acolon_5 said:
Could acetone be used to dissolve it and heptane added slowly until minor preciptate forms (isn't insoluable in heptane right?)...then stuck in the freezer to lower solubility even more?
SWIM is dying to test that very thing out. It should work. SWIM has lots of bufotenine to test sitting around in boxes. His lab is under construction so he can’t test anything yet. He has a list a mile long of tests he wants to perform and his list keeps getting longer, but the bufotenine crystallization tests, and the DMT fumarate acetone precipitation tests are at the top of his list
SWIM recently bought a cooler/heater that lets you set the temperature digitally anywhere from 39F up to 140F and it keeps the temperature you select quite well. SWIM got it just to do freeze precipitation tests on various alkaloids where he’ll start at 140F and slowly bring it down to 39F over the course of 1 week in order to produce extremely large pure crystals. SWIM is not just interested in things like 5-MeO-DMT, DMT, and 5-HO-DMT, he's also interested in many other unusual plant alkaloids used for medical purposes but doesn’t talk about them much on this forum.
SWIM is thinking of trying to use acetone and xylene to crystallize bufotenine. He’s still got some nasty smelling xylene sitting around that he wants to use up. He’s thinking to dissolve crude amber freebase bufotenine (extracted as freebase from Anadenanthera colubrina) in just enough acetone to dissolve it, and then add 1 part xylene. He’s not sure of the acetone to xylene ratio, he’ll have to play around with it. Then he’ll let the acetone evaporate off. Xylene evaporates many times slower than acetone. Within a few days, most of the acetone should have evaporated away leaving behind just xylene. Because freebase bufotenine is insoluble in xylene, it should crystallize in the xylene as the acetone slowly evaporates away.
As freebase, bufotenine is completely insoluble in room temperature xylene, heptane, naphtha, and hexane. SWIM tested all of those solvents and freebase bufotenine won’t dissolve at all in any of those solvents. SWIM never tried them hot though, only at room temperature.
As freebase, bufotenine will dissolve in room temperature ethyl alcohol, in isopropyl alcohol, in methanol, in DCM, in ether, in methyl ethyl ketone, in acetone, and in chloroform. It will not crystallize from any of those in all of the tests SWIM tried. Maybe there’s some way to do it that SWIM is unaware of. I believe the main problem is that it’s too soluble in all of those solvents.
As freebase, bufotenine will also dissolve in large amounts of hot water, even at pH 9 and up, but won’t crystallize from it as it cools down; instead it floats to the top and forms beads that look oily.
One thing important to take note of, freebase bufotenine will eventually form bufotenine carbonate from exposure to air. Mescaline also does this. This will mess up your test results because bufotenine carbonate is a very water soluble salt. Bufotenine carbonate is darker in color, and almost looks like tar. If your freebase bufotenine starts looking darker after storage for a few days, it’s forming bufotenine carbonate, and possibly some bufotenine N-Oxide too. So it’s always good to freebase all old bufotenine before doing tests with it and even better to perform an N-Oxide reduction step beforehand.