OK, so my first extraction didnt go as well as it could have. I did extract about a gram total of pure white goodness, though I started with 500g of MHRB. So my yield was abysmal to say the least. I also lost product by trying to filter out the sediment that came from my powdered root bark. It was just overall a whole mess, and I was learning along the way.

I realize now that I should never have made my very first extraction with 500g of root bark. This was the biggest mistake that I made, because if anything went wrong I would be losing a lot of product... which I'm pretty sure I did.

My second extraction was made with 100g root bark. I did a version of any A/B tek, salted, and used naptha as my NPS.
I ran my vinegar soak/cook 3 times, cooking each batch for 2 hours. Approx 600ml water with 200ml 5% white vinegar for each batch.

Cooking juice was strained and collected, totaling over 2L.
60g non-iodized sea salt was added to 200ml boiling water, then this solution was added to the 2L of juice.
Juice was reduced in volume by boiling to about 1.4L.
After juice was reduced to 1.4L, it was left in fridge for 4-6 hours to let sediment fall to the bottom.

Clearish purple juice was then decanted into erlynmeyer flask

A lye solution was made using 200ml water and 60g sodium hydroxide.

Lye solution was slowly added to the flask to minimize reaction.

Flask is placed in a pot of 70C water and temp is maintained.
Flask was topped up with water to make harvesting the naptha easier
50ml room temp naptha was added. Naptha and Solution are inverted 30 times every 10 minutes, totaling 5 reps.


Naptha is pipetted off the top after clearing, into a sodium carbonate wash.

50ml more naptha is added to the solution, and the process is repeated.
In total 7 naptha pulls were done. The first 6 were combined into the same jar, to be evaporated by half before freezer precipitation. The 7th pull was fan evaporated to see how much material was pulled on the last run. The last pull was such a small amount that I would not waste my time continuing to extract smaller and smaller returns.

Once the first 6 pulls had been given enough time to precipitate in the freezer, I removed the naptha and saved it for another day. The remaining crystals that are still wet with naptha were then placed into my vacuum chamber to remove any remaining naptha. I will post them once they come out of the chamber

Cheers!

Not including pull number 7, simply because I did not weigh it, total yield was 1050mg from 100g MHRB for a 1.05% yield. I think this is totally respectable, but I know I can improve also.


Moving forward there are a few things I am going to try to see how much I can improve my yield. First, I have begun on another 100g of MHRB. I have added enough water to it so that it is fully hydrated, and there is a little excess, but it is not soup. I am going to freeze and thaw this at least 3 times to see if I can further lyse the cells of the bark.

I am also willing to let the bark set in the acid solution for much longer. Last run, I did 3 2hr cooks to the bark with vinegar added. I'm not too sure this will lyse the cells as much as the the NaOH would. I really like the idea of the MaxION tek, where you let the bark stay in solution and never filter it out. I'm very hesitant to try this though, because I had such a problem the very first run due to having so much particulate. My naptha took hours to clear the first time. Last run the naptha was clearing in 2min10sec because there was no fine particulate left in solution.

I'm not too sure what else I should try to boost my yield numbers. If anybody has any suggestions I'm open to ideas...

Looks pretty good. I'd eat it.

I have a few suggestions that may help.

-Heat your soup and your solvent before performing your pulls. I've noticed in considerably increases the total yield (if you haven't thrown out your soup I suggest trying this to see if you can squeeze out maybe 250-500mg more).
-Keep the plant matter in your soup, the solvent doesn't need to fully separate for you to still get the majority of the goodies. However, after finishing your fifth pull, you can also add solvent for the next pull, and then allow a longer period of time for it to fully separate and complete the pull process with the sixth pull in this way (you likely won't need more than six, and as you get more practice in you'll be able to use less solvent overall).
-Congratulate yourself, because that looks mighty fine my friend.

One love

So my soup was heated to 70C for all 7 pulls. The naptha was subsequently kept at the same temp during pulls It was in constant contact with the soup. So if the naptha is dirty when I pull it because it has fine plant particulate, then that will just wash out in the sodium carbonate wash? Is that what you are suggesting?

70C is a little high I think. I usually do my pulls around 50C.

Your yield may be a little on the low side but you've produced some spot on crystals and with a little dialing in to your method I think you'll be pulling like a boss very soon!

I have used the Max Ion tek many times and its very good, I just find the naphtha separation bit annoying; I have access to sep funnels and other apparatus and its still a pain.

Once I switched to the vinegar/lime dry tek and started using a bodum as the pulling container everything became so much easier Ive not looked back since.

HTH

Burnttoast, what do you find a pain about the naptha separation?
I feel like I dont really need a sep funnel and stand. I use a 2L Erlenmeyer flask(instead of MaxIon using a jar with a lid), and push the base solution right up to the bottom of the neck. Once I have added the naptha, I have about 1-2in of headspace between the naptha and my rubber stopper. I like to use a 10ml pipette to remove the naptha. If I do suck up a little bit of the nasty black soup, the pipette acts like a seperatory funnel and I can squirt the black stuff back into the flask.

I agree with you that 70C is a little on the high side. It certainly does lend to turning the naptha a yellow tinge, but I'm ok with that part. I am using a slow cooker on the keep warm setting. Thats as low as it goes, so I would have to be constantly adjusting the thing to keep it at 50C. How do you keep yours at 50C?



Can you link the vinegar/lime dry tek you refer to? I quickly search for one, but the results returned nothing.

The mucking about with glass syringes/pippettes. Its messy, takes a while and you always leave a good few ml behind. I know its not a major pfaff but I'd rather not have to bother having done it so many times over the years.

Dry tek with a bodum (thank you CIELO Tek); mix slowly for ten mins; push down the filter and pour off. super simple and easy.

For pulling:

Turn the crockpot on high and put some water in, wait for that to warm up. Then stick 500ml water in a kettle and bring to near boil. pour out initial water from crockpot and replace with the hot but not boiling kettle water.

Put bodum in crockpot for 5 mins. Wait, Add NPS to a beaker and put in crockpot for 5 mins alongside bodum. (make sure you cover both with cling film) I also cover the crockpot with a large towel to keep the heat in.

After ten mins total has elapsed take out the beaker, pour contents into Bodum, leave that in the crockpot and do your pull.

HTH

E2A: https://wiki.dmt-nexus.m.../Lime_A/B_Extraction_Tek

I actually use the GordoTek method which is, so Im told, a ripoff of the original Tek I posted above. Just google Gordotek DMT and you should be good.