First let me say thanks to 69ron for this remarkable extraction. It is an absolute pleasure being able to quickly and efficiently extract this holiest of sacraments without having to work large amounts of extremely caustic soup as I usually do. For that, my hat goes off to you. Do keep up the good work!

With that out of the way....

From reading the tek (along with other posts regarding this method), it is my understanding that one adds the D-Limo (or in my case, Xylene) directly to the basic "paste", correct?

What I am wondering is if there is a reason as to why one does not dry the paste after it has been made basic as is done in Jorkset's Bufo extraction (another killer extraction, btw). I ask because it seems to me that it would be a bit easier to work with...

Can anyone see any advantages or disadvantages to doing this?

EDIT: I forgot to mention something else that has been bugging me...

Is there a reason as to why the alkaloids are usually removed by extracting into a polar phase instead of gassing the solvent? I understand some prefer the OAc over the HCL, is this perhaps the reason for the lack of interest in gassing?

Thanks!



Tony.

Thinking back to the last time SWIM did this, it would be very, very difficult to stir the d-limo into enough cactus-lime cocktail to get decent yields without the water.

Really? I would have thought it would be hard to work the solvent through the paste, hence the drying. Well I will certainly take your word for it as I don't have enough material to play around with at the moment. Thanks for the quick reply, I can get started now.

Still wouldn't mind hearing other members thoughts on this though....

Adding more lime seems to act as a bit of a drying agent if the paste is too soupy. Better yet, is slowly mixing in sodium carb. which turns some of the lime into lye, dries it up more strongly, and turns the paste into fine sand. I recommend using just lime for a few NP pulls and then adding the sod. carb. and pulling again. Having a more watery paste at the start is convenient as its much easier to mix with the NPS. my 2 cowry shells

Rag, I now see what you mean as far as it making it easy to stir. I had pictured it in my head to be the consistency of bread dough or something similar, now I get it....

raga, i did ron's extraction recently on torch, and noticed that initially the water did seem to help in stirring the sludge. however, after the limo had been soaking the bark for 2-3 days, the sludge turned very watery just from limo.
When i did it, i used enough water as per ron's tek, but i think that very little water should get the job done as well if the sludge is left to soak in the limo for 2-3 days, as ime the limo turns the sludge quite watery.


just a heads up here. someone posted recently about adding the lime after having already added the limo to the cacti sludge. it seems that the lime particles get stuck in the limo if the lime is added after limo. so just make sure you add all the lime you need to in the polar state. and if you have to add more lime, then first decant the limo, and then add the lime.
I'm not certain about whether the lime dissolves into the limo, or just simply gets stuck as particulates; but i think someone mentioned that the lime can be filtered from the limo using a coffee filter prior to salting.


how does the lye exactly help in pulling better from the cacti sludge? perhaps adding straight lye would be even better..?

I have heard of some bad experiences while using NaOH and KOH with this tek. The exact reason for the increased difficulty escapes me and I can not find any of the posts, but I want to say it had something to do with mucilage. If memory serves me, someone had made a point of stating that CaOH was the only base that prevented the whole thing from turning into one giant ball of snot. This seems counter intuitive to me, I would think the stronger base would easily break down the mucus.

For whatever the reason, I am sure 69ron (and others) have settled on CaOH after much trial and error, which sucks, because I can imagine NaOH would increase yields a bit simply by rupturing cell structure better than my coffee grinder/CaOH.

Ouro's method sounds great though, forming the NaOH after the first few pulls. I just would not use it from the beginning.



Good to know. Thanks for the heads up.

good q's Phant, I'll clarify my reasoning.

I originally added na2co3 to the sludge after doing all my pulls, salting, and noting that nothing desirable was coming out. It seems there is some controversy over whether lime can get all the actives reliably, so I added the sod. carb. to see if converting to lye would release any more. It turns out, no more came out, the sludge turned into a more solid sandy material, and the trapped limo was liberated. The little granules of what used to be sludge may trap some stuff, I cannot say, but the sandy stuff is much much easier to separate from the limo than sludge. If I had to guess, I'd say the reason the sludge solidified is because naoh is a fairly strong desiccant, and the reaction precips caco3. This process was done in the presence of limo and didn't affect salting. I can't vouch for adding lime to a limo/sludge mix. Pouring the limo through a coffee filter is a good idea imo anyways before salting in case any sludge sneaks in.

Adding dry epsom salts may have a similar effect, but I haven't tried it. Do dry epsom salts absorb limo or any freebase?

your intuiton is correct. stronger base breaks thins down much better. strong base, ph 13-14, will turn snot to water.
in fact id never even add the np until a water constitensy is acheived...
but whatdo i know