top of that. I'm doing a second pull now, but wont be taking the first out of the freezer for another day or so. I should have the actual wight/% in the next few days for you. The whiteness is what strikes me the most. This is a STB tek which usually leaves me with slightly yellow crystals. I do have one jar(out of 42) that the NPS has become a cloudy brown. I have never seen this before and treated that jar the same as all the others so it has left me perplexed. I'll post a pic of that as soon as my roommate gets back with the camera. So far it seems like adding the salt has been beneficial, even if only slightly. I wont know for sure until the extraction is complete how my yields compare. Very exciting stuff.(for me anyways)

endlessness: as you suggested there has been no sign of emulsion at any point thus far.

My first pull yielded 15.6 grams. This was using 4200g of MHRB powder for a yield thus far of 0.37%. I only agitated the jars three times before the first pull so I think this is a very decent yield. Three of my jars are doing something that I have never seen before. I have agitated my jars over ten times since the first pull and now three of them have a very cloudy Naptha layer that is also slightly brown. I will be pulling the jars again tomorrow and am curious about what could be causing this since all 42 jars have been treated the same way. I'll post some pics tomorrow. I am proud to say that the first pull gave me sparkling white crystals before a re-x, which will be done tomorrow, or perhaps I'll wait and re-x it all at once.

I'm amazed to say that my second pull yielded a total of 44.60 grams. 41.51 grams of light yellow spice and 3.09 grams of brown spice. The brown spice came from the three jars that had cloudy naphtha layers. I still dont know what happened and have never had that happen before. I still have my third pull to see if the salt will increase yield but right now it looks promising. My total yield so far is 15.60g + 44.60g = 60.20grams. This equals 60.20/4200g=1.43% after only 2 pulls. I'm excited to see what my third pull yields. If anyone else wants to try this salt method I would lower the amount from 150 grams to 125 grams, I think a few jars ended up with closer to 180g of salt and that is what caused the brown spice. Can't be sure but thats my best guess so far. I'll let you all know how my third pull goes. I would post pics but my phone is my only camera and dont want to take any risks. I hope my theory proves to be correct, we could theoretically increase yields for everyone using a little extra salt.

wow that a lotta spice mate

Why are you extracting so much DMT? You cant possibly use this all yourself at least not so quickly.. I seriously hope you are not selling, nor giving it indiscriminately (to people you dont supervise their first tries and teach them respect/care/not-selling) away for free..

Of course not, I would never violate that sacred rule. I am doing this much because I had ordered 10 pounds of MHRB and now I'm moving and needed to get it all converted because my new place i will not be able to do the extraction. I have a very good friend who will be sharing most of it with me. He is an active member of this community as well. Needless to say I wont be needing to do it again for a long while. I decided since I was going to be converting all of it I might as well try out my idea of adding salt to the mix. Trust me when I say I am just as against making money on the spice as anyone else is. I also now am looking forward to playing with crystal growing now that I have the material. Only a select few people will get a small gift of spice as a thank you for help with getting me through a very hard time last year. All of those will be gifts and no money will be made. Sorry if my large xtraction sent the wrong message. I do think the high yield is an exciting outcome. I still need to wait and see what the last pull yields though before drawing conclusions, then retrying the experiment with some control jars. That wont be for a while so hopefully someone here will try it sooner and post their findings.

CTM

Alright, thank you for making that clearer! sorry to doubt your intentions, as you can imagine we had had some people pass by the forum with not the best intentions and we just want to make sure we are sending the right message regarding the respect these substances require

I absolutely agree, I feel that there are only a select set of individuals who are meant to experiment with the spice. Far too many treat it with little to no respect at all and act is if it were on par with meth or something like that. The spice is sacred and not to be used to make money or for personal gains of any kind other than spiritual growth. I completely understand your concern. That being said, I would love to hear your thoughts on my progress so far with this salt question. If my third pull yields decently I would say that the benefit of increasing the ionic strength of the aqueous layer is pretty clear. If it is low yielding that may mean that this practice simply reduces the number of pulls necessary to get all the spice out of its source material. Thoughts?

Well without a control group its impossible to say... But thanks for experimeinting anyways This is good indication of something we could test in the future indeed.

Its not unheard of to have 2% yield with some really good mimosa. I think in literature when they claim 0.6% yield, they mean of whole root, but if some resellers brush/scrape off the outer dirtier part, plus remove the hard inner core of the root and keep just the purple goodness and powder that (plus a good yielding tree), I can imagine thats where the good yields are coming from.

BTW, please dont mention supplier names outside of supplier sections, write it in "code" (S0n0..r4n s0ng) kind of thing, to prevent search bots which check all the forum (they are not allowed in the suppliers section), because that helps preventing law enforcement from connecting specific suppliers with possible illegal extractions.

Lesson learned, sorry for the carelessness. I'm finding it hard to give as much as possible while as little as possible at the same time. I only do this as a joke anyways. Nothing I've said has been true. I'll make up some more stories with more mindfulness of the fact that some might take it seriously. Thank you for the reminder.

I think my level of surprise is that in the past SWIM has only gotten around 1% using an identical process with only the salt being different. It was like SWIM's heart sank as the number climbed so high. It was unreal. I wish SWIM had left the salt out of a couple of jars. As a scientist SWIM cannot believe he made such a mistake. SWIM was very certain the difference would be significant as most solvents have such limited solubility. Decreasing solubility in the aqueous phase seems to SWIM to be extremely important for insuring a more complete removal of spice from the mimosa wine. In the future more can be tested. SWIM cannot test this theory again for quite some time.


Past pulls have been done 4 and five times for the 1% retrieval.

Pssst.. swims not here!

#####Nexians hate the "SWIM" thing, you are here talking, so lets hear you#####

Oh the salt thing sounds interesting! Do a side by side experiment and lets see your results.

So to follow up, my third pull(and last) yielded me 27.60g of yellow powder and 1.93 grams of brown powder. This brings my crude totals to 15.60g white, 72.20g yellow, and 5.02g brown, for a grand total of 92.82g(2.21%). If you want to exclude the brown since it cannot be completely cleaned up, the total was 87.80g(2.09%). I realize that without a side by side comparison there can be no real conclusion drawn, but I have NEVER gotten yields like this and there was surely more to be pulled. If I wasn't moving across the country I would keep on pulling. I can't say that adding salt to the mix definitely improves yields, but I will never be working without it again. I don't know why three of my jars ended up turning cloudy and yielding brown powder, but suppose there may have been too much salt in a few jars. I honestly have no idea what causes this. I am going to clean this all up now best I can. I'll post my final clean yields with some pics when I finish.

brown can indeed be cleaned up! just dissolve it in vinegar to convert to water soluble acetate, filter out anything that does not dissolve, base with a few drops of lye water until you see it precipitate, then collect the now clean freebase with solvent and proceed as usual. ive had nasty orange/brown come out fluffy white with single A/B with vinegar, lye, and naphtha.

thanks for the advice, I was curious about whether it had any effect on the experience but if I can clean it that easily then I'll make it sparkle.

i like to get max yields, so i pull with hot naphtha having no fear of a little brown in my later pulls knowing how easy it is to clean up to top shelf product. i never had much success using carbonate washes or re-X, so i tried the A/B on a whim and was amazed how well it worked, its amazing to see brown gunk come out as fluffy white while leaving behind some dirty vinegar.

I used heated pulls as well but only 3 out of 42 jars turned cloudy. I would say its worth the odds anyways. I usually only yield about 1% so this is more than double what I was expecting.