hello hello,

The pet snake has been doing some limo cleaning. The process has been posted here, but here are some experimental results:

~800 ml green/yellow (sort of pee colored really) limo post cacti extraction mixed thoroughly with soln of ~100 ml water and 1 big spoonful of Na2CO3 for ~30 minutes. Discard water layer.

Add strongish Hcl water (10 drops 33% hcl per 100ml water) and mix again. There was some reaction at the soln interface, presumably with some base remaining in the limo.

At this point in the spirit of experimentation some of the hcl water was evapped, yielding nothing noticeable. This is a sign that future salting with weaker hcl will not pull any of the contamination that still exists in the limo. Hcl water discarded.

Limo washed with base again to prevent any residual acid from interfering in any future xtractions. A small amount of limo was lost making sure the bottom layer of basic water was absolutely removed via turkey baster.

Next experiment:

Use washed limo (still the same pee color) again until new cactus seems exhausted, then do a single pull with sparkling crystal clear fresh limo and see if there is actually anything left. I'll relate the snakes results here.

Any ideas are welcome... has anyone tried this?

ouro out.

not with limo...

basic xylene clean-up, w/o distillation

wash salted xylol with weak base solution made with lye. freeze/thaw/freeze, decant.
filter under vacume thru compacted de/( charchol here might be of benefit as well.) or very fine filterpaper

good work! thanks

results just in: 270mg fairly pure lightning from the recycled limo. This is the first hcl salting, similar experiments resulted in ~500mg total. starting material was about 3 feet bridg, just inner white/light green stuff and *all* of the core, powdered and treated with caoh2. The pics don't really do justice to how perfect some sections of xtal formations were. They were beautiful and mesmerizing to look at. Only the innerds were extracted cause the outer green is just fine as jerky.

I don't think you can clean limonene this way, i.e. washing it with acidic and/or basic water. Other non water-washable stuff (will eventually continue accumulating thus rendering limonene less and less effective.

Distillation is the way to go for limonene cleaning. One could try to freeze-precipitate some contaminating crap out of limo by freezing it in very very low temperatures but who knows.

By the way, I wonder what people do with their spent limo. Do they chuck it down the sink or something?

I was wondering how efficient is methanol in cleaning limonene. I know that yellow Naptha can be turned into a cloudy color with just one methanol wash, so it should work similarly for limo as well. Perhaps the limo could first be cleaned with acid/base solution; and then finally washed with methanol. Can someone offer input on this?

Only way to really know is to try it. When this limo stops working for my friends, uncles, twin separated at birth, best friends pet snake I'll send word. hopefully it will stay effective for a long time... part of the fun is getting super efficient, taking advantage of everything available in a positive way.

Raised from the dead...

Okay, what if a strong solution of NaOH was mixed with the spent d-limo? It looks to me like cactus fats could be the main contaminant. Would saponification occur?
I can probably try this. I don't think Sodium Carbonate is strong enough to saponify any remanent fats/oils.

Not all fats/oils are saponifiable, so there's a limit in how much you can clean limo this way.

Even STB extractions (plently of NaOH+cactus powder+water+solvent) do not really give a "clean" solvent, yet it is worth trying if you got the time. Just make sure you use a rigorous test of the efficacy of your cleaning method, e.g. try to pull with spent limo vs NaOH-cleaned spent limo vs virgin clean limo from fresh cactus material and see how much each one pulls if you plan to deduce anything re your limo cleaning approach.

Ressurrecting an old thread.. So were there any useful new limonene cleaning techniques, other than basic water wash, ever discovered with conclusive results, besides distillation of course?