letudiante
Rising Star
How do you do, fellow nexians?
This is the 4th time I'm trying to extract as dry(!) and pure DMT as possible, before that I've had some underwhelming experience with Vovin's tek - the end result was quite oily, dirty and, to be honest, mostly because of my inexperience. (no re-xls, no complete layers separation etc)
So I've decided to try the MAX ION tek by cyb and see if I'm really that incompetent in this field.
Unfortunately I didn't make any pictures during the whole process because I wasn't sure I'd get the result I've always wanted in the adequate amount. I guess I was wrong.
I didn't quite follow the tek to the letter and at some steps I improvised a bit.
Ingredients and equipment:
- ~70g shredded MHRB
- 50g pure NaOH.
- 30% Hydrochloric acid.
- Rock salt
- Filtered water (instead of distilled)
- Wundbenzin (Pentanes+Hexanes)
- Turkey baster
- 3 x 500ml Erlenmeyer flasks
- 1 x 500ml Separatory funnel
- 1 x 500ml Flask with a buchner funnel and a vacuum pump
- Pyrex glass lid
- Glass thermometer
- Glass blender
- 40W average fan
- Rubber gloves
- Goggles
- Extended theme from Breaking Bad
1. Prepare - Freeze/Thaw
First I weighed around 70g of bark and put it in the freezer overnight, so it would become brittle and hard. After that I've grinded the bark in the glass blender for about 3 minutes, I let it still for ~15 min, otherwise the powder would easily escape. Then I put the powder and fine fiber in a glass jar, added ~280ml of filtered water in it for freezing/thawing. First time I let it freeze for 1.5 hours, then around an hour of thawing. Second time the same and the third time I simply had to go to work, so I put the jar in the freezer overnight and next morning I simply took it out let it thaw the entire day.
2. Acidify
I didn't spill the water still inside the jar with the bark so I took the bark with water and put them all in one of the erlenmeyer flasks. While doing that, I made a heat bath and put another flask with around 300ml of filtered water in it. This point in the tek a bit confusing - it says that the target's pH must be 2-4. The target is the water we need to add to the bark or water that has been added to the bark after? Because after adding 2 ph water to the bark, the overall ph is still around 7. I suppose the target is water with the bark therefore I added around 8-10 drops of HCl to it more, until its pH got to 4.
Instead of 8 hours I held the flask with the bark and water for 4 hours with temperature being 45-60 C. Once I was done, the probably hardest or rather tedious part came next.
2a. Dividing the bark with acidic water into two flasks.
The tek is for people who have at least 1L bottles to store and pull DMT from them. I didn't therefore I needed to divide and put water with bark into two different flasks to handle them easier. First I filtered water thru the buchner funnel using the vacuum pump and filter papers (coffee papers can be used as, too). Then I scooped out the bark into another flask by slowly, always measuring the result weight of both flasks thus making sure that I get the exact volumes of material of both flasks. At the end I ended up having two flasks with around 400ml of material respectively.
3. Defat
Skipped.
4. Salinate (adding salt)
With each flask already containing 200ml of material and being able to contain up to 600ml, I simply couldn't afford having a liter of saline water. After dissolving 60g of NaCL in ~200ml of filtered water I added ~600 more to it and then adding 400ml water to each flask respectively. At the end I had two flasks with around 600ml of acidified saline water.
5. Base
I know it's tiresome to constantly beat a dead horse, but seriously, always pull on goggles with gloves to protect against lye, it's that dangerous.
Before beginning this step I put both flasks in the fridge, because as I said I could not afford any more water in it. The tek tells us to dissolve 40g of NaOH in apprx. 100ml of water. What I did was slowly put a bit of lye in flasks, but instead of 40g I went with 50g, i.e. 25g in one flask, 25g in another one.
After carefully adding lye to water and making sure it does not get overheat too fast, I shook the flasks and put them in a heat bath for about 2.5 hours.
6. Pull
I used around 180ml of this amazing non-polar solvent, Wundbenzin, to do 6 pulls. So I took the first flask and transfused everything inside in the separatory funnel. This step is exactly the same as described in the tek, I've followed it to the letter. I'd like to add that making water saline is a MUST - it significantly, dramatically shortens the time you have to wait for layers to separate and with a heat bath I had to wait tops for 3 minutes. It's amazing.
7. Freeze Precipitate
With pulls being really saturated and because of my impatience, I've waited for six hours, instead of twelve. After transfusing the solvent in another flask and letting DMT dry for a while, I get this:
Too good to be true, right? You'd be right, because in 15 minutes this beauty became this bright orange goo. Damn it, I'm so sick of this goo for the fourth time, all I want is at least this flaky whiteish powder just for once! However this time there is definitely some progress, because 50% of this mess was white and 50% bright orange. The tek does work and does pull ALL the alkaloids in the bark. Re-crystallization it is then.
8. Re-Crystallization
Pretty standard procedure, I dissolved the goo in Wundbenzin, took out the oily orange goo, transfused the solvent back to the glass lid and froze it this time for at least 24 hours.
Patience is a virtue, my friends.
That's exactly what I wanted. You can see just by the color that the end product is much cleaner. For some reason DMT here looks more yellow than it really is. The yield has turned out to be 1.7%. Amazing!
So there it is, I can confirm that the tek is not hard to follow and in the end gives a pretty big yield. With zinc powder the possibilities are limitless.
My next experiment would be combining certain steps from Vovin's and this teks, particularly the acidic step. The goal is not to improve the yield, but rather make the overal procedure much cleaner and easier to handle, especially for those ones, who have actual lab equipment. The basified bark simply gets stuck in a separatory funnel and it's such a pain in the ass to take the pulls with a turkey baster. Since I'm not entirely incompetent, next time I'm going to provide some pics.
I hope you enjoyed and see you next time.
This is the 4th time I'm trying to extract as dry(!) and pure DMT as possible, before that I've had some underwhelming experience with Vovin's tek - the end result was quite oily, dirty and, to be honest, mostly because of my inexperience. (no re-xls, no complete layers separation etc)
So I've decided to try the MAX ION tek by cyb and see if I'm really that incompetent in this field.
Unfortunately I didn't make any pictures during the whole process because I wasn't sure I'd get the result I've always wanted in the adequate amount. I guess I was wrong.
I didn't quite follow the tek to the letter and at some steps I improvised a bit.
Ingredients and equipment:
- ~70g shredded MHRB
- 50g pure NaOH.
- 30% Hydrochloric acid.
- Rock salt
- Filtered water (instead of distilled)
- Wundbenzin (Pentanes+Hexanes)
- Turkey baster
- 3 x 500ml Erlenmeyer flasks
- 1 x 500ml Separatory funnel
- 1 x 500ml Flask with a buchner funnel and a vacuum pump
- Pyrex glass lid
- Glass thermometer
- Glass blender
- 40W average fan
- Rubber gloves
- Goggles
- Extended theme from Breaking Bad
1. Prepare - Freeze/Thaw
First I weighed around 70g of bark and put it in the freezer overnight, so it would become brittle and hard. After that I've grinded the bark in the glass blender for about 3 minutes, I let it still for ~15 min, otherwise the powder would easily escape. Then I put the powder and fine fiber in a glass jar, added ~280ml of filtered water in it for freezing/thawing. First time I let it freeze for 1.5 hours, then around an hour of thawing. Second time the same and the third time I simply had to go to work, so I put the jar in the freezer overnight and next morning I simply took it out let it thaw the entire day.
2. Acidify
I didn't spill the water still inside the jar with the bark so I took the bark with water and put them all in one of the erlenmeyer flasks. While doing that, I made a heat bath and put another flask with around 300ml of filtered water in it. This point in the tek a bit confusing - it says that the target's pH must be 2-4. The target is the water we need to add to the bark or water that has been added to the bark after? Because after adding 2 ph water to the bark, the overall ph is still around 7. I suppose the target is water with the bark therefore I added around 8-10 drops of HCl to it more, until its pH got to 4.
Instead of 8 hours I held the flask with the bark and water for 4 hours with temperature being 45-60 C. Once I was done, the probably hardest or rather tedious part came next.
2a. Dividing the bark with acidic water into two flasks.
The tek is for people who have at least 1L bottles to store and pull DMT from them. I didn't therefore I needed to divide and put water with bark into two different flasks to handle them easier. First I filtered water thru the buchner funnel using the vacuum pump and filter papers (coffee papers can be used as, too). Then I scooped out the bark into another flask by slowly, always measuring the result weight of both flasks thus making sure that I get the exact volumes of material of both flasks. At the end I ended up having two flasks with around 400ml of material respectively.
3. Defat
Skipped.
4. Salinate (adding salt)
With each flask already containing 200ml of material and being able to contain up to 600ml, I simply couldn't afford having a liter of saline water. After dissolving 60g of NaCL in ~200ml of filtered water I added ~600 more to it and then adding 400ml water to each flask respectively. At the end I had two flasks with around 600ml of acidified saline water.
5. Base
I know it's tiresome to constantly beat a dead horse, but seriously, always pull on goggles with gloves to protect against lye, it's that dangerous.
Before beginning this step I put both flasks in the fridge, because as I said I could not afford any more water in it. The tek tells us to dissolve 40g of NaOH in apprx. 100ml of water. What I did was slowly put a bit of lye in flasks, but instead of 40g I went with 50g, i.e. 25g in one flask, 25g in another one.
After carefully adding lye to water and making sure it does not get overheat too fast, I shook the flasks and put them in a heat bath for about 2.5 hours.
6. Pull
I used around 180ml of this amazing non-polar solvent, Wundbenzin, to do 6 pulls. So I took the first flask and transfused everything inside in the separatory funnel. This step is exactly the same as described in the tek, I've followed it to the letter. I'd like to add that making water saline is a MUST - it significantly, dramatically shortens the time you have to wait for layers to separate and with a heat bath I had to wait tops for 3 minutes. It's amazing.
7. Freeze Precipitate
With pulls being really saturated and because of my impatience, I've waited for six hours, instead of twelve. After transfusing the solvent in another flask and letting DMT dry for a while, I get this:
Too good to be true, right? You'd be right, because in 15 minutes this beauty became this bright orange goo. Damn it, I'm so sick of this goo for the fourth time, all I want is at least this flaky whiteish powder just for once! However this time there is definitely some progress, because 50% of this mess was white and 50% bright orange. The tek does work and does pull ALL the alkaloids in the bark. Re-crystallization it is then.
8. Re-Crystallization
Pretty standard procedure, I dissolved the goo in Wundbenzin, took out the oily orange goo, transfused the solvent back to the glass lid and froze it this time for at least 24 hours.
Patience is a virtue, my friends.
That's exactly what I wanted. You can see just by the color that the end product is much cleaner. For some reason DMT here looks more yellow than it really is. The yield has turned out to be 1.7%. Amazing!
So there it is, I can confirm that the tek is not hard to follow and in the end gives a pretty big yield. With zinc powder the possibilities are limitless.
My next experiment would be combining certain steps from Vovin's and this teks, particularly the acidic step. The goal is not to improve the yield, but rather make the overal procedure much cleaner and easier to handle, especially for those ones, who have actual lab equipment. The basified bark simply gets stuck in a separatory funnel and it's such a pain in the ass to take the pulls with a turkey baster. Since I'm not entirely incompetent, next time I'm going to provide some pics.
I hope you enjoyed and see you next time.
