This topic has been discussed before and I apologize if there is a thread I should be looking at that I was not able to find.

SWIM has recently been granted a laboratory! As in he has the house to himself--no one cares if there is newspaper and
sludge-covered tools laid all about, and that funky smell of vinegar and limonene. He had failures in the past and has
since gone about acquisitioning FG d-limonene. The seperation between this product and vinegar is absolutely QUICK and
OBVIOUS.

SWIM was rushing to a wonderful brass band--chugging beer on his way out the door he forgot to turn the
oven off (and open it for airflow)--it was at 155F and worries it damaged potency. In any case SWIM came home, took his
glass pan from the oven and scraped up 0.2g of a waxy crystal ranging in colour from light tan to dark amber. SWIM is
considering setting this 0.2g aside and bioassaying seperately to conclude if that heat did damage to the phenethylamine.

SWIM is wondering if the wonderful Nexus Alchemists have any suggestions on squeezing the d-limonene out of the cactus 'doug' ...

SWIM finds his french press (or another one he has used in the past) to not be strong enough.

SWIM finds to get the liquid out of the doug he must use considerable force.
Paper coffee filters break, French presses .. well creak and moan .. then break if SWIM pushes it too far.
Cloth filters seem to clog and not really filter .. more stop anything from passing through ... metal seives allow lots a cactus chunks through.

SWIM has not squeezed his cactus doug, he heard a suggestion to just do limonene pulls on the wet doug and for the final pull squeeze the cactus liquids out.


Does anyone have any favourite methods?

You could try adding some sodium carbonate.

https://www.dmt-nexus.me...aspx?g=posts&t=16224

french press alternative

There is a picture in the above link showing a theoretical device that a theoretical person could use

Have you tried vacuum filtration ?

thanks for the responses, SWIMs last wash of d-limonene is soaking on the cactus doug right now. I guess this sodium carbonate solution seems the best, should SWIM add the sodium carbonate (baked baking soda 400F, 2 hrs) in with liquid d-limonene or should he strain the majority of the liquid off first ... what would be more effective?

vacuum filtration? how would he go about causing a vaccum .. probably with a chemistry pump or something?

SWIM says metal screens/vegetable steams aren't having much success either ...

Yes, a vacuum filtration appartus is something like this.

How hard are you squeezing??? A french press should do.. If it is a small french press, you can divide the cactusdough. Gently apply more and more pressure on the press. Give it some time to release the magic. How much do you want to squeeze out? You cant get ALL of it back ofc.. I wouldnt be surprised if about 0.833333% of the volume remains in the dough, after some serious french pressing

SWIMs press is actually fairly large so he was trying to squeeze all 100g at once (he got ahead of himself and said hey--I can minimise losing material to multiple surfaces) ... it makes sense to only do like 10g at once .. minimise pressure thus not having another press explode in his hands!

He thanks you for correcting his mistaken behaviour! couldn't of thought of it without you guys ... silly but serious.

SWIM is still interested in this sodium bicarbonate thing .. I read the thread for him and I guess my understanding is that guy had success doing it to stuck up material. So there were no other liquids in the container, it was all stuck in the cactus.

In SWIMs case he has loose d-limonene. should he add the sodium bicarbonate before or after he strains as much liquid as possible off of the cactus matter. SWIM is really displeased with his 0.2g/wash yield and thinks there must be more than 0.6 in 100g. He's done three 300ml washes (saving the limonene after salting three times into evap pan with 5% acetic acid).

P.S. Goo factor is a good read ... SWIM's second pull had a much cleaner salt tho, so I do think it was more of a heat issue vs. impurities in his HEINZ vinegar. For his next experiment he will definitely be trying out some purer vinegar.

On second thought, if your cactus paste is fairly dry in consistancy (not counting the dlimo of course) adding sodium carb might not help so much. It's very useful for getting limo out when the paste turns to very thin liquid, but it might help get some limo out for you. It does dry the material and harden it some which might facilitate pressing. Ultimately you are going to lose some limo in there. Doing an extra pull will get more actives out... just consider maybe 5% of the limo doesnt come out, and the last pull has maybe 10% of the actives in it, so you are really only losing 0.5% of your actives to the stubborn limo... nothing to lose any sleep over.

SWIM ended up with
0.2 charred acetates
0.2 tan crystal acetates .. minor waxiness .. quite pretty, SWIM will be going and buying some macro filters for his camera to get sexy pictures!
0.15 fluffy tan acetates .. it looks like dust, minus a few random waxy chunks looks exactly like super pure MDMA except tan. Very happy!
SWIM doesn't have a great scale (accurate to 0.1); but the 0.15 is a guess .. SWIM combined the pretty acetates with the slightly waxier ones from earlier to create something that weighs 0.3 (range from 251-349mg)

that makes his total yield basically 0.5% which is not awful I guess .. it makes sense, slightly weaker cactus/not entirely green flesh .. there are bits of white and all.

SWIM will taste the 0.2 charred acetates first to see if they are active, he hopes they are! bioassay stoked!

A french press that can contain 1 liter water is perfect for the job, high and wide. It is robust too, thick glass, metal rod, metal disc and sieve. Heavy duty coffee drinker ; ) Cactus dough made from 100g of dried, powderized green cactus flesh can be heavily french pressed this way, so it releases most of the clean clear NP. It can be pressed all at once. Dont make the glass snap!! In general it is usefull to think 'what could go wrong?'

Maybe the cactus dough was too dry when i was french pressed. Did the dough have a chance to dry in air before it was pressed?

"don't make the glass snap"

basically my problem with this is, when SWIM presses down it trys to (it "creaks" and "moans", SWIM broke a press in the past--and ouch can't find Non-super expensive french presses) the ... or at least with all 100g.

SWIM divided it up and it worked a lot better, got probs 100ml or 200ml out of the doug. It didn't have a chance to dry, it was soaking in limonene (open to the air) being stirred. SWIM attempted to strain cactus doug immediately after straining the loose limonene off the top. cactus doug is now dryish after being squeezed, but yeah def didn't get all limonene... probs the 5% limonene ouro mentioned--nothing to loose sleep over.

The odd thing SWIM noticed was that he got a yield of 0.6 last pull (he did a fourth pull on all 3 limonenes combined--in three washes)
75ml vinegar x3. This yielded him 0.6g of wax acetates, pretty much the same yield as the other pulls, except 3x larger ... so it really didn't seem like I was only getting 10% of the actives.. it seemed like it was a straight 33%, 33%, 33%.

SWIM made an improvised seperator with a glass bottle. Poking a hole in the lid of the bottle. He forcefully jerked it downwards to force the vinegar pulls out more quickly, this seems to of improved yield so to speak. SWIM likes these larger pulls, will probably do 300g of cactus next time.

SWIM think this is the step he's having problems with after i use my coffee press to filter the d-limo it still seems a little wet so SWIM tried filtering it with a t-shirt and more limo came out and a yellowish liquid comes out the harder SWIM squeezes. then SWIM tried salting just the coffee pressed limo with vinegar and got some gooey brownish stuff after SWIM evaporated it. Then SWIM tried salting the d-limo with the yellowish liquid in it and after SWIM evaporated it he got a plate of tannish crystaly stuff that SWIM thought was mesc but had no effects whatsoever at 600 mg