I have performed multiple extractions using noman's tek and I've ran into some issues recently that are confusing me.

First I bought new sodium hydroxide which is in a far more powder form than the "pearls" I had before. Due to circumstance I added the same amount of lye I usually use to water in my extraction vessel then had to leave it for 24 hours before adding the bark and proceeding with pulls.

After numerous pulls I was getting nothing, so I added 30g more lye and ended up with a total of 300mg far lower than my usual 1.2g

Was the issue leaving the water/lye solution for 24 hours or is there some issue with using a different preparation of sodium hydroxide? Everything else in my extraction is the same, same naptha too.

I'm stumped.

Is the sodium hydroxide 100% ? Is the whole mixture black ?

The sodium hydroxide is labelled as 99% pure and the solution does go pitch black as expected when the bark was added.