Hi, I am inspired to right this tek as I had trouble with the WIKI teks when they only suggested to put a funnel and a coffee filter or cotton balls and wait forever to let it drip out. If you boiled your seeds whole you don't really need to filter before basifying or manske but if you grinded them it is best to filter. Just let your acid solution from your boils cool in the fridge after you have filtered through something like a t-shirt. After a few hours or overnight the sediment will sink and you can siphon off the clear harmala water. If you DON'T WANT TO FILTER AT ALL, you can siphon off clear water from sediment water then add fresh acidic water to the sediment water and siphon that off once seperated in to two layers... nearly all the excess harmalas will be in the clear water and you can discard the sediment water. If you DO want to filter... put the seperated sediment laced water in a funnel with a coffee filter and let that drip through, if you want to do it fast you can set up multiple funnels & filters, alternatively you can follow this tek and try using a coffee filter but IME my coffee filters didn't stick perfectly to the shape of the funnel and air was sucked through but my coffee filters wern't a perfect cone. You could also try to make a flat base with some steel mesh in the funnel and place a filter on the circular mesh then this would work like a vacuum filter just with a water pump. So the tek is as follows:

It is very simple, all you need is

1x water pump (anything over 4LPM/1GPM is powerfull enough)
1x funnel (larger the better)
1x hose to connect to funnel
1x connection to connect hose water pump
1x coffee filter (works better) or cotton balls (can use wool but must roll in to balls)
1x however many glass storage jars you need

Step 1

Once you have finished you boils, strain through a flour sieve and then a t-shirt to collect most of the powdery sediment.

Step 2

Pour solution in to glass jars and let it cool in the fridge for a couple of hours. The fridge is necessary because the oils clump together when cooled and sink to the bottom. You will know when it is time because the top solution will be clear.

Step 3

Siphon the clear solution in to another jar using a clear tube. Place one jar above the other and let gravity do the work.

Step 4

Insert 4 cotton balls in to funnel and compact it with something long like a screwdriver or knife. Using more cotton balls than 4-5 will clog water flow, using less cotton balls will let sediment run through too much.

Step 5

Pour murkey sediment solution in the funnel. Usually 4 cotton balls will be enough to filter 500mls of solution depending on your water quality. If you don't want to hold the funnel I suggest placing it in something round & hollow, I used a milk crate on a chair but you could also improvise with a piece of wood with a hole in it, make sure it is well above the ground to best assist in sucking the water through.

Step 6

Discard cotton wool and replace.

Step 7

Repeat 5&6 once or twice or however many times it takes to enable the most purity

Step 8

You now have pure sediment free acid solution ready for basification or manske.

It will be an abstract artistic interpritation of something that looks like this:



Just want to give big ups to my boi pitubo, this wouldn't have been possible without all your dedication and hardwork. You have made this tek what it is today and I am so proud

In the chat ouro said that "you can avoid most of that work if you base quickly and throw away the waste water"

I found this not true. Quick base step does not dissolve all of the sediment in the basified water, it sinks to the bottom so the sediment collects with the harmala crystals. Hence filtering while in acidic stage.

ouro then said you can base and collect to get rid of a lot of the water but although you get rid of the water you still have sediment with your harmalas whereas if you filter before basifying then all the gunk is rid before basifying or manske.

Unless you boiled your seeds whole then if you basify on the first step and let crystals sink to the bottom, the sediment would sink also as the basified water doesn't dissolve all of the gunk.

If you have already basified by accident, you can just put excess acid in to convert back to acid so that you can filter.

You can either reduce before you filter or remove excess water after the first salt manske.

Also, if you are wondering about whether the seeds need to be powdered please look at these threads:

Rue extraction with pressure cooker - Results and Conclusions

Syrian rue - powdered, whole, soaked.

Powdered Syrian Rue Seed or Whole?

My conclusion is that if you have bulk seeds then it is worth it whole but if under a kilo then it would be best to get your moneys worth a grind.

These are the tricks I found to improve rue filtering:

- Filter thoroughly before precipitating the alkaloids (not only the first time but also between each precipitation in later steps). Best way to filter thoroughly without having to wait for too long is to make progressively finer filter. First a very crude filter like a metal strainer/t-shirt to remove rue pieces, then a funnel with loosely packed thick layers of cotton on the bottom of the filter, to another funnel more tightly packed)

-First base precipitation or two with lye instead of sodium carbonate

-Alternate between base precipitating and manske each time.

- Do the manske with the exact amount of salt (100g per liter of boiling solution) and let it cool VERY slowly (by having the bottom of the container submerged in warm water solution) to form larger crystals that are easier to filter

- Use vacuum filtering (you can buy a whole kit like this, very easy to use or build an improvised one with vacuum cleaner funnel, hard hdpe plastic container and some tubes)

- Use multiple funnels/filters at once if necessary to make it faster

- Be patient, and dont stay staring looking at the filter, rather leave it filtering and go do another task and come back later

If I understand you correct, you use the suction pressure from a water pump as a means to drag the liquid with some force trough the cottons?
What kind of water pump are you referring? A internet link would be nice, thx.

I've tried with vacuum cleaner before but it ran hot very soon, because it had no air flow going trough it to cool it down.

Another alternative: Cheap vacuum pumps OK for vacuum filtration?

Hi Sleeper,

That is a clever idea to use a pump to force the filter.

as we discussed in chat, you had gunk setttle with the harmala precip because you had extremely finely ground seeds and the seed solids are never soluble.

Grinding finely and using a quick filtering tactic like vacuum or your pump filter idea is a legit tek. Basically you may have to boil with less water/for less time at the cost of having a more difficult time filtering, and you can be pretty confident you have exhausted the seeds for a maximum yield.

If you do not grind seeds, filtering is not difficult or even necessary.

I have personally found perfectly satisfying yields using whole seeds, and I'm collecting data from other users that shows the same. Boiling whole seeds 3x 1 hour with a water/seed ratio of around 1.5L/100g seems to get 90+ percent of the alks, and one of the above links shows PCing 3x 45 minutes also gets the vast majority of the alks out. It's possible I'm only getting 6 percent yield when I could have gotten 7 if I finely ground the seeds, but when I am extracting 500g-1kilo I don't really care that much and the extreme increase in convenience is worth it. Different strokes for different folks.

Cheers

My experience with whole seeds is that not filtering still leaves plent of crud. Even unground seeds are covered with all kinds of dust. Boiling 3 x 1 hour also seems to extract noticeable fats from the seed kernel. But indeed, it's way better than with ground seeds.


Agree on almost all counts, except that 5 x 1 hours gets me an additional 10 percent, so I would guesstimate that 3 x 1 hour gets 80 to 85 percent.

Pitubo - when you boiled 5x1 hour how much water did you use? boiling times cannot be compared easily if you don't note the amount of water used. 85 percent seems reasonable tho.

As for the minimal amount of gunk that comes through when boiling whole seeds, most of that can be removed by basing tea and discarding the dirty water before any of it can settle out. Some peoples tastes might still require filtering, but it is certainly not necessary.

Sorry for the digression off topic. The water pump is a cool innovation that could be useful for other types of extractions instead of a vacuum filter.

Hmm, I guess it is about 1 liter per 100 grams of rue seeds, maybe even a little less.


Agreed, let's review the tek.

Sleepermustawake, could you post a picture of your setup?

Yes we need something more substantial than a flimsy description like



If I understand you correct, you use the suction pressure from a water pump as a means to drag the liquid with some force trough the cottons?

What kind of water pump are you referring?
Can you please post a picture of your setup, that makes many people happy.
If not that, then at least an internet link of the pump you used would be nice.

I ask because water pumps can come in various design. A rotary blade pump might create sufficient underpressure, a classic centrifugal-pump those are likely to produce only very limited underpressure. I would really like to see the pump you use, thanks.

Yes drag the liquid through cotton, but it is annoying because you have to replace the cotton often, I wish you could do it with a coffee filter instead. I also bought a hand pump and connected it to that instead but there is already a tek in the wiki about that.

I bunked this and now just use a t-shirt, any left overs I use a multiple multiple multiple multiple funnels and cone shaped coffee filters and just wait.

It is a portable water pump, the kind used in motorhomes but anything will I suppose. Ebay is littered with them.



The pump was gr8 it is just the cotton balls that sucked