Lot's of catching up to do here!
good to see the activity, but makes it tough to keep up!
Any ideas what's going on with this delay?
Is it the small number of fish in a big sea effect; I think it is that.
Were both with the VG already added ?
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Ammended method write up to recommend 12 hours for this step.
no, VG wasn't added at this point.
I think it's a combination of the few fish/big ocean effect as well as the inherent properties of mineral oil.
The more I mess around with it, the more my mental model of what's going on changes to picture it as a big pile of noodles. If you were to fractionally distill it, there is a large component of solids in there, and I believe these long chains contribute 'slowing things down' in transfers.
Chemically, to "isolate" has a bit of a meaning that should be understood. This oil-based method (or similar) does not isolate alkaloids. The alkaloids are concentrated, but not isolated. The
tobacco matrix is still quite present though a significant percentage of it is removed in the partitioning.
yes, the obvious removal is the actual plant material.
without washing between steps, there is a LOT of crap still in there. In this last batch, I ended up washing 3 times with basic water, and once with oil after the acid phase.
I evaporated the basic water down, and was left with over half a gram of brown goo. After seeing this, all my extractions will include washing, despite the probable alkaloid losses.
..... While the mineral oil is basically hydrophobic, there is likely a small solubility of the hydrocarbons in water... could this present a problem? Also, the presumption that vaping matrix components from the tobacco is safer than smoking tobacco is probably valid, it should be made clear that the matrix still may present a degree of hazard that is unknown.
I found this info once, and the miscibility of oil in pure water at STP was insignificant, (less than 200ppb)
however, this is NOT pure water, and no doubt there is some. This is just harm reduction, not elimination.
The mineral oil, well I'm sure you get some alkanes in the mix when you smoke analogs too.
What is my greater concern, as said ad nauseum, is to keep from adding anything other than known 'safe' chemicals in the process. This entire process would be far easier I removed this stipulation.
What must be kept in mind is that this is not a one time thing, and there is possibility/likelyhood of vaping this for years.... so for instance, someone decides to use lye from the hardware store. It has trace levels of heavy metals, and they accumulate over time. You might very well have been better off smoking.[/QUOTE]
In other words, we do this at our own risk, and the risk is non-zero. If an individual is uncomfortable with the procedure or is not willing to accept full personal responsibility for following the procedure along with full personal responsibility for any side-effect either known, suspected, or unanticipated, then the individual should not attempt the procedure.
That's my view of the ethics.
And mine. My primary goal was a selfish one, and I assume those risks for myself.
.........................
Done carefully, this 'kitchen' method might well get within a 10% margin of the lab method - both in terms of yield and purity.
I'll take that bet! After boiling down the crap, I KNOW what's still in there.
After finding
this PDF, it seems clear that the alkaloid profile varies between types of tobaccos (see Tables 2/3). So that makes me want to go back to the neurochemistry of these alkaloids individually and ask what exactly it is that we want.
Nice find. I was looking for something like this. I'd like to see the profile of Rustica in comparison to nicotiana tabacum.
As it's such a higher alkaloid content, I'm assuming that the tobacco strains used are chosen for taste, and maybe profile as well.
.......... If I had a nickel for all the things I've seen that worked on paper, and not in the lab, or only after considerable tweaking, I'd be swimming in nickels.
a lesson learned only by 'doing'. I'd have nickels, and a lot less wasted tobacco.
.........makes we wonder if I want to be within 100 miles of this thread. Without belaboring the point, because I've made it before at length, don't be that guy!
yeah, I feel that. A few times this thread has started down that road, and each time it does I feel like deleting my account.
Might be that mineral oil is not a good solvent. Not that it needsto accept much, but compared to veg oil, much paler color. Mineral oil: pale yellow; veg oil: deep amber.........
The oil seems to be a good enough solvent to extract from the solid matrix, but is perhaps not quite as aggressive. The color of the oil really won't make any difference. That's long gone with purification. Again, interesting, worth looking at again, but perhaps nothing to get hung on.
It could be that the vegetable oil ends up being far superior. That's a next step, after the mineral oil is quantified, then we can add another easter egg.