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Does SWIY distill his/her solvents?

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w0mbat

Rising Star
SWIM generally tries to avoid all solvents that are not either water or D-limonene, but it's looking like s/he may need to use naptha, acetone, or IPA in the near future. In order to maximize safety (& quality of final product), s/he is wondering whether it might be worthwhile to distill acetone/naptha (to remove impurities) or IPA (to get rid of denaturing agents).

Is this worth the extra effort? Or would it be sufficient to just evaporate some solvent (say, naptha) and make sure there are no extra residues leftover?
 
Yes as far as I'm aware, the 99% isopropanol sold in many large grocery stores is clean of any contaminants. If someone knows otherwise however, swim would love/hate to know about it :?
 
If you want to know how contaminated a solvent is just evaporate a large volume down. There should be no residue. Distilling your solvents is an unnecessary risk.
 
The best approach is to purchase high quality solvents, read the label as to what the solvent contains. You can also request the MSDS, often available on-line. For the solvents mentioned, since you are doing phase change extractions and hopefully clean-up steps, you should not be overly concerned about trace elements. the plant materials have plenty of trace molecules as it is. As mentioned above, always handle solvents safely and professionally (venting and flammability issues).
 
Omg, what are you worried about?
1% Do you know how less this is?
I wouln't bother that much about such small amount of potential toxins.

SWIM just takes fresh bottled chemicals from his favourite chemdealer!

Forget about it! Just take solvents as you buy them. I wouldn't recommend using anything but limonene for extraction anyway.
 
sorry but you're wrong, Mr DMT.. if you had 1% weight of some real toxin you could be screwed.. For example if it was 1% of lead or some other non-volatile toxin, and if one evapped the solvent and used the product orally, it could be very very serious!

Also, when you say the evap point of alcohol and 'the aditional chemical' are nearly identical, you are not being correct.. There may be some or other poisonous denaturing agent (such as methanol) which are volatile, but there are others which are not (such as bitrex or a few others), so they will stay as evap residue and if consumed they can taste very bad or depending on what, maybe even be dangerous

The key is, as one has said above, to know your solvents! Check the labels, run a search for the brand on the internet, look for MSDS.. Also preffer solvents that have guarantees (food safe or USP grade preferably, but also analytical purity or etc etc), coming from chemical suppliers, instead of things like fuel (which could have all sorts of anti-rust, whatever additives that they are not obliged to say because their product is not supposed to be used for consumption or for chemical processes appart from simple burning )
 
i deleted the wrong part.
:roll:
But would you really think that such small amounts of toxins can do serious harm?
I would not think so.
Just an example:
If i took 10 ml IPA
then there is 0,1 ml toxic chem in it.
Anyway...

IF he wants to make sure he's not ingesting bad chemicals he just uses limonene.
 
Mr_DMT said:
i deleted the wrong part.
:roll:
But would you really think that such small amounts of toxins can do serious harm?
I would not think so.
Just an example:
If i took 10 ml IPA
then there is 0,1 ml toxic chem in it.
Anyway...

IF he wants to make sure he's not ingesting bad chemicals he just uses limonene.
Drinking IPA will make you sick regardless of what that 1% impurity consists of.
 
Mr_DMT said:
Omg, what are you worried about?
1% Do you know how less this is?
I wouln't bother that much about such small amount of potential toxins.

SWIM just takes fresh bottled chemicals from his favourite chemdealer!

Forget about it! Just take solvents as you buy them. I wouldn't recommend using anything but limonene for extraction anyway.

i could not tell if you were being sarcastic or not. that's nuts if you think like that, you should be more careful
 
benzyme said:
mumbles said:
Distilling your solvents is an unnecessary risk.

assuming one isn't silly enough to distill in a closet using a bunsen burner, distilling solvents isn't very risky at all.
Sure common sense and the right equipment can lessen the risk of problems, but swim doubts many people here have ground glass labware and after explosions smell would be the main problem.
 
Mr_DMT said:
Omg, what are you worried about?
1% Do you know how less this is?
I wouln't bother that much about such small amount of potential toxins.

SWIM just takes fresh bottled chemicals from his favourite chemdealer!

Forget about it! Just take solvents as you buy them. I wouldn't recommend using anything but limonene for extraction anyway.
1% can be too little or too much. You know nothing actually. It all depends on the active dose of a given toxin (some can be toxic at 0.00001%, so 1% can be lethal dose), the pharmacokinetics of the toxin, its cumulative effect in the body, its rate of metabolism etc etc.

Of course some people don't give a dime, SWIM is not too worried about toxins and other potentially hazardous chemicals to be honest but others take this issue very seriously. So be careful with the type of "advices" you give here"
 
I am curious as to what ppl think about the use of pharmacy-bought IPA as a solvent in terms of contaminants & safety. Since it is designed to be applied to open wounds, I thought it would have to be pretty safe, and as such might be a good compromise between throwing caution to the wind & using any solvent and making the effort to distill.

Benzyme & infundibulum I am particularly interested to hear what you think about this :)
 
91% (or even 70%) from a pharmacy is fine, no need to dry it either

keep in mind, IPA is a somewhat polar alcohol. it will pull other things like carbohydrates, chlorophyll, and other compounds which have OH groups. so doing an extraction with alcohols will be rather dirty.
A/B extraction is a good way of cleaning it up, because it targets free amines.
 
benzyme said:
keep in mind, IPA is a somewhat polar alcohol. it will pull other things like carbohydrates, chlorophyll, and other compounds which have OH groups. so doing an extraction with alcohols will be rather dirty.
A/B extraction is a good way of cleaning it up, because it targets free amines.

Let's say MHRB was mixed with calcium hydroxide and limonene. The limonene was isolated, and then vinegar was added. The vinegar layer was then collected and evaporated, to yield a goo consisting of DMT acetate + polar "plant junk". Would it be possible to clean this up by dissolving it in water, making sure the pH was around 3-4, and then adding limonene? Would the limonene draw off the unwanted polar "plant junk"? --- Is this what you would consider doing an A/B to clean things up?

Is there anything else that could be done to clean it up further, preferably without using any petroleum-based solvents or acetone?
 
w0mbat said:
benzyme said:
keep in mind, IPA is a somewhat polar alcohol. it will pull other things like carbohydrates, chlorophyll, and other compounds which have OH groups. so doing an extraction with alcohols will be rather dirty.
A/B extraction is a good way of cleaning it up, because it targets free amines.

Let's say MHRB was mixed with calcium hydroxide and limonene. The limonene was isolated, and then vinegar was added. The vinegar layer was then collected and evaporated, to yield a goo consisting of DMT acetate + polar "plant junk". Would it be possible to clean this up by dissolving it in water, making sure the pH was around 3-4, and then adding limonene? Would the limonene draw off the unwanted polar "plant junk"? --- Is this what you would consider doing an A/B to clean things up?

well, sort of.
no need to evap the acidic wash, just add basic water, and extract with a nonpolar solvent.


Is there anything else that could be done to clean it up further, preferably without using any petroleum-based solvents or acetone?

sublimation.

it would be less hassle to use a recrystallization solvent like hexane or heptane.
they're not particularly toxic.

I know everyone is on a green kick, but guess what..petrochemicals actually come from green sources;
and since we're not combusting the solvents, we're not melting any polar ice caps.
besides, the safety rating on these solvents is usually 1 or 2. Just don't smoke a cig while recrystallizing, and you'll be a'ight.
 
So, lemme get this straight: would one keep removing some polar plant gunk every time he or she dissolved the salt product in basic water, added limo, removed lime, and then salted out again? Would that isolate the goods from the gunk or would you keep picking up the same impurities with limo each time?
 
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