I ran an extraction this weekend using ACRB, and (almost) everything went swimmingly. I was using gallon jars that had stainless steel tops, but they were not made for canning or pressure. While heat-bathing one such jar filled with basified liquid and naphtha, an imperfection in the glass was stressed from what I assume was uneven heating, and the bottom cracked. The basified solution leaked into the surrounding pot of water, and brought the naphtha layer down to about halfway down the side of the jar. I was about to write it off when I noticed needle crystals that had fallen out and were now resting on the top of the basified liquid. I decanted as much naphtha as I could, and then decanted the top layer of basified liquid to make sure I grabbed the needles. However, the crystals were accompanied by rafts of particulate matter that floated on the basified liquid, and were hard enough to break into smaller chunks when touched with a baster. Does anyone know what the composition of the mystery particulate is? I filter my acid boils well, but not as well as I could, so one guess is just bark matter. Another is excess lye, although my proportions are usually correct. The last is that it's somehow DMT crystallizing with another substance. Thanks for any guesses/help

Have you considered it might be glass?

Not really, as these chunks were visible before the jar even went into the heat bath. I should add that I mixed the chunks and the basified liquid that came up with naphtha in a jar. After being heat bathed, the chunks seem to have dissolved, or at least broken down.

EDIT: Almost forgot I took a picture of the jar, it was more for the needles but the chunks are clearly visible.

[1] I would stress that performing dangerous tasks without the proper tool is dangerous. Please, if you are going to do extractions use glass that is meant to be heated while doing this part.

[2] So did anything leak into the jar that broke (rather than just out of)? I am assuming the needles and clumps formed in the basified solution that was still inside the initial vessel?


EDIT: wait... these formed before the vessel broke?

anrchy has a very good point. Please buy some heat-resistant glass before moving any further with the extraction.

After you've done that, just continue on with naphtha pulls as you normally would. If the crystals are DMT, they will dissolve in the solvent. If they are lye, they won't.

If they were there when the jar was cool, and they dissolved when the jar was heated, I'm going to go ahead and guess that they are lye crystals. How much lye did you add, and to what volume of liquid?

Anrchy: Yes, these formed before the jar broke. I've halted everything until I find properly safe jars, it's not a good excuse but the jar that did break was provided to me by my partner, who assured me that they were made for applications involving heat. Everything prior to this has been mason jars.

I added ~150g of lye to 1500ml of basified solution, in keeping with thick-light's ACRB tek. I don't think the lumps dissolving is necessarily indicative of it being lye, because DMT would dissolve as well when heated. I'm not worried about yields or saving this run, just interested if anyone had seen this before and could definitively tell me what they were.