The title more or less says it all.

A friend of mine had his own harvest of peganum harmala that he decided to extract from. The amount was not weighed but it seemed like a lot. After boiling thrice and reducing almost down to a thickish liquid (2l) he added salt (25 g/ 100 ml of water, people have gone even at saturation point with salt and still harmalas have precipitated). He left it in the fridge for about 2-3 days and when he checked it had an almost mousse like consistency and of course no precipitate at the bottom. Friend decided to thin it up using salt water (25g/l) and he brought it up to 6 liters almost so as it could be of a runny consistency.

Here is the thing : Due to the volume he did the whole procedure in HDPE plastic and cannot see if there is precipitate at the bottom. However, "clouds" appeared in the solution that will not settle down even after a week at cold temperature and further addition of saltwater to thin it up even more.

Those clouds have been observed with smaller extractions that went more along with the protocol of a standard "manske" extraction. There seems to be quite a volume of them so it cannot all be harmala. It seems as if its the stuff that clogs the filters (the one that Phlux propably removes with his technique) and makes filtering rue tea a painstaking procedure. My friend will decant and he hopes he will find precipitate at the bottom but he is worried if the "clouds" hold usefull material.

Has anyone stumbled upon those "clouds"? Are they "inert" material? They look as if they could be readily precipitated via centrifuge, alas this is not an option. Personally i have seen such "clouds" even at smaller extractions and they seem to be of slightly "soapy" consistency.

Any opinions welcome.

The mousse is what you want....it is the precipitate. A precipitate is simply a solid coming out of solution, settling is not necessary. Thinning it out is redissolving the salted harmalas. They should be solid at this stage...that is the point of a manske.

Most of it is harmala, with some excess salt of course. It simply seems like a large amount because it is in suspension. In my experience, it will never settle.

TEK

Hmmm, well my friend started with something along the lines of more or less a kilo of Peganum harmala. The "mousse" was the whole volume of liquid (the whole 2 liters) so it was suspected that something in the solution appart from harmalas that gave it this texture, actually setting the liquid into a mousse.

It is interesting though thats it doesnt settle down for other people as well. I was under the impresion that most people saw a rather clear seperation with solids at the bottom and liquid on top, not a suspension. Thanks for the responce!

Here's your problem.

When I do 100g of seeds I reduce my boils to around 1 litre and it's still very watery and free-flowing. Then I leave it in the fridge for a further 2-3 days so a bit more of the dirty sediment drops out which I filter/decant and then add the salt. On the first salting there is always a very obvious seperation as the liquid portion should look a bit lighter in colour and the precips should be stuck to the side of the jar with the majority of them at the bottom.

As your harmaloids are precipping from a heavy suspension they aren't going to drop and in fact will behave like a sponge in jelly. Also as the initial liquid was also quite thick and probably very brown, your precips will be much more impure than if your liquid was more diluted. I recommend watering down your whole mix by at least 4x and adding a splash of vinegar to help any precips desolve, then fridge decant and filter the solution, then repeat the salting step.

Also when adding the salt I never really measure it, but just keep adding and stirring thoroughly until I can feel gritty pieces at the bottom of the pan with my spoon.

Thanks for all the advice! I stopped by my friend to see how he was doing and we took some time together working on the project. Indeed , it seems that nothing settled on the bottom, the precipitate was in suspension but the liquid went "thicker" with it the deeper we went.

It all went...unexpectedly smoothly! The suspension was filtered through a tighly woven cloth, praying that it wont escape through its pores. Funny thing? It worked as a charm! Lots of "mud" was gathered on it and it seems that as the cloth got encrusted with "mud" the layer of it also served as a filter keeping more precipitate on the cloth. It was almost flawless given that the now-discarded liquid was clear with no sign of suspension in it! Still though i can see the trouble in filtering : it took some patience and i couldn help but comment from time to time that this job would have been a piece of cake with a centrifuge.

Now my friend has redissolved the "mud" in 15% saltwater to repeat the proccess for cleaner results!