Alternative organic solvents for spice extraction

[ThatChemGuy]

Hi everybody, swim is having problems sourcing clean aliphatic hydrocarbons and is planning on using different solvents for an extraction from mimosa.
Swim can source only Ether and DCM, cleaniest source of naphta is Zippo LF.
Swim is planning on distilling it to get a crystallization solvent but can do it only in small bathces (so not enought for an extraction).
What we know is that with xylene or toluene Jungle Spice will come along with the N,N,and that Jungle is mainly actual DMT with some "impurities".
A quick look to the polarity table and we read:

Heptane....0.1
Toluene....2.4
Xylene.....2.5
Ether......2.8
DCM........3.1

Seems safe to say that if Ether is used for a main extraction instead of naphta, pure yeld should increase a bit but the product will be overall pretty dirty (probably not just alkaloids, some plant junk will come along too); this trend should increase with DCM, lowering purity a lot.
Big problem with these solvents is that Ether is really flammable and DCM is carcinogenic and very eco UN-friendly.
Source plant material is not much and it's nearly 10yo, so swim was going to run some tests before the bulk extraction.

Has swiy any experience extracting with non-hydrocarbon solvents? Swim should really go with ether but he can't work outside or in a fume hood so DCM can actually be safer, but purity (even after crystallization) will be much lower.
Another question is about test batch size: swim has 90g mhrb left, with a bulk extraction size of 30/40g (and at least two of them), swim is left with 10g to 30g for testing. Has swiy any experience with very small batches? Is a 5 or 10g extraction possible? If we consider a 0.5% mean source we are talking about 50mg to 25mg of product if full efficency, with a very dirty pre-crystallization reagent this can lead to many problems like actually getting some crystals. Sadly no TLC are available for now, just a scale and a pair of lungs.
All in all I think 10g batches should be fine; we'll begin as soon as the lab glassware arrives.
I'll keep you up to date with the results.

ThatChemGuy out, peace.

 

[Ulim]

Stop swimmin the police got boats :d

Small scale extraction work but you need to adjust accordingly and loss will ofc be greater than in big extractions.

You dont need a whole lot of naptha anyways. So you can go with zippo distilled.
I use like 50ml for 50g of bark.
Just pull freeze and then reuse it immeadiatly. This also reduces loss due to DMt not freezing out.

Imo theres is no "best" solvent for dmt. Nearly all non polar solvents will pull more than enough dmt.
But i find that naptha works best because freezing out the dmt is also kinda a small reX already and its very reusable thus.
No need to evap anything. Just store the naptha and reuse. If it gets dirty distill it.

For the other solvents you need to full evap which is not nice especially for dcm or ether.

 

[downwardsfromzero]

If you want to avoid evaporating the water-immiscible solvent the following procedure may be applied:

Freebase solution in DCM or ether (or anything else immiscible with water) could be pulled back into acidic aqueous solution, evaporated down, based with sodium carbonate paste, dried, pulled with acetone, ethanol or IPA and then evaporated to recover freebase.

 

[Drowning-man]

Hi everybody, swim is having problems sourcing clean aliphatic hydrocarbons and is planning on using different solvents for an extraction from mimosa.
Swim can source only Ether and DCM, cleaniest source of naphta is Zippo LF.
Swim is planning on distilling it to get a crystallization solvent but can do it only in small bathces (so not enought for an extraction).
What we know is that with xylene or toluene Jungle Spice will come along with the N,N,and that Jungle is mainly actual DMT with some "impurities".
A quick look to the polarity table and we read:

Heptane....0.1
Toluene....2.4
Xylene.....2.5
Ether......2.8
DCM........3.1

Seems safe to say that if Ether is used for a main extraction instead of naphta, pure yeld should increase a bit but the product will be overall pretty dirty (probably not just alkaloids, some plant junk will come along too); this trend should increase with DCM, lowering purity a lot.
Big problem with these solvents is that Ether is really flammable and DCM is carcinogenic and very eco UN-friendly.
Source plant material is not much and it's nearly 10yo, so swim was going to run some tests before the bulk extraction.

Has swiy any experience extracting with non-hydrocarbon solvents? Swim should really go with ether but he can't work outside or in a fume hood so DCM can actually be safer, but purity (even after crystallization) will be much lower.
Another question is about test batch size: swim has 90g mhrb left, with a bulk extraction size of 30/40g (and at least two of them), swim is left with 10g to 30g for testing. Has swiy any experience with very small batches? Is a 5 or 10g extraction possible? If we consider a 0.5% mean source we are talking about 50mg to 25mg of product if full efficency, with a very dirty pre-crystallization reagent this can lead to many problems like actually getting some crystals. Sadly no TLC are available for now, just a scale and a pair of lungs.
All in all I think 10g batches should be fine; we'll begin as soon as the lab glassware arrives.
I'll keep you up to date with the results.

ThatChemGuy out, peace.

Xylene is the work horse of most of my extractions. If you can get acetone and find fumaric acid online you can do fasa which will give you white dmt. Or defat an AB brew, pull freebase will xylene then backsalt with vinegar then pull on that, should be white. I remember researching clean naptha after reading a scare about klean strip. I started reading through msdss and discover one brand of lighter fluid if the purest of available naptha. I believe it was Robenson. Just check evap test, shake with vinigar to see if it reacts, and check msds. Other than that there isnt any clean napthas available to the public. Im probly gonna spent the mony for hexane online. Not cheap. Or uses bestine.

 

[pitubo]

Other than that there isnt any clean napthas available to the public.

That's just not true the way you state that. In my locality, we have high quality pure naphtha called "wasbenzine" available in practically every supermarket.

You may need to be more creative in your search for sources. Try looking at specialized cleaning solvents, like panel wipes.

Lighter fuel is not always a good choice, as it may contain anti-corrosion additives. The MSDS is not a complete listing of ingredients, it s merely a safety sheet, enumerating only those ingredients that are potentially hazardous. The hazards are defined with regard to emergency services, not dmt extractors.

 

[Drowning-man]

Other than that there isnt any clean napthas available to the public.

That's just not true the way you state that. In my locality, we have high quality pure naphtha called "wasbenzine" available in practically every supermarket.

You may need to be more creative in your search for sources. Try looking at specialized cleaning solvents, like panel wipes.

Lighter fuel is not always a good choice, as it may contain anti-corrosion additives. The MSDS is not a complete listing of ingredients, it s merely a safety sheet, enumerating only those ingredients that are potentially hazardous. The hazards are defined with regard to emergency services, not dmt extractors.

Sorry, i assumed he was in the USA. Of course country of origin will dictate product ingredients and veriety of products available to public. wasbenzine is German, European, or canada i think i remember. In the US we had crown and klean strip that was the A1 choice and trusted. But they added something to it that makes its purity questionable. Theres a whole thread on it here. I dont trust information from most anywere else

 

[blue.magic]

Other than that there isnt any clean napthas available to the public.

That's just not true the way you state that. In my locality, we have high quality pure naphtha called "wasbenzine" available in practically every supermarket.

I agree. Similarly in Poland, there is "benzyna ekstrakcyjna".

I just recently found petroleum ether (BP 80-100° C) that ships from UK. Not sure that can be used for extraction, but at least it comes with MSDS and known impurities.

All in all, naphtha is jsut the light aliphatic fraction of petroleum.