Can boiling at this stage [bark + water + Vinegar + Salt + lye] result in evaporating the DMT?

[dazultra]

Hi, I've just done another extraction by cooking the Acacia root bark in a pressure cooker with vinegar for 1 hour at high pressure and heat x 3 times. Then I added a saturated salt solution and lye, but then I had too much liquid, so I boiled it down for 30 mins and pulled heptane (hot) and Xylene (cold). The heptane produced nothing, and the xylene is looking like nothing, too. Could my mistake be that I boiled the final mixture too hot? Does DMT evaporate at that stage and heat?

Thanks!

 

[Voidmatrix]

Do you have any idea what the highest temperature was?

DMT melts at 40C and boils at 160C (upper limit). As long as it didn't go above the second, none of the DMT should really be lost.

What was the total volume you were working with and how much lye did you use? Did you check the PH before performing your pulls?

One love

 

[dazultra]

Do you have any idea what the highest temperature was?

DMT melts at 40C and boils at 160C (upper limit). As long as it didn't go above the second, none of the DMT should really be lost.

What was the total volume you were working with and how much lye did you use? Did you check the PH before performing your pulls?

One love

I don't think it got that hot. It was a gentle boil. The pH was relatively high, about 14+. The total volume was about 1.7 litres, and I used 60g of lye. I prepared the lye in 200ml water the day before. The Xylene has left a yellow goo, but there isn't much.

Can I mix the good with heptane and then freeze it to see if I get crystals?

So far, I have got my best results by doing the whole thing cold and letting each stage sit overnight. I'm tempted to try that again, but I would use xylene instead of heptane this time.

Thanks!

 

[Voidmatrix]

How did you mix the heptane into the soup?

And yeah, you can run a re-x on the goo.

One love

 

[dazultra]

How did you mix the heptane into the soup?

And yeah, you can run a re-x on the goo.

One love

I put 100ml into the jar while the liquid was still hot and shook it, let it separate and repeated it 6 times

 

[Voidmatrix]

Dis you actually "shake" it?

One love

 

[dazultra]

Dis you actually "shake" it?

One love

Yeah, is that a bad idea? I'm still confused as to why I got so little out of it. I had the xylene in it for about 30 minutes, and I wonder if it should have been longer.

 

[Varallo]

I think you can answer this question now , and collected a new insight on how not to do an extraction, my guess would be that boiling DMT in a lye solution causes probably oxidation, hydrolysis, or demethylation and doesn’t cause evaporation, apart from the very serious safety concerns it is not a good method.

Thanks for sharing

 

[Voidmatrix]

Yeah, is that a bad idea? I'm still confused as to why I got so little out of it. I had the xylene in it for about 30 minutes, and I wonder if it should have been longer.

Yes, yes it is. In the future, try non-vigorous stirring, or the tumble method where you roll the jar over/under in your hands.

One love

 

[acacian]

I don't know that it is responsible for your reduced yield.. that's hard to say. But it seems like a mighty coincidence that you happened to get nothing here. Either way its a bad idea boiling lye solution from a health perspective. If you've ever added a lot of lye to water in a jug and accidentally breathed in that vapor - its not nice. I imagine boiling a lye saturated mixture just as hazardous.

Always do your reducing during the acidic phase. DMT salts are fine with being boiled pretty vigorously. During the acidic phase is your chance to reduce, filter, precipitate unwanteds and just generally clean up your solution as you desire before committing to making it basic.. take your time here there's no rush. I'll often spend a good day or two getting the acidic solution as crystal clear as possible before proceeding further. The work you put in here pays off and will make the latter part of extraction much easier and result in probably a significantly cleaner extract.

 

[dazultra]

I don't know that it is responsible for your reduced yield.. that's hard to say. But it seems like a mighty coincidence that you happened to get nothing here. Either way its a bad idea boiling lye solution from a health perspective. If you've ever added a lot of lye to water in a jug and accidentally breathed in that vapor - its not nice. I imagine boiling a lye saturated mixture just as hazardous.

Always do your reducing during the acidic phase. DMT salts are fine with being boiled pretty vigorously. During the acidic phase is your chance to reduce, filter, precipitate unwanteds and just generally clean up your solution as you desire before committing to making it basic.. take your time here there's no rush. I'll often spend a good day or two getting the acidic solution as crystal clear as possible before proceeding further. The work you put in here pays off and will make the latter part of extraction much easier and result in probably a significantly cleaner extract.

I'm learning to take my time more each time . Other than straining your acidic solution through a straining cloth, how do you get your acidic solution clear? Thanks!

 

[acacian]

Decant.. you'd be amazed what a lengthy fridge decant can do to clean things up

 

[dazultra]

Decant.. you'd be amazed what a lengthy fridge decant can do to clean things up

Ok that’s interesting, so leave it in the fridge let it all settle and pour off the top leaving the sediment? So you don’t loose loads of DMT doing this, does it stay suspended in the liquid? Thanks!

 

[acacian]

The sediment after a good amount of time will basically be a solid cake at the bottom of your vessel. You should be able to just pour off your solution and the sediment will be stuck to the bottom. Using a more diluted solution at this stage ensures minimal loss.. obviously if you've decanted a very small volume of liquid you'll likely lose a bit. The reduction to your workable volume should be about the last thing you do before making basic.. even throw in one last filtering if you wish

Also if using something like cotton buds you can do different "grades" of filtering.. push it down a bit harder with each consecutive filter. It takes a fair deal of time but is meticulous .. and more fun IME! You can get pretty creative tinkering with solubility of different things.. I suggest just play around a bit .. experiment.. and you'll find something that works well for you. But try to do all of this while your solution is still acidic..

 

[dazultra]

The sediment after a good amount of time will basically be a solid cake at the bottom of your vessel. You should be able to just pour off your solution and the sediment will be stuck to the bottom. Using a more diluted solution at this stage ensures minimal loss.. obviously if you've decanted a very small volume of liquid you'll likely lose a bit. The reduction to your workable volume should be about the last thing you do before making basic.. even throw in one last filtering if you wish

Also if using something like cotton buds you can do different "grades" of filtering.. push it down a bit harder with each consecutive filter. It takes a fair deal of time but is meticulous .. and more fun IME! You can get pretty creative tinkering with solubility of different things.. I suggest just play around a bit .. experiment.. and you'll find something that works well for you. But try to do all of this while your solution is still acidic..

Thanks heaps for the tips! How would you filter through cotton? Would you use a double coffee filter lined with cotton between and pour through a funnel?

Thanks again!

 

[acacian]

Just stuff the cotton bud into your funnel.. coffee filter works pretty well but I find the supermarket varieties around here insufferable. A corner of a pillow case/oil filter for initial filtering of plant material, followed by decant and then filtering through cotton bud is fairly thorough I find. You can also buy cool hand pump Buchner filter setups.. is just a simple buchner flask with funnel and a handpump + tubing (and of course appropriate filters). No powered vacuum source required. They're relatively inexpensive - of course not essential. Fridge + pilllow case + cotton buds is pretty good really.. plus a healthy dose of patience!

 

[dazultra]

Just stuff the cotton bud into your funnel.. coffee filter works pretty well but I find the supermarket varieties around here insufferable. A corner of a pillow case/oil filter for initial filtering of plant material, followed by decant and then filtering through cotton bud is fairly thorough I find. You can also buy cool hand pump Buchner filter setups.. is just a simple buchner flask with funnel and a handpump + tubing (and of course appropriate filters). No powered vacuum source required. They're relatively inexpensive - of course not essential. Fridge + pilllow case + cotton buds is pretty good really.. plus a healthy dose of patience!

Brilliant, thanks for your help! I'll try this on the next batch.

 

[acacian]

Good luck with it all

 

[fractals4life]

Ok that’s interesting, so leave it in the fridge let it all settle and pour off the top leaving the sediment? So you don’t loose loads of DMT doing this, does it stay suspended in the liquid?

At the acid stage DMT is actually in solution as it is in salt form, so any solid is stuff you don't want, any liquid is DMT solution. When you later add base and the ph goes over 11 then DMT will become insoluble in water as freebase and become suspended instead, ready to be grabbed by your NPS.

This is why you filter or decant when it's dilute acid stage, so any small amount of liquid liquid that stays behind is a very small loss of DMT. DMT as salt is very stable so you can then reduce the filtered soup by boiling to concentrate the DMT *before* basing it.