Can a different acid be used for Q21Q21's Tek?

[MachineElf88]

Fancy having a go at this dry tek. Can a different acid to vinegar be used for this Tek? Would a phosphoric acid solution work instead?

 

[downwardsfromzero]

This tek?

Phosphoric acid will substitute for vinegar in the initial acidification as well as for the purpose of pulling the DMT out of the non-polar phase. BUT - it is much less volatile than acetic acid, which may have practical consequences if you're trying to evaporate your solution.

Also, as phosphoric acid has 3 ionizable protons, it could react with up to three equivalents of base - more realistically two equivalents at the most. This could theoretically lead to problems.

phosphoric acid: pKa1 = 2.148, pKa2 = 7.198, pKa3 = 12.319
acetic acid: pKa = 4.76

This part of the process: Q21Q21's Vinegar/Lime A/B Extraction Tek - DMT-Nexus Wiki:
is where phosphoric acid would really fall down, in my opinion. So you'd need to use sodium carbonate or something for the freebasing procedure if you weren't planning to use DMT phosphate as is. (People seem to have stopped thermally cracking DMT acetate anyhow, for whatever reason.) Then again, I've never heard of anyone attempting to produce freebase by heating DMT phosphate so it would be interesting to know what happens. You would have to capture any DMT vapours as they were evolved. Non-trivial and not recommended.

Why phosphoric acid instead of vinegar?

 

[entheogenic-gnosis]

I was curious in this regard as well, why phosphoric acid over acetic acid?



-eg

 

[MachineElf88]

Thanks downwardsfromzero, yes I was referring to that tek.

I was only talking about the initial acidification stage, I have fumaric acid also so use that to make FASW for salting from limo.

So for that initial acidification stage phosphoric is ok? What about fumaric?

 

[MachineElf88]

As for why- Vinegar smells. Phosphoric doesn't at all.

 

[downwardsfromzero]

Some phosphates of calcium are insoluble. This may screw with the basification if the surface of the lime particles gets coated in an insoluble layer of calcium phosphate.

What you are suggesting qualifies as an experimental procedure (in my book, at least). I would suggest testing it with a, er, test-tube quantity first.

 

[syberdelic]

In my experience, white distilled vinegar works great for A/B DMT extractions. If you can get your hands on glacial acetic acid, this would be ideal but I would still dilute it at least down to 25%. The 3-5% sold in grocery stores works fine, but requires more washes and possibly a slow boil reduction to bring things down to a workable volume. For the last extraction I ran, I used 5 gallons of 5% to extract 1kg MHRB. I would soak the MHRB in 1 gallon vinegar for three days, pour out and filter aqueous solution, and then return my filtered sludge back into the soaking bucket. Repeat this three day soak for the remaining 4 gallons. By gallon 4, the red/purple coloring starts to fade and the last gallon has a urine color to it.

I also now use sodium carbonate for the base as it is much easier/safer to work with than lye. The next time I run an extraction, I will document things better so that I can put together a tek that's easy and safe using grocery store chemicals. You will still need naptha, hexane, or heptane but these are not too hard to find in most parts of the world.

 

[MachineElf88]

I can get glacial acetic acid, so you think a diluted amount of this this would be better than using white distilled vinegar for the dry tek?

edit - just thinking about it I guess diluted glacial acetic is the same as vinegar

 

[syberdelic]

The advantage that glacial acetic offers over the 3-5% you'll find in the grocery store is that you won't have to boil it down to a reasonable amount. My extraction that used 5 gallons of 5% was boiled down to about 2 gallons. By using a 25% solution, the washes could be done with maybe 5 liters rather than 5 gallons. If I had used lye (NaOH), this would have turned into 4 gallons easily. If I had not boiled it down, much more.

By using sodium carbonate, you can add to the acid as needed without diluting with water and adding virtually no volume to your solutions. Lye, if added directly to solution WILL chemically destroy a fair amount of spice. Sodium carbonate on the other hand if fully saturated in solution will only reach a pH of 10.6 which is not high enough to cause degradation but well above DMTs pKa of 8.68.

I would like to someday have a reflux apparatus to do the acid extraction with 25% acetic. I can imagine that an entire kilogram MHRB could be extracted using no more than a liter of solution. I would also add to this solution a small amount of high boiling point, low density non-polar solvent such as xylene to do the defating in the same step. I know that most MHRB teks don't include a defating step as there are minimal fats, but I have found that it makes subsequent steps easier and makes for a cleaner final product to eliminate this small amount of fat from the beginning rather than in re-x.

Sorry about rambling on, but I love chemistry.

 

[MachineElf88]

Are you talking about a standard A/B or the dry tek (vinegar and calcium hydroxide)?

 

[downwardsfromzero]

I have a sneaking suspicion that syberdelic overlooked the matter of the tek in question being a dry tek.