Hi all,

I'd like some advice on how to make rue extraction easier. Im looking at Buchner funnels for filtration and im curious which kind would work best. I see there are 2 kinds: one ceramic one fitted with a rubber plug and cylindrical glass ones with a ceramic piece.

Which one would be preferred for rue extraction? For me it seems like the glass ones should be superior due to the filter paper covering the whole surface. Is there an issue filtering plant material through these? Will these papers clog easily?

Are you going to be using a vacuum with those funnels? After cleaning up my harmalas today I was reminded of that slow process but I just filled the funnel with some cotton ball. A vacuum filtration is very nice but sometimes harmalas are very fine and may pass the filter?

I was looking at these myself and would get the one ceramic one fitted with a rubber plug but I don't do a lot of extractions so not worth it for me.

I'd use a handpump. With a filter paper im certain the harmalas will be filtered out. Its also conveniet to filter the acidic solution with such a contraption. These glass buchner's already have G3 filtration is that enough for harmalas?

You need to be aware that filtering these guys is no trivial task. That mud blocks everything. Look at Sakkadelic's tek. The best way is not to filter too early in the process. Trust me a vacuum doesn't help at all IME and in fact can just hold up the whole process. And manual, well thats gonna be even more stress. Cloth filters are also more useful than buchner paper filters, especially early on. Later when you acid/base you can use paper/vacuum.

One of the keys to this process that Sakkadelic came up with is to base earlier than the other teks do. I find a LARGE bottle to dilute the extract before doing this is a far more effective way of getting through the early stages. Filtering should be avoided as far as possible in favour of dilution and decanting/refilling. Then acid/base/acid a few times (with lots of water - most of which is decanted).

The amount of alkaloids in rue you get means wastage is not a huge issue early on and you can save weeks of time vs filtering rue mud.

I use a ceramic buchner and a cheap vacuum and its fine, you might need to change the papers once or twice depending on how much you are extracting.
As merkin says the trick is to filter as little as possible and never reduce.

My usual route is:
Acid pull -> base -> decant/wash -> acid -> filter (there a very low volume to filter here) -> base
You can also use the buchner to recover/filter the alkaloids after any base step. I use 10 micron paper IIRC.

I think it was written here across the nexus that you dont need to grind harmalas AT ALL. Just use whole seeds and boil them and then discard. 100% no grinding needed and then filtering is a piece of cake. Just do this instead of buying any other lab tools

Yeah i don't grind my seeds, i coarsely filter (strainer) then leave the tea for a day or two, after every step that involved heat so any sludge can settle, and then i can just use gravity / coffee filters. It is usually only the final step of the crude extraction, ie. collecting the freebase, where i need more than one filter.

Rue extraction is very easy when no filtering is used in first steps of extraction. I also filter only after first basing step is done and sediment is reacidified again.

It is even possible to extract reasonable pure harmala freebase alkaloids with no filtering at all, just with decanting.

I tried to get freebase harmalas without filtering and ended up with an extremely contaminated powder. After washing the bicarbonate is was relatively clean but the carbonate freebasing needs to be filtered. Lye may prevent this issue. I also needed to filter all my carbonate freebase water with a compact filter since the freebase refused to settle even after 24h it became a 'milk of harmaline freebase'.

This 'milk of harmaline' is exactly what it got with the first PC cook of a large amount of rue when based with ammonia - it refused to settle and was too fine to filter, both clogging and passing through the filter. I think some of it is due to the surfactant effect of all the other rue components like pectin, protein, and maybe quinazoline glycosides and other similar legendary intractable rue 'crud'. Basing of subsequent boils went a lot more smoothly so it may be worth diluting down the first boil to reduce the concentration of everything, as well as perhaps adding the base very slowly after that.

I was so cheesed off with how the first boil went that I just poured it into some large bottles and abandoned it. Maybe it has finally settled out now some eighteen months later - I'll wait for a gloomy winter's day and have a look.

NaOH or KOH should be used, settling of freebase is then quick and clean. I mentioned no filtering method just as a possibility, it is of course more practical to filter in some stages of extraction.

Wow I didn't even realize that I did that :b but yes basifying and decanting the original tea followed by water washes is an easy way to clean the solution early on.