kemist said:
TROUBLE!!!ILPT is poorly equiped now. he cannot distil and recycle solvents. defating seems like like waste of solvents. He has some chacruna leaves on hand.
IDEA!!! 1,He wanted extract leaves via boiling with diluted vinegar (twice), collect hot extracts and cook down to manageable level.
2,Basify with ammonia(10%) and extract with naphta or DCM (preferably DCM, but is much more easy to get naptha)
3,Collect solvent pulls and extract them with citric acid solution, separate layers. Solvent layer
is collected, saved and re-used in step 2, for next batch
4, Acid solution is basified with ammonia and extracted with hot naphta only.
5, Naphta solution cooled down, then placed in freezer to precipitate
EXPECTATIONS!!! He expect to get nice and clean white dmt because his plan is to always use fresh naphta for extraction in step 4
NOTES!!! A, he plans work in first place with very little liquids so it`s necessary do boil down and concentrate water solution of acetate salt in step 1,. Little amounts are hassle free and ILPT is able to do even 5 steps extraction with not much organic solvent used.
B,Perhaps is better to use Sodium carbonate for basifying in step 2, but ILPT hasn`t got pH indicators yet so
he need to use ammonia cos is easy to detect it with nose
SO WHAT DO YOU THINK FELLAS ???:?:
I hate to be the bearer of bad news.
Reusing the solvent in step 3 is not a good idea. It’s going to get saturated with fats and oils from the leaves and become ineffective at extracting anything.
SWIM has extracted from chacruna many times and naphtha just doesn’t do a good job with that plant. The main problem is that chacruna contains a lot of DMT N-Oxide in addition to normal DMT. If you extract with naphtha, no DMT N-Oxide gets extracted and so you have really low yields. SWIM has seen cases where over 90% of the DMT in chacruna is present as DMT N-Oxide. Only a solvent like DCM (such as diethyl ether, chloroform, etc.) can extract DMT N-Oxide.
If you could re-distill your solvent, DCM saves you a lot of money in the long run because it takes less energy to distill DCM than naphtha and it distills many times faster. You can re-use 1 liter of DCM for several years by re-distilling it. You can distill 1 liter of DCM in less than 30 minutes. The same amount of naphtha would take hours to distill wasting a lot of electricity for the hotplate and in the end cost you quite a bit of money.
I recommend getting a still and distilling all solvents used. You have no idea what’s in the solvents you’re using especially if you’re using the technical grade stuff from the hardware store. It’s called technical grade because it’s NOT CLEAN. It’s contaminated. Otherwise they would sell it as USP or FCC grade at a higher price. Technical grade basically means its not fit for use in food or drug manufacture.
When SWIM first started extracting, he didn’t think much about the quality of the solvents used, but after a while he decided his health was not worth the risk. He got himself a small still setup, gas mask, gloves, and all the other proper lab safety equipment. He never uses any solvent that wasn’t first distilled.
Naphtha contains small amounts of benzene, and you can’t get it out easily, even by distilling. Benzene is extremely carcinogenic. DCM is also potentially carcinogenic. For those reasons, you need to be careful using those solvents. Don’t breath any, don’t touch it with your hands. If you can smell it, it’s getting into your body for sure.
Actually, after a while the whole science of extraction becomes kinda fun, and SWIM now likes collecting miscellaneous lab equipment.
Be careful. Be safe.
