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Research 2020 Bufotenine Extraction TEK + Analytical Data

Research done by (or for) the DMT-Nexus community
Migrated topic.
This is the most beautiful writeup I've seen I years. So inspiring. Kudos to you and THANKS for the immense amount of time you've put in this.

I have mixed results with bufotenine extraction so far (used citrate, not fumarate) so I will try your tek.

It seems there is something in the seeds promoting oxidation of bufotenine, as the oxidation has not been observed on pure bufotenine without an added oxidizing agent (source: R.H.F. Manske, "The Alkaloids: Chemistry and Physiology, vol. VII", p. 8).

Perhaps treating the seeds with a mild reducing agent or reducing acid will help.

As for the roasting, I wonder how that could promote oxidation, but maybe it helps a lot as this for sure deactivates any enzymes involved.
 
I can only speak of my experiences with yopo.

There are strong simmilarities.

On the one hand yopo is by far not as immersive as DMT. It is a highly visual substance. In smaller quantities it does seem to have no mental effects at all, even.
But it is not completely void of them.

I find the mental effects very hard to place. There is a definate euphoria that is simmilar to me, as a good amount of oral cannabis. A warm wave of euphoria.

But there is something very weird about it. Maybe there are trace amounts of 5-MeO-DMT present in yopo and maybe pure bufotenin lacks this effect, but i would say it is a bit freaky.

Last time i took yopo, i was starting to come down from acid.
And i saw muppet-like creatures everywhere.

You know that scene in the first lord of the ring movie the fellowship of the ring, when that psychic elfqueen starts to freak out and says something like that she will be treacherous as the dawn?

They where looking a bit like that. But i couldn't hear what they where saying.
Then i started to become like that myself as well. I started to morph into a sort of jim henson puppet of psychic energy.

But it was never frightening. Just realy, realy weird.

But then it already started to fade realy quickly.
 
dragonrider said:
I can only speak of my experiences with yopo.

There are strong simmilarities.

On the one hand yopo is by far not as immersive as DMT. It is a highly visual substance. In smaller quantities it does seem to have no mental effects at all, even.
But it is not completely void of them.

I find the mental effects very hard to place. There is a definate euphoria that is simmilar to me, as a good amount of oral cannabis. A warm wave of euphoria.

But there is something very weird about it. Maybe there are trace amounts of 5-MeO-DMT present in yopo and maybe pure bufotenin lacks this effect, but i would say it is a bit freaky.

Last time i took yopo, i was starting to come down from acid.
And i saw muppet-like creatures everywhere.

You know that scene in the first lord of the ring movie the fellowship of the ring, when that psychic elfqueen starts to freak out and says something like that she will be treacherous as the dawn?

They where looking a bit like that. But i couldn't hear what they where saying.
Then i started to become like that myself as well. I started to morph into a sort of jim henson puppet of psychic energy.

But it was never frightening. Just realy, realy weird.

But then it already started to fade realy quickly.
Click to expand...
Hmm very interesting. Still I am hoping someone has experience with pure bufotenine and can relate it to spice. If it's better in a way I'm willing to give this a shot.
 
this is amazing! bufotenine was such a struggle for me.. only had a few decent experiences. but those experiences made me try so hard to figure it out. i found nasal bufo to be kinda dangerous. i once passed out after taking it and luckily was laying on my stomach because i ended up puking. always found that bufotenine worked better with just a bit of dmt mixed in. seems to grease the wheels.

awesome work
 
I just realized that some of the impurity signals at the 1H-NMR are Ethyl Acetate. I just fanned the Bufo for some minutes with a fan, so maybe one should do it a little longer. But this means that Bufo Signal fraction is not 96 % but even 97,87 %. Considering the fact that both the integrals of the NMR and Chromatogramm are not directly equivalent to the final purity, it is quite remarkable that their value is practically the same, being 97,87 % and 97,85 %. What a funny coincidence :surprised :surprised 😁 .

Also I tested 2 other solvents that were suggested as good extraction solvents / re-x solvents long time ago, Limonene and Xylene.
69ron told that Xylene is good, as it can be heated just above the melting point of Bufotenine. This drastically changes its solubility behaviour, making it soluble in boiling xylene, whereas the more polar other impurity stays undissolved. Limonene can be heated even further, so in theory it should also work.

Summary and solubility data are on the 2nd post.
In short: Xylene may be an alternative to people who cant find Ethyl Acetate. It dissolves much more compared to the mix, but also keeps more Bufo at - 20 °C. A bad side is that it is much more unhealthy and harder to evaporate.
D-Limonene is not that promising. It drops Bufo as cloudy solids, not forming any real crystals. Also it seems there is a chance to damage Bufotenine from 170 °C onwards. If the Bufo is not dissolved fast enough, it will form a solid brown residue that doesnt dissolve in acid anymore.




PS: To get all the Bufo back you have to evaporate the residual Xylene. I just went back to check how its doing while writing this post and all the Xylene already evaporated, nothing could hold turn down the heat and it skyrocketed to 200 °C+ and now the remaining 0,2 g of Bufotenine went bye-bye :twisted: :( :( Never turn your back while doing something that may need full attention boooooo
 
Some thoughts on this TEK:

1. After reproducing a yield of 3,4 % was achieved (not 1 % like before)

2. It is possible to use dry citric acid instead of fumaric acid for alkaloid-fat-separation. You can get it in every grocery, it will simply just instantly form a blob of Alkaloid-Citrates within 1 min, instead of forming these orange crystals over 8 h seen in the pictures above. Therefore this may even be an advantage, as it speeds things up quite a lot. You simply have to let it sit outside of the Acetone to let also other incorporated acetone run out of the blob, otherwise it will reduce efficiency in the next step. Then afterwards just dissolve in water and basify and proceed as normal.

Picture:

Bufotenin-Citrate.png

3. In literature I saw people using Ammonia to freebase Alkaloids. Ammonia is a weaker base than 3° amines, but excess should still do the job. But I could not observe it with Bufotenin so this means Na2CO3 is the only reasonable freebasing agent.

4. Solubility in Xylene was measured again and corrected a little bit higher overall ...

5. As Xylene is the best solvent for crystal formation there is now a pictoral at Post #2. You can clearly see the brown fine dust remaining, which is the 2 % impurity from GC and NMR - probably leftovers from the water phase.
 
Hi everyone! I'm tackling this right now, and I have a question. After the defat step, do you wait for all the solvent to evaporate, so you end up with a dry powder, before starting the acetone extraction step, or can you go ahead with extracting even with some naphtha traces left?
 
I just completed this tek. It's beautifully written and easy to follow, despite the large number of steps. Thanks for all the work that went into this!

I only had 15g of seeds and ended up with 180mg of FB bufotenine. It's hard to work with such small quantitates since it makes filtering almost impossible without losing product in the filters. Next time I will go with the 100g of seeds the tek calls for, which should make the process even easier.

Bioassay report to come!
 
downwardsfromzero said:
Great stuff, BQ!

Did you let all the naphtha evaporate after the defat, or just press on anyhow?
Click to expand...
I went with the "looks dry enough" method, so probably some traces left. No naphtha smell in final product, just the usual shoe leather aroma. Not sure if it affected yield.
 
Love the write up Brennendes Wasser awesome work.
I was gonna start my own thread but i thought it was more appropriate to add it to here. Not trying to hijack the thread. I think your Tek is solid, just wanted to share some experimenting.

I recently got a hold of a small amount of yopo seeds I've started to experiment with. So i thought I'd add my findings.

Using sodium carbonate and water I managed to make a paste with crushed seeds and then microwaved it until I had steamed off 60-75% of the water content by weight (using the Cielo Tek as a blue print that Loveall has been working on).

No defatting, straight to pulling with EA. 1 minute room temp pulls x 6. Collected all pulls and then filtered the EA (although it didn't appear to need filtering). Salted with citric acid 15mg per gram of EA. Gave it a shake and almost instantly ended up with what I assumed is bufo citrate looked quite clean like a lumpy off white glob. I then decanted the EA.

My reason for EA and citric was to see if it was more selective in yielding bufo.

Instead of following your Tek and using a small amount of water and your recommended sodium carbonate amount, I instead used 300ml of water and then tried to crash out the bufo freebase with sodium carbonate. The reason was I used this on the Harmala EA approach I've been working on with great success, as it yields cleaner freebase. For bufotenine it doesn't.
At first it refused to crash out then over 2 hours the water turned purple. I added excess sodium carbonate and the purple separated and formed a floating freebase layer. I filtered this and ended up with black/ purple bufo crystals. Actually looked quite cool. They were active no nausea or anything. Tired the EA:Naphtha in an attempt to clean it up but this did not work still got purple/ black crystals.

So microwaving works, EA works for first pull, citric acid in EA seems to work well. But less water and sodium carbonate for the freebasing step as per your Tek is strongly recommended. I still have a bit of refining to do to this process.

Just thought the extraction could maybe be simplified and made quicker.
I think warmer pulls with EA will yield more. I only have enough seeds for a few more runs but keen to report back what i can.

Wouldn't mind hearing your thoughts.

Edit: Did a few warm EA pulls and got a few more alkaloids out of it the first run. Managed to freebase a lot easier with 25ml of water and sodium carbonate as per your tek, evaped and pulled with ea/na then evaped for nice cl3an crystals.
 
I may have spoken too soon.

When scraping up the crystals as mentioned above it turned to goo, this may have been from the warm EA pulling fats, as the excess water/sodium carbonate I first mentioned (at room temp pulls) yielded black crystals no goo.
It could also be a ratio issue with sodium carbonate and water-(I have found in the past less water when freebasing = more impurities but this should be taken as a personal observation not fact).
So although the (goo) looked like a cleaner product it wasn't and was not as potent as the black crystals when I conducted a bioassay (however the seeds may have been spent by then and warm EA just pulled more fats?).

So I think a defatting would likely sort out the goo issue (if warm EA was to be used) however if one doesn't mind black crystals you could go down the first route I tested. Of course purity then becomes questionable.
At 15mg of black crystals in the genie all i got was a nice body load for 40 minutes and slight visuals (did have awesome dreams all night though which is rare and unusually for me).

To simplify the tek there's a few ways it potential could go.

Grind seeds
Add sodium water mix
Microwave (until 66-75% of the water is evaped)
Pull with EA (Filter if needed)
Salt with citric acid
Base with sodium carbonate and water (the ratios here may need to be tweaked)
Use heated Xylene to clean the black crystals.

Benefits/ variations may be:
Fry Pan is replaced with a quick microwave step.
No defatting
Initial filtering may not be required (microwaved sodium carbonate mix holds firm with the EA when decanting).
No paste drying time.
Citric acid crashes out >95% of the actives in minutes when shaking.
Filtered freebase crystals can go straight to a heated xylene step as the Ea:Na step didn't clean up the black/ purple crystals further.
Once tweaked you could do this within 2 hours or less including any wait times.


If I had enough seeds I'd love to experiment with so many variations but I'll have to be picky.

Loveall, I think defatting is worth adding in especially if using warm EA but it may not be necessary.
I thought about Ea:Na then salting but i have limited runs left and the quality of Naphtha in my country is questionable (DMT yields have dropped massively with naphtha, I have had to switch to xylene).
Ea:Na may not help but i could definitely give it ago. Although I must say the bufo citrate came out quite clean with the first set of EA pulls (second set with warm EA not so much). So sticking with room temp EA looks good, cold pulls could yield a cleaner product again and be more selective.

For now Brennendes Wasser original Tek is the go to for bufo in its purest form IMO. But I'm hopefully it could be refined to save time.

I should mention I'm using Anadenanthera Peregrina seeds not Cebil and no nausea or anything as others have mentioned over the years with their extractions.
 
I went for a second experiment this time with a few modifications.

After vaporising my black crystals I noticed the bufo to be very body load heavy and not visual at all only very slightly even when uping the dose.

I've read a few mix reports on bufotenine's activeness, and my personal belief is pure bufo may be just a body high without the other elements of the yopo (5Meo & DMT) perhaps it just greatly potentiates these substances. Anyhow that is only my theory but it got me thinking about the extraction. So I decided to skip a few steps.

EA/ citric acid combo could be quite selective compared to other solvents, but more tests need to be done.

For my second run:
I cut up and dehydrated 10g of seeds at 50 degrees celsius. Probably not necessary, but it was to aid the grinding of the seeds.
I then added 2.5g of sodium carbonate and mixed in with the seeds with minimal water (very thorough mixing).
I left this to dry in front of a fan at room temp until it was dry.
Then I conducted 6 EA pulls with a french press and filtered with a lab filter.
Then I dumped 10mg of citric acid per gram of EA.
I gave it a good shake and ended up with what appears to be the whitest crystals I've gotten yet. No fats no colors just little crystals.
Potentially there are traces of 5Meo and DMT. If I am successful at basing these citrate crystals they may come out very clean.

I just thought for anyone experimenting, EA and citric acid with no heat to the seeds maybe a good route to go down. I still don't think defatting may be necessary at this stage.

I would be keen to see if this extraction is more active visually than last.

First Run Black Crystals
20211207_102321.jpg


Second run Yopo Citrate
20211210_134508.jpg


Edit:
Second run I ended up with off white crystals. Potency was on par with the black crystals form the first run but yields were lower.
Even when increasing dose this bufotenine isn't very active just a nice body load so it may be far from pure. Either my extract is extremely weak or dose is way off. Tested from 10mg to 50mg.

Did find this:
In 2001, ethnobotanist Jonathan Ott published the results of a study in which he self-administered free base bufotenine via insufflation (5–100 mg), sublingually (50 mg), intrarectally (30 mg), orally (100 mg) and via vaporization (2–8 mg).[26] Ott reported “visionary effects" of intranasal bufotenine and that the "visionary threshold dose" by this route was 40 mg, with smaller doses eliciting perceptibly psychoactive effects. He reported that "intranasal bufotenine is throughout quite physically relaxing; in no case was there facial rubescence, nor any discomfort nor disesteeming side effects".

At 100 mg, effects began within 5 minutes, peaked at 35–40 minutes, and lasted up to 90 minutes. Higher doses produced effects that were described as psychedelic, such as "swirling, colored patterns typical of tryptamines, tending toward the arabesque". Free base bufotenin taken sublingually was found to be identical to intranasal use. The potency, duration, and psychedelic action was the same. Ott found vaporized free base bufotenin active from 2–8 mg with 8 mg producing "ring-like, swirling, colored patterns with eyes closed". He noted that the visionary effects of insufflated bufotenine were verified by one colleague, and those of vaporized bufotenine by several volunteers.

Ott concluded that free base bufotenin taken intranasally and sublingually produced effects similar to those of Yopo without the toxic peripheral symptoms, such as facial flushing, observed in other studies in which the drug was administered intravenously.

Maybe sublingual is the best route.

Edit:
Sublingual was tested 40mg (from the black crystals) with 10mg harmala just a body load. Starting to conclude my process needs refining for a purer end product.

Keen to do a similar extraction to my first process and add in a heated xylene step after FB black crystals (if it comes up black again).

50mg of oily bufo (from the first extraction second run) with 15mg harmala was visual, this bioassay wasn't conducted with the black or off white crystals which after a few tests appear to be more active.
 
Sadly I fear there is no faster extraction - or at least no faster to get to pure crystals. I mean you can always leave out 1 step that will defat a certain compound. But then I would not call the TEK faster by definition, because it will not generate the same result in a shorter time.

Reason:

There are more polar and less polar alkaloids and/or fats, that need to be removed for crystalization. Every of these steps has a certain purpose for this:

1. Defat with Naphtha on Freebase Seed Powder = removal of Fats + unpolar Alks

2. Precipitation with FASA = removal of more polar Fats, only Alks are left over

3. Extraction from this mixture with Xylene at best, this will only pick up the most unpolar Alk, which is Bufotenin (and the biggest part of the residual stuff at this step).

So I think it can only be really faster by combining 2 of these 3 steps and I dont know how :?



Also you tell you evap the water of at the Freebasing step to 66-75%. If already taking a look at the weight, why not remove all? I mean it takes longer. But residual water in the freebase cake will hinder penetration of less polar solvents throughout the whole cake. Moreover it might make some FASA salts soluble again in the Acetone which you might add (of course only relevant if doing a FASA step).

But in any way it's a good idea to experiment around. Maybe there is a solvent mixture that can achieve both or other gadgets that can fix waiting time for any other stuff. :thumb_up:
 
I didn't evap it all because i was worried about burning it in the microwave (I could have passively evaped) and if it acts anything like mescaline does with EA it may need moisture to facilitate a more efficient pull.

Brennendes Wasser, I think for now i will stick with your Tek and if I come across a large amount of seeds in the future I'll look into experimenting again.

I did have limited success experimenting with it my way. (Unfortunately my photos are gone as the host website has disappeared). I think you have nailed the process though.

I'll stick with your Tek next time and report back.
 
I would like to add and hear peoples thoughts.

Now EA pulls freebase Bufo as established by BW and others i can confirm the same. In my experiments it pulls far better than acetone and i recommend it over acetone in the initial pull. Between BW's data and 69ron's it seems EA holds more bufo at room temp.

Now i have an issue with boiling xylene, its dangerous and easy to lose yield if you burn it etc.
I also have an issue with the naphtha and EA ratio's as I have gotten different results each time. Now I'm not as skilled as BW is in chemistry, I'm definitely one sloppy kitchen chemist so I have found something that works for me.

I have had limited seeds to experiment on. But, I have had success with xylene and EA and i believe this is superior to naphtha/EA.

Here's why i believe it may be superior:

EA pulls freebase bufo, Xylene dissolves next to nothing unless heated to 140 degrees. So.....

I have been freebasing with sodium carb and distilled water (as per tek) then evaporating it and pulling with EA (in a hot water bath). I then add xylene (after pulling). Something like 1:3 (EA: Xylene). I haven't been accurately measuring. (Neither solvent should pull the sodium carbonate.)

Then I evaporate by 50% atleast. Now EA boils at 77 degrees and xylene at 140 degrees celcius. So what appears to be happening is the EA is evaporating first leaving mostly if not entirely xylene behind. Bufo FB appears to drop out as it's insoluble in xylene and the impurities stay in what little xylene is left, I decant (or filter if using enough material) and fan evaporate the residue and it appeared to leave relatively pure FB bufo cyrstals? I believe. Is active at low dose but harsh to vape.

This wouldn't work with the EA/ Naphtha mix as naphtha generally has a lower boiling point than EA. (depending on the type of naphtha you have). Xylene I believe is a 'wider specturm solvent' so I'm guessing it should hold more impurities than naphtha, which doing it this way would be ideal.

I believe this could be a better/ easier route than Naphtha/EA as per tek. At least it was for me anyway. The question then becomes a purity issue and weather the EA in the EA/ xylene mix should be swapped out for another solvent for a purer end result. I'm sure EA/ Naphtha mix works well, I just had mixed results maybe due to working with such small amounts. Acetone has a lower boiling point than EA and should hold 66% bufo as EA more than enough.
 
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