Apologies Kerberos...hope that didn't sound curt...
was posting late at night, in pitch black, from a tablet and kept it short...

Please go for the full saline saturation if you can spare 50g's for the experiment...it would be very interesting to know if 'over-salination' is an boon or a hindrance...

Cheers

if your going to add NaCl to saturation you are going to end up with salt precipitating into the aqueous layer, since it has a common ion with lye, and only so much sodium can be in solution. however, the presence of other ions will increase the amount of salt that you can dissolve into the solution. Here's what I would do:

Make a batch of salt water that is supersaturated by heating up some distilled or filtered water and adding as much salt as you can until no more will go in. Then let it cool, this will cause a bunch of the salt to crash out of solution and settle at the bottom of your container. You could filter this water but as long as you try and keep any solid from transferring over you'll be fine. Use this saturated saline solution as your aqueous starting solution. Add the lye to this and then proceed as normal. Just make sure to do the saturation in a separate container to minimize the amount of solid that ends up in the final mixture. This is the easiest way I can think of to reach full saturation. Good Luck and hope it works well for you.

*you may have some precipitate form when you add the lye but since the temp of the solution will rise it should not be noticeable, Once the bark has been added it will increase the salts solubility, and I highly suggest heating your saturated/basified solution for hours before adding your NPS to the mix. This will break apart the proteins as I mentioned earlier and increase the ionic strength even furthur.

Not at all cyb, i do now feel guilty for making you believe i took umbrance at your posting though!

It was my intention to extract in the same way I normally do except I would start with a saturated saline solution and continue using my used solvent as i normally do. I thought if I did this I would have a proper comparison with the salt extraction regarding yield and quality. I was doing this as a personal comparison.

However I am prepared to do as you suggest ChemisTryptaMan, with the extended heating period and use fresh solvent if you think this data would be more helpful in the scheme of things.It could give us an upper base line with regards to the saline solution; at least in relation to the Nomans tek.

I will be doing this extraction this week and i will take some pictures of how things look at each individual stage. Thank you for your reply and advice, it is greatly appreciated.

kerberos, My suggestion was to make a saturated saline solution first and use this in place of the distilled water. That would be testing the limits at the upper end. I suspect this may cause problems with every oil in there coming out in the first pull, but the oils seem to enter the NPS far more slowly than I would expect. Even when using salt the first two pulls stay quite white, so this may not be an issue. Is this what you are saying your going to do?

Yes, it was always my intention to extract exactly the same way i always do except substitute the saline solution for my distilled water. i usualy use a 2ltr kilner jar filled with 1800 ml of water and 120g of lye. i then add the powdered bark slowly to the warm solution so i dont have to shake the jar to mix everything. This takes about 30 minutes for 50g of bark. i let sit for a further 30 minutes then add 40ml of hot, used Bartaline low odor white spirit and turn jar for 2 minutes let separate and repeat this 2 more times before pulling. i pull with 30ml for the next 2 pulls before adding another 30ml and leaving this for a week or two before pulling and just putting this into the solvent jar for next time. I freeze precip. I use this amount of water because it takes the level to the narrowest part of the jar to make it easier to pull. I use an inverted glass funnel which just fits into the jar and let this sink into my mixture. This forces the solvent into the stem of the funnel allowing me to use a 3ml pipette to draw off about 80% of my solvent in about 20 seconds. I will post some pics of this when i do the next tek. Last time i did this tek i pulled 716mg.

However, now i am thinking that it would be best to follow your advice in the first instance and do the same as above but let the mixture stand in warm water for several hours and then use some hot fresh BS245 white spirit to do the pulls. This will give a better start point for future tweaking.

Do you think that 120g of lye is a good starting point for this amount of liquid with this method ChemisTryptaMan?

with regards to the oils being driven out i was thinking that if a layer forms i could pull this off before adding my first pull. Or will the oils only make an appearance in the solvent? If they do make a layer i could pull this and add a couple of ml of solvent to see if it pulls anything out of the oils.

Thank you for your reply. I am really looking forward to this to see how it goes.

I would use the normal lye:MHRB:water proportions, though this may be what your suggesting as I haven't done the math. The only difference would be that you start with a saturated saline solution instead of distilled water, giving the upper salt limit. Those who don't add salt at all and use distilled water have already found the lower limit, and there has been some experimentation with a few different salt levels, but an upper limit would be invaluable knowledge for us salters. We already know we can double the yield, but can we go as high as 3%? This is why I suggest the long cook in acid or base to increase the ionic strength beyond what can be achieved through salt alone, as the amino acids in the plant will increase the ionic strength as well, giving an even higher upper limit of ionic strength. Best of luck and I can't wait for your results.

Before I posted this last year I saw no discussion on this forum about adding salt to increase the efficiency of extractions. I can't express how happy it makes me to see talk of salting in such a great number of posts im reading. I thank you cyb for making your tek, this has made 2% the standard yield with mimosa, and salt is to be given credit for the difference. This community really is special. When members see an idea, they test it, explore it, and make sure they find an answer to the question "Is this a good idea?" and they do it together. We all have a gift in this forum, and I am so amazingly appreciative of its existence.

Traveler, you are a pioneer in this. You have done so much for all of us by creating and maintaining this site. I've been on here reading posts since back when you could literally read every single post ever posted(and I did), and since then have watched it blossom into something greater than the sum of its members. I took a long time to officially join this community, but I feel like it is the most important community I belong to.

Many blessings to all of you, we are all beings of light, illuminating whatever darkness we can.

Sincerely,

CTM

I still do...(or try to)...it's exhausting...

ps. I'm going to try and write up a new tek using the new info that has come to light...hopefully soon.

I was away from the forum for a month or two a while back and had to give up, this community has just gotten far too big to read every post nowadays, but I figured you were one of the lurkers like myself for years just based on your knowledge and dedication. Cheers!

Oh yeah? Hopefully soon? 454g of ACRB just came in for me. I will probably wait for this tek. Used yours with my last extract.

I would use cyb's tek with acacia, as we just had a friend get a 2.85% yield this way. Any questions you have just ask. I would thoroughly read the tek and educate yourself on why it works so well before starting, but If the last extractor had continued to pull to exhaustion they would likely have reached the 3% mark. You could be the first to do this. All the best and good luck ChrisChris.

His current salt tek? I was maybe going to try to wait for the acacia tek he said he is working on. Is that what you meant? And thanks brother!

Im the one CTM was referring to, i actually did get just over 3%, could've possibly hit 3.5% (currently a work in progress.) I was using ACRB, and followed cybs tek, The only deviations i made were an 8+ hour heated acid soak, a 3 hour base soak, and a freeze thaw procedure, similar to thick lights but with powdered bark. I have never worked with MHRB, but by treating ACRB very similarly using cybs tek, i got equal/greater results then with MHRB, AFAIK it doesn't require much special treatment.

Also that was without a re-x so yields couldve been slightly less, though the first couple grams came out crystal white, only <1 gram came out yellowish.

I would like to add my salting experiences to this awesome thread.
(massive props to CTM for discovering this improvement.)

I added roughly 100g salt to a 'spent' MHRB A/B solution (last pull before salting gave only a very small amount of yellow oil.)

The next pull after salting gave nearly half a gram of pale yellow crystals and dark orange goo. recrystallisation was only partially successful, much of the DMT became trapped in the plant oils and would not dissolve.

To overcome this I carried out a mini A/B. The goo was dissolved in hot vinegar, DEFATTED 2X with naptha, based and extracted. This recovered the spice nicely, separating it from the plant fats.

This lead me to the conclusion that although a defat stage is generally considered unnecessary for a MHRB extraction, perhaps since adding salt forces the fats into the NPS, A de-fat stage might now be beneficial.

This could be done after reduction and filtration of the acidic solution. Salt should be added, followed by a de-fat with NPS, then lye added and pulled as usual.

any thoughts? Also I think this thread should be stickied in the A/B and STB sections to help spread knowledge of this very useful discovery

I have only read the first five pages of this thread, but it was a very nice read and quite educational...
Thank you CTM, Cyb, and all of you who contributed...

I have been reading a lot of teks and related threads for the past few weeks in order to get as good an understanding as possible of all the processes involved before attempting my first extraction...

I think I might go for Cyb's hybrid A/B tek which incorporates the "salting" that we all owe CTM for...

I'm not yet sure of one thing though, and hopefully someone can provide some clarity...

I would like to use zinc dust to convert the dmt-oxides into regular spice...
What would be the best moment in the tek to do this?
Right now I'm thinking of doing it at the end of the acidic stage, would this be okay? Would it be better to do it during the basic stage?
Also, should I filter the solution after the oxide conversion is complete (2 hrs. stirring at room temp)?
Or do I wait with the zinc until the r-xing?

Thank you

PLUR

Please don't bother with the zinc dust. It is a strong reducing agent and you may end up with unanticipated side reactions. Not to mention the fact that the amount of oxide in the product should be negligible unless you have exposed it to high temperatures outside of solution, a high oxygen environment, or allowed it to age for a long time in a warm moist atmosphere. Your thinking is sound but the process is unnecessary. Just stick to one of cybs salt teks and you will get a great yield of some fantastic spice.

**CTM rocks**

<3 !

I just wanted to add I will soon be comparing Multiple teks with and without "salting" for comparison on yeilds and difficulty on my "Attemping MHRB Cake Method" Thread. thank you to all who have provided information and contributed to this site im soo excited to get started!!