Extraction - extracted with naptha, left with dodgy tar??

[Waste]

What SWIM has done so far;

Hello all, SWIM began the process of extracting 1kilo of salvia a few days ago.

900g leaf was grinded well and put in a bucket with 18 litres of isopropyl alcohol.
SWIM then stired this every 10 minutes for an hour, then left the mix for around 30 hours or so to let as much of the gunk settle out as possible.

SWIM then took off as much of the liquid as possible without disturbing the bucket. It should be noted that the bucket was black, so SWIM couldnt see how much he was taking off, and had to guess when to stop the siphoning.

This liquid was then poured into 6 seperate alluminium trays and left to evaporate off completely.

The black tar that was left was then washed off and collected using some of the naptha.
This naptha + tar mix was poured into a wine bottle and left to settle for 30 minutes. After this roughly 1/3 the liquid was carefully siphoned off the top and collected seperately.
This was repeated a further 5 times (although it was SWIM's friend who was doing this part without SWIM present, and he admits he rushed it a little).

Finaly all the naptha that had been taken off was pooled and left to evaporate.

The problem;

What SWIM is left with is definately not pure salvinorin A crystals. SWIU are left with a black tar, quite similar to what was left before the washes. At a guess another 4 or 5 naptha washes might fix this problem, but honestly SWIM doesnt want to waste his money unless he knows this will work.

The only other thing SWIM thinks it might be is the bucket he used. It was a standard black plastic bucket, maybe small amounts of the plastic disolved into the liquid, causing SWIM to be left with the mess?

Any ideas would be greatly apreciated, as it seems if this doesnt work SWIM and his friend will have wasted a good £250 or so

Reputation Comments on this post:

Good Report/Swimmer

[fiveleggedrat]

To Swim, it sounds fine.

Swim did a crude extraction using 1 ounce or 28grams worth of leaf, and a random amount of isopropyl alcohol, 91%.

He ground the leaves to a fine powder, and soaked them in the alcohol.

After shaking said things in sealed glass jar for 20 minutes, Swim filtered the substances into 1. Green alcohol liquid and 2. Leftover plant matter.

Old plant matter was squeezed dry and tossed. Leftover liquid was poured onto glass dish and left to dry, IN THE DARK, over a day or two.

Said crude extract was scraped when dry, and smoked. It produced resonable salvia effects, like a x5- x10 extract.

Therefore, yield of 1 oz was 2 grams crude extract.

It was a dark green, almost black colors. That's because of the plant tannins that made it into the final product.

Hope this helped somewhat!

Swim is unaware of how to process product into pure Sal A crystals.

[Salvinorin A]

Yes, swim would recommend more naphtha washes.

Keep doing it until the naphtha no longer changes color (and usually that color is some sort of green). SWIM once had to have 15 washes before this happened...and the first 4 used a huge amount of naphtha compared to the amount of extract.

It takes a lot. After that, then do more IPA washes to adjust purity.

Sal-A

[Waste]

thanks for the info guys, seems SWIM is going to have to spend a bit more heh.

I've read somewhere though that doing alot of naptha washes causes a high amount of waste in terms of salvinorin A?

[Salvinorin A]

Originally Posted by Waste

thanks for the info guys, seems SWIM is going to have to spend a bit more heh.

I've read somewhere though that doing alot of naptha washes causes a high amount of waste in terms of salvinorin A?

The Sal-A lost refers mostly to the IPA washes when really purifying the extract.....the solubility of Sal-A in naphtha is almost negligible, so swiy can do tons and tons of washes as long as swiy is not sucking up extract by mistake or something.

Sal-A