As I prepare to launch my products at fijifreshkava.com I have been doing rigorous chemotyping tests (HPLC, HPTLC, microscopy) and I've also been doing some acetone tests because, well, I would expect that informed consumers would do it. Quite frankly, I wanted to know ahead of time if there were going to be any surprises. I'm glad I did, because the acetone tests on our products appeared at first to be anomalous. Let me explain.
I have a lot of details about the experiment on my blog, but here is the conclusion: The way we pound our kava creates significantly more very fine particles compared to other kava powder I've tested. The presence of these small particles changes the color of the acetone test significantly (the scientific word is the Tyndall effect). I confirmed this by using a centrifuge to force sedimentation of suspended particles and was able to successfully change the tint of the supernatant from amber to noble.
This is what our kava looks like before and after centrifuging.
It's also worth noting that this kava will take more than a week to achieve the color on the left, and it is still not sedimented. It's only possible to get a useful result if the samples are centrifuged. I hope this sheds some light on the practical challenges of achieving high accuracy through acetone testing.
I have a lot of details about the experiment on my blog, but here is the conclusion: The way we pound our kava creates significantly more very fine particles compared to other kava powder I've tested. The presence of these small particles changes the color of the acetone test significantly (the scientific word is the Tyndall effect). I confirmed this by using a centrifuge to force sedimentation of suspended particles and was able to successfully change the tint of the supernatant from amber to noble.
This is what our kava looks like before and after centrifuging.
It's also worth noting that this kava will take more than a week to achieve the color on the left, and it is still not sedimented. It's only possible to get a useful result if the samples are centrifuged. I hope this sheds some light on the practical challenges of achieving high accuracy through acetone testing.
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