Alcohol extraction of Yopo

[modern]

Using 96% ethanol I soaked 100g seeds in just under 2L of ethanol. After a few weeks I finally got around to distilling the ethanol and the last 50ml was swirled and put in beaker. Tried to dissolve the goo/oil with 25ml recovered ethanol but didn’t dissolve so just poured. Added water and the goo dissolved in 100ml.

There is a blueish tone under 365nm light. I’ll try to capture later. Don’t have any TLC plates at the moment.

Planning on doing hcl to free and acids and other non alkaloid impurities. Than ammonia to Freebase it and hopefully I’ll have Freebase bufotenine once everything is evaporated? I know a more solective solvent would be a good option. Thinking a defat using frozen ethanol may be enough? Idk if it is in the oil/goo in meaningful amounts.

After some time the alcohol extracts got a little cloudy… maybe pulled some water air?

 

[modern]

Two days settling…

Water dissolved goo has a precipitate that I don’t think is bufo since ph is slightly acidic naturally or maybe partially Freebase naturally?

The alcohol has a clear separation of the oil no on top which I assume holds some bufo but most is in the alcohol?

May be a while before I finish my idea on this so just posting if anyone has any ideas or experiences

 

[modern]

So I decided to freeze the alcohol portion and got a good separation of the oil that solidified. The alcohol portion is slightly thicker like honey. The oil I decided to add to the water fraction and most “dissolved” and formed a precipitate like earlier and now much more material. Still some oil on top of the surface which I’ll later stir to see if dissolves.

I’ll attempt a TLC on the water, alcohol and the precipitate hopefully by the weekend.

The fact that the precipitate is only formed in water makes me believe it may be bufo (atleast the free bufo) since acids likely all water soluble and in alkalin solution also soluble…

 

[TheGreenPhantom]

Any progress on your extract?

 

[modern]

Not much... I let the extracts evaporate on their own and noticed the alcohol portion just becomes goo. So the last 10ml of alcohol I just added to the water portion and got the precipitate again.
Now I have two fractions the oil and the water.

Next when I have time I'll add HCL to both to see what happens. The water I'll concentrate first and when HCL is added I expect a precipitate to form which should be the free acids. Then I'll filter and alkalize with ammonia.

I've been busy so may take a week or two.

 

[modern]

So when I added hcl (added WAY too much) the solution became even darker than the concentrate and took on a smell that kinda seems rancid but not exactly.

I left it for two days debating wither or not to distill a portion and recover some hcl and reduce the volume a bit. Hopefully I didn’t destroy the alkaloids added excess hcl… I doubt it but have material to try once again if I fail.

Decided to add some ammonia hydroxide just to test and immediately was created with a white precipitate with the black background of the solution. When stirring it lightened the solution a bit. Added a little more again strong white precipitate but after stirring again I now have a black tar like precipitate. I imagine some fats or something.

I’ll save that black tar material and decided to distill a portion of the solution to reduce the volume again. The ph is still 1-2 even after adding some ammonia. I’m filtering the solution and will proceed after distilling or it reduces volume on its own.

 

[modern]

success?

I decided to just add ammonia to the solution and get a white precipitate that later lightens the solution and precipitates this black sticky tar/goo material. I added 100ml of unknown concentration and the pH was still very acidic so I filtered to remove all the black tar. I then added sodium carbonate until the solution became cloudy yellow solution pH around 7-8. I then stirred for a while and got this amorphous brown precipitate. I let it settle after stirring again and did a fridge rest. Caused clouding again and resulted in a very thin precipitate over the original amount. Then I decanted the original solution and added hot water and stirred leading to a slightly darker precipitate but looks finer. The solution has a greenish hue in the sunlight. After some time cooling the clear green hue solution became cloudy... IDK if I should separate the two.

To the original decanted solution I added more sodium carbonate until 10pH and it became cloudy again IDK if anything will precipitate. Stirred the hot water recrystallization attempt and will now leave it alone.

 

[modern]

Ethyl acetate is what is suggested to recrystallize to yield "yellow pale solid" based on a paper. I'll try again to clean up a bit more with water and use ethanol to recrystallize. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epdf/10.1177/1934578X1501000411

Anyone have any ideas?

 

[modern]

So the precipitate had too much volume when filtered off and also took on a grey tone. I decided to add to hcl solution and got lots of insoluble material so hopefully this cleans it up well. I’ll filter off and realkalinize with a solution of sodium carbonate.

The original solution I added more sodium carbonate til ph 10 and got cloudy and overnight precipitated the same grey powder but much finer.

Hopefully I get a yield of something in the end. This reminds me of harmala extraction other than the original alcohol pull which is a bit more selective than water.