I did mescaline extraction like usual. I do alcohol extraction followed by A/B. It always works perfectly but this time it failed miserably.

I used more cactus powder than usual (300 g instead of 150-200 g) and the final salting step resulted in pure emulsion (see image).

But at least now I know what is the cause of dreaded emulsions. It's the FAT! Even when gently swirling the two phases, the oily drops travel into the aqueous layer and slowly back. Even slight shaking caused them to break into million oil droplets and emulsifying the water layer.

I think some kind of de-fatting is really necessary. But now it seems too late.

I have no idea how to salvage the mescaline at this point. The emulsion simply sits there and it's unbreakable.

I could maybe drain the emulsion and re-extract several times with water and acid. Then put the collected emulsified extracts on hotplate - heating and stirring until the emulsion breaks completely. Then separate the layers again.

Is it acidic? Have you tried to basify it back? Sometimes it helps to break it. I use it when everything else fails. But the pH change has to be significant.

Do you have a vessel that will not crack in a deep freezer?
If you can deep freeze it then it might kill the emulsion totally. I've killed emulsions before like that but it was not from cacti, maybe that doesn't play a roll? It usually killed +95% of the layer, it is repeatable to kill even better.
It's along time ago I did that, I think to have used a cylindrical vessel lying on it's side, so any expansion would not result in breaking the vessel.
To be prudent you can do the emulsion layer only.
Place vessel in a glass dish so when it does crack the content will not escape far.
I remember the emulsion breaking feature of deep freezing in the time I had no separation funnel, when deep friezed I could simply poor off the non polar instead. It dawned on me that no emulsion was able to survive, as said no cacti though.

Btw, I had defatted 100gr (trial) of cacti tea once and my yield was near zero. I dunno where exactly I fekedup but I screwed up hard. I hope my suspicion on defatting cacti is ungrounded. That was my last cacti extract ever I called it a day with that snot and emulsion LOL. I boiled and boiled and people got rid of snot but not in my pot
Thinking about a dry or semi dry tek instead.

I haven't even managed to acidify it yet because of the emulsion (hard to indicate pH). Both organic and aqueous layers are murky.

My plan is to extract the emulsion and continue with acidic water extractions until no more alkaloids are left in the original organic layer.

Then I will try to break the emulsion with heat&stir.

I left the drained emulsion sit overnight and little bit organic layer resolved while the aqueous stays in fine foam form.

I can freeze it down to -18 °C but will see today how it will do.

How sure are you the cause was a fat? I am planning on trying to resolve emulsion problems in STB when whole cactus is used and the fat is number one suspect. I just don't think it is contained in all plant parts though, but I have to prove this yet.

What have you tried to do, to break the emulsion? More base, tons of table salt, putting on top of speakers with some beats on (or any source for vibration) ?

Nothing helped (any vibrations or even slight stirring actually worsen the emulsion - it's more like there is oily middle layer that quickly dissipates into the water layer whenever agitated).

Then I added sat. saline solution and 50% KOH - then everything cleared up into three layers (see image).

The top is the toluene layer, middle is aqueous (with indicator, hence it is blue) and bottom is that weird oily layer.

I think I will pour everything in a 2L separatory funnel and try to get rid of the water+oil, then add more solvent, heat it up and attemp to salt out the mescaline once again.

It seems the oils are denser than the saline water, so this offers a promise that excess plant oils could be separated this way.

Out of curiosity, what type of cactus is it? Do you think this specimen is particularly fatty?

Unfortunately I don't know since the powder has been provided by someone else who just labels it "wachuma powder". It's most likely T. Pachanoi but I don't know about specific strain.

I made part of the powder myself by drying and grinding the chips - my powder was very green while the purchased one was light yellow.

I used the whole cactus, incl. skins. Now I will certainly remove them beforehand.

Anyway. I found the oils raise in hot solution while sink in cold solution. Therefore I simply washed the solvent several times with KOH/brine and place the combined washes in an Erlenmeyer flask. Then placed this flask in a ice water bath in a bucket.

Then I will extract the small amount of toluene on top and proceed with backsalting.

The solvent was very very dirty and opaque. Now it's transparent dark green after the washes.

It seems few washes with cold basic brine prior to backsalting are beneficial.

So no even the washed toluene still emulsified the water. I have washed it 6 times (!) and still any water added to it foams immediately after even gentle swirling.

I hoped the an1cca's tek is emulsion-proof but no Emulsions, emulsions, emulsions...

I have a feeling that toluene itself is much more prone to emulsions than xylene.

Avoiding emulsion is my target as well. I have acquired fresh torch, pachanoi and bridgesii. And xylene as well, so I have enough material for tests. I have some ideas what to do, once I finish my cacti growroom, I will continue with this project. Hopefully we find some path...

Yes it would be great to discover a way to deal with cactus emulsions once and for all.

The initial alcoholic extraction helps a lot but it still pulls plant lipids and emulsion problems reappear as the liquor gets too concentrated. Although the oils consolidate after very, very long time, it is not practical to work with. It can make a nice lava lamp effect though

Same problem happens when I extract DMT and concentrate naphtha pulls too much - fats will take over and the result is more sludge than crystals.

Freezing might be one possibility to crash out some fats too.

Traditional de-fatting is what I will try now. I will use hexane as mescaline is completely insoluble in it.

So far I collected the water washings and realized I have actually extracted freebase back into the water (mescaline freebase is quite water-soluble), hence the toluene was almost devoid of alkaloids.

Washing the solvent with water, even alkaline, is thus not an option.

Therefore I re-acidified and concentrated the aqueous, then filtered it. To my surprise, lot of black desbris appeared (see images) - this normally happens when acidifying the liquor but now it appeared at a much larger extent (I used excess acid). Maybe some organic reaction happed or it some (possibly organic) neutralization product.

I have to recycle my xylene in order to proceed. Meanwhile, I stored the mother liquor in a bottle and try the de-fatting a extration in the following days.

Why hexane? If you go to pH 7, then only 0,275% mescaline is in freebase form. You can go even lower, just for safety, but not necessarily. For pH 6 it is only 0,028%. Then you can use toluene or xylene, which are much better for defatting, no?
I was thinking about using naphtha or heptane/hexane for defatting in highly basic solution, but this was for STB, which is not your case here.

I was afraid toluene/xylene would still pull some of the salt with it so I wanted to go for as nonpolar solvent as possible.

Another reason was that I might need to heat up the system for better separation and the heated xylene might pull the salts even if room temp. solvent won't. But maybe I am a bit paranoid here.

Anyway, see table below for solubilities. I found this when looking for the solubility of mescaline FB/.HCl/.SO4

It does not include BTX solvents but I will believe you and assume mescaline hydrochloride is insoluble in xylene even if hot.

About the pH: It seems the pH swing in A/B extraction need not to be as dramatic as with - say - DMT?

Last time I added only a small amount of 5% HCl (less than 50 ml) and pH of the solution dropped below 1.5

However, the an1cca's tek used much more HCl as well as some other Teks I read. Some even used excess of concentrated HCl.

Is the pH the only factor or could there be any other reasons for using excess acid (or base)?

Well, I haven't done any tests, so only theoretically - it is the same like back-salting. Only one small water pull is necessary, even for pH 7. Another pull with fresh water yields zero mescaline. The HCl migrates very readily, the warmer is the water, the easier it is, so I don't see reason why it should leave water and enter toluene/xylene with defatting.

I am not sure I understand. Are we talking about back-salting here? I don't know an1cca's tek. What reason is the acid added for in this tek? Or in what stage of extraction?

This I did not expect.

If FB mesc is indeed soluble in a base water, are there not similar oddities when it comes to defatting? Meaning: is salted mescaline safe in the acid water layer? Will it not goto the (for example) toluene? I would think not but now I start to wonder.

It is difficult to get it from water to non-polar, there are many pulls needed.
When back-salting later, it goes very easily into water as HCl. I am pretty sure defat with toluene/xylene when slightly acidic will be OK.
Question is whether defatting causes emulsion or not.