About using DCM (dichloromethane) as solvent for DMT

[nootropik]

Dear all,

after reading several discussions on this forum it became apparent to me that it seems to be a common practice for many people to use DCM as solvent for the extraction of DMT.

While being a versatile solvent for many ways of application, for DMT it is actually not recommendable to use DCM due to a specific reaction with DMT, resulting in the formation of a quaternary ammonium salt byproduct, i.e. N-chloromethyl-N,N-dimethyltryptamine chloride.

If it is desired to use alkyl halides as solvent, then it is better to use chloroform (CHCl3) instead of DCM, or otherwise any other non polar solvent.

A detailed description of these findings can be found in the original article:

Dunlop & Olson, 2018 - "Reaction of N,N-Dimethyltryptamine with Dichloromethane Under Common Experimental Conditions." ACS Omega 3(5): 4968–4973.

Just FYI

Best regards
noo

 

[Brennendes Wasser]

Ok wow, interesting ;o

It seems that they discovered after 24 h roughly 6 % are converted, otherwise being 2 % after a shorter time.

Wel this is not that much, but still a decent amount. At least I think this would mostly apply for people that let their soup sit overnight for any emulsions to separate completely.

The salt should be water soluble and therefore not get into the final product, but then again you would lose up to 6 % or maybe even more of your goodies.

Luckily I guess there is only a minority using DCM, it's of course much stronger than Naphtha, but will produce a very unpure extract that would normally often not even need further purification when using Naphtha.

Also it is more unhealthy (ok it evaporates so easily, but while extraction you may inhale a decent amount therefore) and also less available / more expensive.

So I would at this point also encourage everyone to not use this as a solvent ;D.

Chloroform is less prone to SN2 as it's core Carbon is less accessible, but it seems to be even more unhealthy than DCM, so better avoid those 2 completely if not having a laboratory environment to handle gas fumes :!:

I guess this is also is a new reason why DCM should never be heated like Naphtha when extracting, as it would catch up even more waste and this reaction should be accellerated by far, which is much worse. Maybe then even 30 mins total extracting time may destroy a worthy percent.




Info from the sheet:

After 1 h, the percentage of 10 [the adduct "N-chloromethyl-N,N-dimethyltryptamine chloride"] in the mixture was 0.8 %, and it reached 38 % after 4 days (Figure 3 B). Crystals of 10 were observed to precipitate around day 2when the starting concentration of DMT was 10 mg/mL

THX for sharing :thumb_up:

BTW: Gz to first post after 7 years