Can someone break down the methodology to me?

[perraux]

I understand the instructions, but personally, in order for me to get a proper grip on what I'm doing, can someone break it down for me?

For the acid to base, you start with xyz confusa bark, which contains dmt (in what form)

You soak the bark containing dmt in acidic water. Why? Is heat essential or just useful for speeding the reaction? What is the reaction? Why is this step happening? Does this produce water that contains dmt salt? And the objective is to turn it in to freebase? Is it the water that contains the salt, or does the sludge need to stay with the water? Is there a temp that can destroy the molecules that I need to remain under? Or do i even need to bother with heat? If I were to simply extract the dmt salt from the dmt water, by evaporation, would or wouldn't that work?

You proceed to mix that acidic solution in to a highly alkaline solution to get the PH of the bark soup to like...13-14. Why? Does this happen simply by mixing them together? Does heat need to be added here, or is that a bad idea since that'd produce lye fumes? What transformation or process happened and why is this step important? What happened/why does this step happen?

Now, you have basified root bark soup that has undergone a change from acidic to alkaline. Why is it now ready for a pull? Why is naptha used? What does the solvent matter? How does the solvent mix with this solution to pull anything out? Is it temp dependent, or does the temp simply speed the reaction? Should I be doing pulls from a root bark sludge soup, or should I filter all of the liquid out, leaving 2 seperate containers. One of sludge, one of dark liquid, and then add the solvent to the dark liquid? Or should I leave the liquid and sludge together for the addition of the solvent?

Is salt essential anywhere in there?

 

[fractals4life]

My understanding, I'm hoping any watching chemists will correct any gross misunderstanding, and fill in on the subtleties :

DMT in the plant is in salt form, this salt is water soluble and stable up to at least boiling point of water, so boiling won't degrade your DMT.
The DMT salt is trapped in the plant cells, a bit of acid and heat helps break down cell walls and dissolve the salts in water.
The sludge can be filtered off, this is routine in a A/B style extraction.
If you leave the sludge in, then any remaining DMT containing plant matter can be broken down by the base in the next stage. Whether this matters or not depends on how well the boiling stage went, I guess.

The basification stage turns the dissolved water soluble DMT salt into suspended, water insoluble, DMT freebase. This happens rapidly at room temperature simply by mixing.
The process is known as deprotonation: Deprotonation - Wikipedia.
Many Straight To Base (STB) techniques will have a wait time here to allow the strong base to break down the plant material, as with STB there is no acid soak stage.

The freebase DMT is insoluble in water, but Naphtha will selectively dissolve the DMT from its suspension in basified bark soup.
It matters that the solvent chosen is not miscible in water (so it can be easily separated from the soup), and only dissolves DMT freebase well enough to extract some from the soup, but will drop the DMT out when chilled to domestic freezer temperatures. It matters that the solvent is easily available, Naphtha fits all these criteria.
When then solvent is in with the soup there will be a surface where the two liquids are touching, at this boundary DMT freebase follows a diffusion gradient into the solvent as there is more DMT in the soup than in the solvent. Mixing the solvent in with the soup by gentle agitation increases this surface area and speeds the diffusion of freebase into the solvent. Mix too hard and the solvent breaks into bubbles too small to merge back into a coherent layer floating on top, this is the dreaded emulsion and should be avoided.

Salt isn't "essential" to any of this, but is supposed to make the soup more polar so that the solvent is less likelly to mingle into an emulsion and separates out easier, it is also cheap and readily available, so why not?

Heat acts to speed up reactions and increase solubility, so it speeds up the initial salt extraction, and helps DMT dissolve in the solvent later, but it isn't "essential", lower temperatures throughout seem to result in lighter coloured end product, which some find desirable and others do not.



Hope that helps!

 

[perraux]

My understanding, I'm hoping any watching chemists will correct any gross misunderstanding, and fill in on the subtleties :

DMT in the plant is in salt form, this salt is water soluble and stable up to at least boiling point of water, so boiling won't degrade your DMT.
The DMT salt is trapped in the plant cells, a bit of acid and heat helps break down cell walls and dissolve the salts in water.
The sludge can be filtered off, this is routine in a A/B style extraction.
If you leave the sludge in, then any remaining DMT containing plant matter can be broken down by the base in the next stage. Whether this matters or not depends on how well the boiling stage went, I guess.

The basification stage turns the dissolved water soluble DMT salt into suspended, water insoluble, DMT freebase. This happens rapidly at room temperature simply by mixing.
The process is known as deprotonation: Deprotonation - Wikipedia.
Many Straight To Base (STB) techniques will have a wait time here to allow the strong base to break down the plant material, as with STB there is no acid soak stage.

The freebase DMT is insoluble in water, but Naphtha will selectively dissolve the DMT from its suspension in basified bark soup.
It matters that the solvent chosen is not miscible in water (so it can be easily separated from the soup), and only dissolves DMT freebase well enough to extract some from the soup, but will drop the DMT out when chilled to domestic freezer temperatures. It matters that the solvent is easily available, Naphtha fits all these criteria.
When then solvent is in with the soup there will be a surface where the two liquids are touching, at this boundary DMT freebase follows a diffusion gradient into the solvent as there is more DMT in the soup than in the solvent. Mixing the solvent in with the soup by gentle agitation increases this surface area and speeds the diffusion of freebase into the solvent. Mix too hard and the solvent breaks into bubbles too small to merge back into a coherent layer floating on top, this is the dreaded emulsion and should be avoided.

Salt isn't "essential" to any of this, but is supposed to make the soup more polar so that the solvent is less likelly to mingle into an emulsion and separates out easier, it is also cheap and readily available, so why not?

Heat acts to speed up reactions and increase solubility, so it speeds up the initial salt extraction, and helps DMT dissolve in the solvent later, but it isn't "essential", lower temperatures throughout seem to result in lighter coloured end product, which some find desirable and others do not.



Hope that helps!

So, if i have NaOH soaked (for 2 months now) bark that i havent acid cooked, and i dont want to boil a bunch of sodium hydroxide fumes in to my apartment, can I just add an absolute ton of acid and let it sit for a week without heat? Thats essentially the crossroad im at. My ACRB probably needed to be acid boiled, and wasn't, and now my mud patties are full of NaOH that I dont really think I should subject myself or my neighbors to...so idk.

 

[Exitwound]

Disclaimer: I am not as experienced as many chemists here, but...

I don't think you need to boil or add acid now. You can just dissolve your goo/patties with warm/below boiling temp water, then extract with solvent.
Or you can just go with solvent, if your concoction is already liquid enough.