Hello,

This is my first run with the Q21's lime tek. I used 100g of MHRB and did the heated vinegar + water (about 100ml of each) soak for about an hour and then added lime until the mix reached the consistency of oatmeal. I then added ~ 200ml of heptane after a couple of days. I had some trouble mixing the heptane into the bark/vinegar/lime sludge because I was working out of a taller mason jar and it was a pain to stir at the bottom of the jar with a chopstick. I ended up shaking to miz the contents but now the heptane won't separate out.

I've done a search of the archives and it seems like I can do a couple of things:

1) Add more lime
2) Dry the mixture (which would be a real pain, and smelly, I think)
3) Squeeze the liquids out through a cotton filter (I'm thinking a T-shirt) and then use a sep funnel to separate the vinegar and water from the heptane. (I'm leaning toward this.)

Would adding sodium carbonate do anything to help this along?

Does anyone have other suggestions?

Thanks.

All of those things might help, but I would leave out the sodium carbonate.

In my experience sodium carbonate makes water thicker and then emulsions form much easier. Save it for freebasing harmalas or something with a single phase.

Have you tried adding more heptane? Sometimes the material will seem to absorb the first round of solvent, and you need to add a little more to get it really flowing around the mulch. Just don't shake it up. The mixing doesn't need to be super vigorous with dry teks.

I was hesitant to add more solvent because I wanted to do a freeze precipitation and thought ~200ml was enough for one pull and adding more would just be superfluous. But if you think this might unlock the solvent that's arleady in in there, maybe I ought to give that a go.

Also, I was wondering if heating or cooling the mix would be of any help?

Thanks again.

Just thought I'd update the thread.

I tried heating the MHRB/vinegar/lime mix in a hot water bath and this didn't do much to help the emulsion.

Today I added more lime (didn't exactly measure, though it was about 3/4 of a cup) and this very quickly caused the heptane to separate from the mix.

So, in my case, at least, I've needed to use more lime than what the tek calls for. Hope this will be helpful for anyone that gets stuck while using lime for the first time or two.