blue.magic, I have again went through the information you provided and I can see the main difference between this STB and your approach. I think it is the COOKING PHASE before you started with STB. There is a complex mix of chemicals within the cactus and boiling it an acidic environment will inevitably lead to some reactions, which can produce results causing problems when put in strongly basic environment.
As I said before, from my experience even very small changes in the TEK can cause big changes in the result. And boiling the cactus before this TEK is definitely something that changes the game.
Nonetheless there still might be other reasons, like different cactus, different parts of cactus included in the entry material or low-grade chemicals. I believe the latter is not your case though.
My estimate is the probability of pre-boiling causing these problems is about 75%. The rest is 25%.
I would suggest to follow this TEK with raw material of known composition. But I don't have an idea, how serious is your quest for emulsion-free TEK...

The solubility of NaCl in water is about 359g/l. Solubility of KOH in water is about 1,2kg/l. The NaCl amount was calculated to saturate (roughly) water by these two chemicals. Only these two were taken into account.

swim cacti dried as is with core include and no messy emulsion was formed on the cacti/xylen phase.
he encountered emulsion only when pulled xylen of cacti jar and place it in new jar with dh2o.
swim think that all emulsion are form only if one's dont defat before he base the cacti, which probebly cant be done in stb tek.
when looked at alcohol teks like An1cca and see how much junk will form after a defat stage swim think that its mandatory with cacti to prevent the emulsion, espacialy when used cacti as is without removing core and waxy layer

This is a theory. Only proper test with toluene can prove/disprove this. And I hope it disproves it!

blue.magic : We have someone who successfully got over the initial extraction with complete cactus material. Which is improving the estimate I have done. I would really like to see this working, unfortunately I don't have any live material I could try it with at the moment. I would have to sacrifice one of the cuttings I have waiting for rooting, but it cost me money and is supposed to be grown.

Fractalus : are you going to try to change to toluene?

swim have a great idea how to defat stb!
one can use naptha or other np that DOSENT pull mescaline successfully to pull from the basic cacti jar, this can pull all the fats but not the mescaline and after that to add xylen/toluene. hows that sound?

swim is gonna do what ever he can before buying toluene, if he had no choise so he probbebly will

Good idea, but ...
Defat is usually done with acidic solution. It is done because the alkaloids are not very soluble in nonpolar when acidic, but there might be some another reason. I am not a chemist, so maybe others could elaborate on this. If the solubility of fats is independent on the pH (which might be), then this may be the way.
Another problem might be the solubility of mescaline in such solvent. Obviously it is low, so naptha is not used for extraction, but this doesn't mean the insolubility is absolute. There would be some loss, question is how much. Anyway, my feeling is it seems to be worth the try. Evaporation of the np after the defat and taste test (bitterness) would be a good way how to tell how much goodies got trapped withing the np.
And there is ofcourse possibility of emulsion while defatting

blue.magic maybe try to base the cacti a bit more it might help

if the cacti is basic enough so there less probebility for emulsion right?

No, this doesn't work like that. As blue.magic has written, sometimes the more the base, the more likely the emulsion occurs.
You never know whether emulsion occurs before you try. But there are odds you can be OK with naptha.
There is only one way to be sure...

If blue.magic followed the amount, I doubt more base will help, it is already very basic solution

I only ever go STB on fresh cactus and it always produces some kind of emulsions, sometimes not bad sometimes thick and stubborn.... However heat and more base/water ALWAYS fixes things. More watery the better IMO

Get it real hot. Most of the xylene will come out.

Same goes for titration. Heat will clear things up <80deg C. Adding more water can help too

And remember to take PH readings at room temp or they are not accurate (and you shorten your ph probe life)

I was always getting emulsions with STB without NaCl. It had to be heated all the time, which was annoying. Even with just green tissue.
With NaCl no a sign of emulsion. But NaCl has to be added before np and properly dissolved, if added later, it is too late

Okay here are the results.

It seems the "emulsion" problem were actually very fine particulates suspended on the dense aqueous layer.

I have drained as much aqueous as possible so only the xylene and "emulsion" remained. Then I added 200 ml of hot water and got this velvet effect, showing the particulates move into the thinner liquid:



I waited. The separation got cleaner and cleaner until I got almost full amount of the original xylene:



I again poured off almost all the aqueous and dillute it some more. Now we can clearly see there are floating particulates. Some are heavier and sank down:



So the problem is that whatever was in the cactus tea was not attacked and dissolved by the KOH. Maybe this was scar tissue, ground thorns, I don't know...

I separated the organic layer, dried it with magnesium sulfate, filtered and proceeded to backsalting. Unfortunately only a very little acid was needed showing low alkaloid content (the water contains indicator turning yellow when acidic):



Here are the mescaline sulfate crystals found on dish the next morning:



After thorough scraping, I was left with about 360 mg of sulfates



I am afraid washing this would lower the amount to less then 300 mg which is only one light dose. Over 1 gram was expected ideally but of course there are too many unknowns, especially the source of the cactus, method of preparation etc.

Nice work blue.magic!

Well, there is another difference you have from original tek, which could lead to those particles. I remember this was stated as very important step many times when I was doing the research - the initial mixing of cactus and the base.
As I've written, I am using 1kW glass blender (Braun JB 3060 WH). It can crush ice cubes, so it has no problem to powderize cactus chips and it turned few kg of shredded MHRB into fine powder too without a hiccup. I just put there cold basified water, powderized chips, place hdpe bag over the top (there are some holes in the cover!), put the cover, hold by hand (necessary!!!) and mix for few minutes with different speeds. Works like a charm!
With 50ml pipette and borosilicate glass bottles, that was the best investment I did for STB!

Did you shake the absolute life out of the titration? You really need to be vigorous. I often find I’m at ph 7 then after a few minutes heavy shaking it rises back up to 8... or 9 if your lucky 😉

Of course, a lot of mescaline was transfered to the hot water too...

Also I really think indicator like that is a bad idea. Your salting water can go a bit yellow from titration and dissolved emulsion ((when using heat). Better to use a ph meter. Shake it hard out then deal with resulting emulsion with heat and repeat. I bet there’s more in there!

And lastly since you used sulfuric acid just dissolve your crystals in a little bit of hot water and add acetone. It will all crash out fluffy and white. It will crash out of water if concentrated enough but that might be like two drops for you lol. Use acetone

Well, I just notice how much HCl is needed when I am passing pH 7, so I know how much of goodies is there, but I always continue to pH 4 or 5. I don't care the purity. Because I go this way anyway and I am rewarded by white medicine at the end

Hey Pete. Yeah I do the same but it might drop to 5 then come back up to 8 depending how vigorously the phases were mixed. I’m gueasing blue magic didn’t shake the beejessus out of that funnel.

I’ll try NACL next time although I use sodium hydroxide so I’m getting plenty of ions as it is

Antichode, yes, this is why I like emulsion free TEK, so I can shake as I want and not as I can. So I am sure as much as possible is transfered.

I suggest trying it, but again, it has to be added and shaked properly before np. Please report the result if you try it