Hmmm... I like how undeterred you are. Maybe it's because the work is important and I want to be much better at it, or maybe I'm just impatient but I can get right agro (at myself) when I have an extraction setback or huge loss of yield. It's the same creative rage I got at 10 when I ran out of Lego window pieces mid-pirate's castle—"What... but ... SMASH!!" I'm less reactive now but still... sux. By that same stroke I would find I hated the PF tek. It just dint work! I even put way more water than the dumb tek called for, so it would y'know work that much better. Ego. I was put off the whole enterprise after I spent four spore kits and hours sweating over that scary steam reactor, a postmodern cauldron straight from the Cold War kitchen. To a myco "n00b" the pressure cooker was a relic out of time, from before the proliferation class action lawsuits, a time before any product from floor wax to multivitamins might require printed warnings, even contingency plans:" "induce vomiting," "DON'T induce vomiting!" "Call the following number and follow all instructions..." It just looked unsafe...unwholesome. 3rd degree burns waiting to happen. This hissing thing of industrialized housewifery sold to the public before Bureaus of Consumer Protection pulled mercury tooth fillings, lead paint, candy cigarettes, radium Christmas ornaments, and Quaaludes from the market. Appropriately I would duck-and-cover like the Cuban Missile Crisis every time i heard the pressure seal pop into place on the little 2 gal pot... Now I have to make excuses for 41 liter autoclaves, (I really do make my own soap!) and the dreaded infection factor is almost none, an afterthought of rote procedure. Anyway, I admire your pluck, blue.magic.
SORRY total off topic ramble—I will edit this paragraph out later, just wanted to share that and say "Hello." Hello.




If you're worried about the active carbon or trace zinc oxide and sodium hydroxide combusting I don't think that is likely. Ashes don't burn. Also these minerals should not readily sublime or atomize into the vapor under normal conditions as to cause acute harm. I'm confident that that's the case, but your lungs deserve more knowledgeable advice from someone who can make those claims for sure. I can't. I just reaaaly think so. ...Oh do you still have the coffee filter? Cellulose (paper pulp) is an adsorption material its own right used in ion exchange medium (paper chromatography). I'm sure there's a method to elute it like any other adsorption material—toss it in a blender with your np solvent and... and there's that nagging feeling again, that angst that I'm telling someone to do something dumb or untested. So I'll stop there. Good luck!

Thanks for making me smile with your ramble, SBG^. I enjoy your writing style.

Filter papers can also be rolled up an inserted into a clean tube of the correct diameter for a snug fit. Then fasten the tube into a vertical orientation. Solvent can be dripped into the top and collected from the bottom.

I (accidentally) popped part of the bottom out of a glass boiling tube with a small blowtorch. This was then useful for packing with rolled up kitchen roll sheets as about the only way of filtering out particulates from a rue solution in the absence of celite, frit funnels or a vacuum pump. It should work for crude chroma as well.