swim was doing an a/b mhrb xtraction, and in the final step he took almost all the clean solvent (benzine), and left a little bit with the impurities in the jar.

after some minutes the xtals that are in the pic appeared.

is it spice? or maybe lye?

swim did an 250g xtraction, reduced the cook to 800 ml, and added 600 ml water with 60g lye.

Benzine doesn´t dissolve lye, but there seem to be impurities present that look like LyeSoup. Maybe you pulled some of it ?

Did you test your solvent for additives ?

Could you make clear, what exactly you have done ?

Oh and if you did an A/B then you very likely have some acid left in solution. So i would say, that 60 G Lye for 250 G Bark (?) may be too little to properly freebase the alkaloids. I know measuring the PH with the black soup isn´t easy, but adding a little too much lye doesn´t hurt.

It very likely is pretty impure spice, kind of the ear wax terrence mckenna talks of

I wouldn´t use the product as is. Best way to proceed would be to base into fresh (CLEAN evaporating) np solvent. Pulling carefully so no lye comes along and maybe wash the np with carbonate solution several times. Then you could crystallize 2 times.

ok, so i will explain better.

swim puts 250g mhrb to cook, adds distilled water with 6 drops of fosforic acid to low the ph to 4.

after doing 3 times the acid cook, and reduce the 3 cooks to 800 ml, swim added 600 ml distilled watter with 60g lye.

then did 4 pulls with 100 ml bezine each, and put the 400 ml benzine in a temporary flask, since swim got a new glass seringe that cant discard the impurities so well, letted the dirt settle in the bottle of the flask, and took almost all the benzine (aorund 370ml) to a new container, where it is precipitating, and nice white and clean xtals are allready forming!

what you are seeing in the pic, is the benzine leftover (around 30 ml benzine and the brown goo from the cooking), that swim didnt put in the final flask to dont have the risk of having some brown goo with lye contaminating the spice, and it has almost as much brown goo as benzine.

swim tested the benzine before using, and its clean. (and by the way swim finds it 10x better then naphta)

and swim does not like to use to much lye, allways used this method, and allways got around 1% final product.

so very probably it is contaminated spice, since it has all the brown goo around it, what swim wants to know is if it is spice at all, and if its worth to clean.

in 72 hours swim will post a pic of the real content of the xtraction.

and thanks 5htp, is good to know that benzine does not dissolve lye

Ah Okay, definately worth the Cleanup

I think what is sold as Benzine (Washing benzine, camping Fuel, Lighter Fluid) actually is Naphtha ?

Maybe washing the NP with sodium carbonate solution helps in cleaning up. Anyhow this is what swim has to test with his Limonene which is currently sitting as some goo settles at the bottom.

You´re right, when extracting with an A/B one needs less Lye. The Lye in an straight to base plays a part in breaking down plant matter which is what swim likes to do for simplicity

Have fun

ok, thanks!
by the way, i started using benzine as an alternative because i didnt find any good naphta, and somday i found some clean naphta and dacided to give it a try.... and YUK! the smell is awful, much more corrosive then benzines, and takes ages to get out from the stuff... i rather use benzine so after a good hot water wash it doesnt smell anymore. and it seems benzine is lighter than naphta, takes less time to evap..

i still didint dedicated much time to study how to clean with sodium carbonate but will give it a try!

swim picked the clumps from the flask and mixed it with 50 ml benzine.

the benzine is the fridge and is allready white opaque so the goodies are there!

some oils are left, that are in the picture.
swim will now wash them with 99% isopropyl, and make changa!

well, it seems it was mostly oils, from the clumps swim took 0,1g of spice, and 0,8g of oils.

from the oils swim made some sweet changa that is in the pic.

now what i find strange is that from the 500 mhrb swim cooked, 6,2g spice came out, swim is going to wash it once more.

I did an sodium carbonate wash on my limonene and it was.. a disaster :/ The whole limo and water turned to emulsion instantly. Then I found a post, where endlesness said that would happen with limo.

When I dried with MgSO4 it went clear again. But no more SC washes on limo. Limo seems pretty difficult to handle and the workup takes like forever. Miss the times with good old lab grade Toluene and Hexane just pull and freeze/evap.

But now at least it smells like oranges in my place



Sorry to hear that. I had thought there would have been more goodies, but at least you got rid of that lye soup.

The overall yield sounds very good. I have read of yields from 0.5 to 2 % so this is very much possible

Edit: In the last picture, is this your overall yield ? Maybe recrystallize again to get to whiter spice ? But this looks pretty nice as it is..