After a heap of shaking, swirling whatever give it 10 mins to settle out cleanly into layers.

Ok. SWIM poured about 220ml of solvent ("toluene with xylene" is listed as ingredients) over the acidic juice, shaken it about 5-10 mins, and it looked like this, imediately after shaking. At the time SWIM writing this it has passed about 1 hour and the "foam"-looking thing at the surface is still there. Is that what SWIM have to discard ?

thats an emulsion.

You may have to wait up to a few hours. You could try salting or heating if it doesn't pass in 2 hours.

SWIM finds that if an emulsion doesn't break in 2 hours it won't in a day.


Salting and heating is your best chance.

just heat first to 60C or so, then wait 1 hour.

If it is still emulsed then add some salt, like 1-3 tsp. (rock salt, non iodized)


If you can't break the emulsion then you could add more acid or just accept the slight loss of brew within the solvent

problem is , the whole jar has only two layers. The yellow big part and the foam-like thing at the surface. Shouldn't it have 3 layers (acidic juice, solvent, emulsion) ? Please excuse SWIM's lack of knowledge , as SWIM sayd it is his first extraction.

Theoretically yes, but in SWIY's case it seems that all of the solvent has emulsified.
Just add more solvent, shake gently and let sit. No probs.

Emulsions:

Vibration
heat
Salt
Time

All of these thing will help to kill nasty emulsions. Listed from best to least effective. If you heat it up, tap the sides (or put a vibrating object on the glass..hmmmmm) add a bit of salt, and give it 30 minutes, you should have 0 emulsions left.

It's been ~4 hours since SWIM added the solvent to the acidic juice and this is how it looks. Swim going to listen to acolon_5 and Infundibulum's suggestions and add more solvent. Then he's going heat some water in the large cooking pot he used to cook the plant material, and put the jar into the warm water (with the jar's cap on it). Eventually he can put a mobile phone to vibrate on the jar's top )

SWIM has a question concerning this defatting process:
After pouring the solvent over the acid-soup, how long and in which way should the jar be shaken so that there will be minimal emulsions to deal with?

"put the jar into the warm water (with the jar's cap on it). "

loosen the cap so the pressure won't build up. Safety first

stir with a long object instead of shaking, this reduces chances of emulsions

And for how long should SWIM stir it with this long object?

well I dont know... you'll get the feeling, there is no rule.. I guess most gets picked up in the first seconds of contact of mixing, but I guess its more effective if one stirs for a few seconds, lets it settle, stirs again, etc, doing cycles of stiring over, lets say, 15 mins, and then separate

And how long will it take for the solvent to cleanse the acid soup of it's oily and fatty stuff, if SWIM would be using 200ml of solvent the first time? What amount of time does it take, until SWIM can remove the solvent?

What endless is describing is a liquid-liquid extraction which is exactly what your defatting step is your goodies are in the acidic aqueous layer and you want to extract the fats and oils out of there with a non-polar solvent. So just follow his advice about stirring, whip it up good and then leave for a min, whip up some more etc. Yeah 200ml will be fine just note the colour when you separate it out and if you feel its too yellow or dirty extract it 1 or 2 more times. Try evaporating an extract down fast with a fan and seeing exactly what you removed.

Thank you for the helpful information!
SWIM asked all of those questions because he was confused. Another post said to leave the solvent with the acidic soup for 1-2 hours before separation [after a heap of shaking and swirling]. While this one suggests to stir gently with pauses in between, for like 15min and observe the colour of the solvent. SWIM appreciates the useful info.

Yeah anything over 15mins is a waste of time unless there is an emulsion formed. That gives the spice plenty of time to move to where its comfy :-P

This tek uses Ca(OH)2 and says that NaOH wouldn't work, why?

Most of the people in this thread have been inactive for over a year lol. It's back from 2009.

Well I hope I'll still get an answer. I can't see why lime would work and lye wouldn't.