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Easy NaOH alternative tek / Sodium carbonate tek

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Infundibulum

Infundibulum

Kalt und Heiß, Schwarz und Rot, Kürper und Geist,
Moderator
OG Pioneer
Chemical engineer
Hi,

This is a fairly easy one-step tek suited for those who cannot find / afford to buy NaOH/lye, KOH or any other decent base. This tek relies on the manufacturing of sodium carbonate (which is not easy to find where I am coming from - same goes for NaOH, which is totally unheard of) from sodium bicarbonate

The idea is not new - it comes from another thread (spice limonene update - FAQ - All your basic questions and answers - Welcome to the DMT-Nexus) and has already been tried by 69ron who wrote:

Yeah...SWIM made sodium carbonate from sodium bicarbonate before just by baking it in an oven. It is very easy to do but causes CO2 gas to form which causes the sodium bicarbonate to jump around in the pan. Make sure you cover the pan with tin foil or your whole oven will be covered in pieces of sodium carbonate.
Click to expand...

Sodium bicarbonate powder (aka bicarbonate of soda, baking soda) can be easily found in supermarkets and bakeries. It is a raising agent added in doughs. DO NOT buy baking powder which is a mixture of sodium bicarbonate and tartaric acid.

The aim is to convert sodium bicarbonate which is a very weak base, (pH ~8 ) to sodium carbonate which is a moderately strong base that will easily give you a pH of >12. The reaction is:

2NaHCO3 ----> Na2CO3 + H2O + CO2
sodiun bicarb ----> sodium carb. + water + carbon dioxide

And you just need heat to do it. So,

1) Heat up the oven at 200 Celsius
2) put as much sodium bicarbonate as you want in your oven
3) cook it for 1 hour.

That's it, now you have sodium carbonate.

You can now dissolve 12.5 grams of it / litre water for a pH of ~12
.......or 25.0 grams of it / litre water for a pH of ~12.3
.......or 37.5 grams of it / litre water for a pH of ~12.4
.......or 50 grams of it / litre water for a pH of ~12.45
.......or 100 grams of it / litre water for a pH of ~12.5
.......or 200 grams of it / litre water for a pH of ~12.7


Note that upon baking sodium bicarbonate its weight will decrease; In fact, taking the stoichiometry of the reaction and the molecular weights of NaHCO3 and Na2CO3, your final product will be ~37% lighter. This is exactly what you will find, so if you cook 200g of sodium bicarbonate you will get ~ 125g of sodium carbonate.

Enjoy!

[EDIT: EXTREME CARE should be taken when adding sodium carbonate in an acidic solution. Sodium carbonate neutralises acids and this process also liberates carbon dioxide which causes the solution to foam. Just mix some vinegar or lemon juice with sodium carbonate and see.

If one wishes to basify an acidic extract, then sodium carbonate needs to be added slowly, waiting for the foaming to settle, then add a bit more. When addition of sodium carbonate does not cause any foaming this is an indication that the solution is neutral and pH is around 7. From this point onwards one can add as much sodium carbonate as one desires for basification without fearing that foaming will happen.

Many thanks to SyZyGyPSy for bringing this issue up. ]
 
sodium carbonate can be found at the pet store as ph up for fish tanks. Has anyone tried this yet? Is there a problem with emulsions or bad yield with the extraction of mimosa hostilis. I've heard this isn't as much of a problem when extracting psychotria viridis because of less chance of emulsion and less of a ph able to be used but with mimosa ph 13 was always what i've read as the target.
 
Can you actually get pure sodium carbonate from pet stores? I've never come across any, but on the other hand I never really had to adjust pH to a fishtank!

As for extractions, a pH of 12 is very good for A/Bs, whereas I have the feeling that a pH > 13 is required for STBs, in which case carbonate may not be the way to go. I also have the feeling that adding a lot of carbonate (>100g / litre) may also help with emulsions.
 
Ronue said:
Can you actually get pure sodium carbonate from pet stores? I've never come across any, but on the other hand I never really had to adjust pH to a fishtank!
Click to expand...

Yes, and reef-tank products are usually very very pure.
 
SWIM always uses food grade sodium carbonate purchased from winery supply stores sold as “soda ash” or “washing soda”. SWIM NEVER USES SODIUM HYDROXIDE ANYMORE. SWIM doesn't do STB techs though. He always uses standard A/B techs and doesn't see the need to go to pH 13.

SWIM extracts from Psychotria at pH 9.5 using sodium carbonate and can get 99% of all the DMT out in about three pulls, so that pH 13 stuff is only specific to mimosa. Actually that pH causes saponification (a process to convert fat into soap by treating fat with an alkali at pH 12 and up), and with fatty leafy plants like Psychotria, that's really not a good thing. The last thing you want is the fats in the leaves turning into soap at pH 12+. That causes emulsions you cannot believe! The highest you want to go with leafy material is pH 11, no higher than that or soaps start forming. So sodium carbonate is perfect for that.

SWIM has used sodium carbonate with Mimosa at pH 9.5 also using standard A/B techs and is able to get very good yields from that too at about 99% of all the DMT present. There's no need to use sodium hydroxide except maybe with a STB tech for Mimosa.

The pKa of DMT is only 8.68. At such a low pKa it makes no scientific sense to extract at a pKa higher than 10.68, unless doing an STB tech in which case pH 13 is used so that the alkali will digest the bark. Some people use pH 13 to knock down Mimosa specific emulsions that are not fat related. It works for Mimosa, but not most other plants where it actually causes nasty soaps to form that create really tuff emulsions.

SWIM has many friends who extract from Psychotria all the time using ammonia as the base and they get great yields from that. SWIM’s yields from Psychotria are 0.3% on average. SWIM’s yeilds from Mimosa are about 0.6% on average. And that’s with SODIUM CARBONATE, not sodium hydroxide. When SWIM used sodium hydroxide in the past he did NOT get better results with it. SWIM actually gets better results with sodium carbonate. SWIM has found that sodium carbonate is actually better at knocking down mimosa specific emulsions than sodium hydroxide. It’s all about saturating the liquid with sodium carbonate. Sodium carbonate makes the water more polar than sodium hydroxide does.
 
Ronue said:
CAs for extractions, a pH of 12 is very good for A/Bs, whereas I have the feeling that a pH > 13 is required for STBs, in which case carbonate may not be the way to go. I also have the feeling that adding a lot of carbonate (>100g / litre) may also help with emulsions.
Click to expand...

One may be able to get around the emulsion problem by cleaning up the acidic solution with gelatin or albumen before basifying.
My friend plans to check this out soon.
pH 13 and then some is required for STB's.
 
What exactly causes the Mimosa emulsions anyway?

Is any of this caused by tannins? If so, tannins can be precipitated out and removed by filtration when using calcium hydroxide as the base. Calcium hydroxide and tannic acid forms calcium tannate which is insoluble in water.
 
I think it's proteins which makes me hope that a gelatin/albumen clarification would help.
In cooking, when you want an emulsion to hold together you add protein like anchovy or egg yolk.
That's why Caesar salad dressing holds together and vinegarette separates quickly.
But if you put a teaspoon of mayonaise in your vinegarette it'll hold together like Caesar because of the egg in the mayonaise.
More handy cooking tips from Antarctica to come!
Chaliponga salad with mimosa carbonate dressing anyone?
 
Chaliponga!!! That stuff is intense!!! It makes Mimosa seem like something for children. SWIM nearly freaked out the first time he tried vaporizing a Chaliponga extract thinking it just had DMT in it. Boy was he in for a surprise. He vaporized 20 mg and was completely blown away. SWIM gets chill thinking about it.

I've heard of people using eggs white to remove the proteins in Mimosa when brewing ayahuasca. I suppose this should also help to get rid of the emulsions in an A/B extraction?
 
That's my thinking. I can't see what would be left to hold an emulsion together if one were to get rid of the proteins. Maybe the proteins are destroyed at pH 13 and that's why that high pH prevents emulsions.
My friend is new to chaliponga, he's just finished the acid cook of his second time extracting it. He's mainly interested in determining the alk content of this particular batch of leaf so that he has some idea of how much to use for an Aya dose without blowing the top of his head off.
 
69ron
SWIM has many friends who extract from Psychotria all the time using ammonia as the base and they get great yields from that. SWIM’s yields from Psychotria are 0.3% on average. SWIM’s yeilds from Mimosa are about 0.6% on average. And that’s with SODIUM CARBONATE, not sodium hydroxide. When SWIM used sodium hydroxide in the past he did NOT get better results with it. SWIM actually gets better results with sodium carbonate. SWIM has found that sodium carbonate is actually better at knocking down mimosa specific emulsions than sodium hydroxide. It’s all about saturating the liquid with sodium carbonate. Sodium carbonate makes the water more polar than sodium hydroxide does.
Click to expand...

only 0.6% from mimosa? SWIM always gets right on the 1% mark from 4 pulls
 
Jorkest said:
69ron
SWIM has many friends who extract from Psychotria all the time using ammonia as the base and they get great yields from that. SWIM’s yields from Psychotria are 0.3% on average. SWIM’s yeilds from Mimosa are about 0.6% on average. And that’s with SODIUM CARBONATE, not sodium hydroxide. When SWIM used sodium hydroxide in the past he did NOT get better results with it. SWIM actually gets better results with sodium carbonate. SWIM has found that sodium carbonate is actually better at knocking down mimosa specific emulsions than sodium hydroxide. It’s all about saturating the liquid with sodium carbonate. Sodium carbonate makes the water more polar than sodium hydroxide does.
Click to expand...

only 0.6% from mimosa? SWIM always gets right on the 1% mark from 4 pulls
Click to expand...

It depends on the mimosa used. Some is really crappy, some is really good. SWIM has extracted over 2% DMT (2.6% actual, and that was after purifying the DMT) from mimosa before, using sodium carbonate and DCM with only 2 pulls. But the average is 0.6% (after purifying the DMT). Recently the mimosa has been horrible. SWIM has switched to other plants (chaliponga and psychotria) and no longer extracts much from mimosa because of all the bunk mimosa he’s purchased recently.
 
how much sodium carbonate do you need to use if you are extracting from mimosa.

With lye i use 1 gram lye per gram of mimosa.
 
Its actually faster to heat your bicarbonate in a pot on top of the oven, only takes 5 mins or so and it is cool to watch the small volcanoes of CO2 bursting through. SWIM made some today and the weights were accurate although SWIM had been warned not to use an aluminium pot (don't know why though but was heeded just in case)
 
Ok so speaking of volcanoes... Swim just tried his first sodium carbonate attempt. He cooked his mhrb in vinegar in a crock pot overnite, then poured it into a gallog jug (still plenty of room left in the jug). The jug was kept warm in a hot water bath in a crock pot until swim was ready to basify. When he added the sodium carbonate, a hellacious foaming reaction occurred. Swim was suddenly reminded of those vinegar/baking soda volcanoes they used to make in science class when he was a kid. Apparently that happens with sodium carbonate too, eh?

So first off, swim wants to warn people to be aware of this reaction.

Second, anyone got any suggestions how to deal with this? Seriously there's a RIDICULOUS amount of foam and swim hasn't even finished adding sodium carbonate yet. How can he get rid of this stuff so as to continue on with his extraction? He already tried adding a little limonene (his np solvent) but that didn't seem to do anything to reduce the foam...

Any help = much appreciation!
 
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