I am thinking it might be plant fats. I will have a hard time believing its lye, because I do my pulls with great care. Perhaps it is nothing more then DMT, shellite just being extremely saturated with it?

Before the shellite was evaporated down, these fluffy floaties would "clump" together. They were not misty, like the normal saturated solvent. The pictures are not the best, it looks more like saturated shellite, then the floaties I am trying to explain.

I will also add. For my 2nd extraction, I heated the lye and shellite in a very warm bath. From the 1st pull, the mix was placed in a hot bath, unlike my 1st extraction. For my 1st extraction, I did three cool pulls, and gave the last two pulls a bath. I will also add on that I am leaving the shellite in the lye for a MUCH longer amount of time, with this extraction. This is why I think it might be floaters of plant fats (even though I have not read of such a thing). Because I would be pulling much more rubbish with each pull this time around.

Ignore the denser, yellow chunky looking things at the bottom. They are just dirty crystals that I scraped off from the sides. After I evaporated the shellite down some, I was left with the crystals on the side. So i thought I would scrap em in. As you can see though, this is not the normal misty solvent, they are floaties!

It looks like it's impurities (fats and oils?) from the plant material. Have you tried washing with sodium carbonate before freeze precipitation? It greatly reduces the yellow colour of both the solvent and the outcome for me! If you do try it, remember to do it with a solution you have not evaporated down like the one on the picture.

I might have to look into that next time, thanks for the advice. As for the end result. I ended up using my Baster to suck up the floaters once they settled down to bottom again. The shellite I removed then was treated to a hot bath, leaving the fats and oils from the dirty crystals and floaters on the bottom. I poured the shellite back to the bowl, and repeated the method by removing what floaties and dirty crystals that were left. The 2nd time had much less oils and fats at the bottom.

Once this was done, I transferred all of the shellite to the small measuring cup so I could wash out the bowl I would be putting in the freezer. I gave the whole mix one last bath, and washed out the bowl of dry dirty fats/oils/crystals. Dried it and poured the solvent back into the bowl making sure to leave the crappy mix of fats, oils, dust, and hair behind.

The finished result was a much cleaner looking solvent. Still very yellow in color, but so much more crystal clear. Once it cooled down to room temp, I could see a number of very small specs of them floaters. But was a much smaller amount this time. Here are some pictures so you can see the results. Top two are before and afters.

Before


After

That looks like ALOT of solvent.

how much did you use for how much MHRB?

Yes it is a lot. Probably overkill, really. I think the scale I used was off, but I measured the lye and bark powder out the same. That sead, I did maybe 8 pulls. Two pulls 200ml, then down to 100ml pulls. The last maybe 4 pulls I started to evap down the shellite, or els I knew I would not fit it in the bowl. To answer that question, 100g of bark, or maybe in this case 200g. Next time I will use the new scale I got (one for measuring bark and lye), the old scale is way off.

It is more solvent I suppose, but I had no problem with freezing the crystals out with my first extraction. The first extraction had about the same amount of end solvent (5 200ml pulls, no evaporating the solvent down). I also used the solvent that was left from my first extraction with this extraction. Looking at the solvent just now many crystals are forming. There are floaters on the bottom, a large amount. But this might be crystal floaters. I will know on monday if giving the lye/shellite mix a bath every time was worth it. That's when it will be ready to pour off the shellite.

If it's not, I will just do cool pulls, and the last 2-3 pulls I will heat the mix. My 1st extraction I had really clean solvent, and finishing crystals. You probably already seen the results of my 1st extraction in my topic.