Ethyl Acetate Approach for Harmala

[_Trip_]

Sodium carbonate may be a better option, but I must admit I'm not overly careful with the french press. I figure a quick filter never hurts but yes if one was careful no filtering would be needed and perhaps this is especially the case for sodium carbonate.

It will be interesting to find out what is being pulled in.

 

[Loveall]

I based the decanted manske water, based, extracted it with ethyl acetate, added citric. An orange oil is forming. I guess this would be vasicine and related alks, plus any harmaline/harmine that the manske didn't crash (that should be small though).

I'll weigh it all out after basing/crashing and compare it to the manske yield (which should be mostly harmalas).

 

[_Trip_]

Keen to see what numbers you come up with Loveall.

If I do another extraction I think I'll go with sodium carbonate, calcium hydroxide does seem to need filtering regardless of how careful one is. Chemically drying EA could still be used but I don't like the idea of adding in a manske afterwards. I lost a bit of product and it did not appear as 'pure'. However a manske may be needed if unwanted alkaloids are present. I do like the wet tek you're working on Loveall and i just saw that 5th picture of the decanted manske. Those xtals look amazing. I can never get crystals to form like that, I'm also impatient though.


I decided to do a second extraction to see if I could replicate the first results. Again this extraction was done quite quick but I took note of the ratios used.

-300ml of water mixed with 25g of calcium hydroxide.
-100g of dried ground rue seeds was then mixed.
-2/3rd's of the water content was microwaved and steamed off.
-A warm water bath with boiling water was prepared and EA warmed.
-Just under 1lt of warm EA was used to pull (rue seeds absorb a little bit).
-6x pulls were collected via french press (5x for 2 mins and 1x for 2 hours at room temp).
-Approx just over 800ml was recovered and filtered.
-16g of citirc acid was added to the combined EA and shaken for 5-10mins (red/yellow oil formed as per previous results). Orange goo forms at the base of the jar and the rest of the jar gets covered with sticky yellow goo.
-EA was decanted.
-850ml of warm distilled water was added.
-Then based with sodium carbonate (this was shaken once acid was neutralized).
-Harmala crashed out quickly and was filter after cooling.

This first run yielded 3.7% (3.7g). Not too bad really.

I reckon the microwaving and basing takes 25mins approx. EA pulls can be done in 15mins if doing quick 2 min pulls (I need to test longer vs shorter pulls to compare results), citirc acid can be added straight away and crashed in under 10 mins, basing takes another 10-15 max (everything crashes out quickly) one could filter almost straight away or wait a couple hours. Alternatively one could base, shake and use the freezer to speed up the cooling and help the harmala settle. Filtering takes another 10-15mins and finally drying depending on method can be done in like 30mins. This whole tek could be done in under 2 hours if in a rush with half decent yields or 2.5-3hours if taking your time. Crashing of the FB and citric acid could be extended as could the pulls on the ground seeds if one had the time and wanted to increase yields slightly.

Today I would say I wouldn't have spent more than 4.5 hours (after leaving 1x pull for nearly 2 hours) on this whole tek start to finish.

Basing.

I don't remember getting the floating harmala in the traditional A/B manske extraction. It eventually sinks once cooled.

Final yield

Left side is the yield form the second extraction vs first extraction on the right. Color is identical and appears fairly pure (to the naked eye anyway). But its consistent.

 

[Loveall]

The goo precipitated by citric acid in EA which previously survived manske was about 20% of the crude FB. Sorry, I ended up eyeballing and did not measure it - it was enough to convince me that a bunch of non- harmala stuff was coming through.

Nice work on your fast process. Could be of interest to some.

However, for me, since we can get to a "similar" crude base (meaning there is stuff that will survive manske) after water pulls (e.g. Sakkadelic's excellent approach), the advantage of this method is not as much as I had hoped. It is a beautiful idea, and if one likes quick pulls with EA instead of longer water pulls on whole seeds and squeezing, them it could be an option.

The idea of using EA to dissolve harmala FB is still interesting. I want to try modifying Sakkadelic's TEK (it is my preferred rue approach) to see if we can make use of it (changes in bold):

-Current Sakkadelic TEK: Extract -> base to crude FB with NaOH -> decant -> Dissolve in acidic water, filter -> base, decant, water wash (multiple) -> Dissolve in acidic water -> manske

- Experimental test to Sakkadelic's TEK: Extract -> base to crude FB with Na2CO3 -> Pull with EA -> Pull EA with acidic vinegar -> manske

May not work (emulsions), but if it does could be a nice option and maybe less work overall for a very pure product.

 

[_Trip_]

Thanks Loveall, I have learnt that longer pulls have almost no added value, short warmer pulls are the way to go. Knowing this now, I feel one could do this Tek in 2.5hours fairly easily from start to finish.
Na2CO3 may be a better option as well. Going off your findings incorporating Na2CO3 may not require a single filtering step.

The main advantage of this Tek simply seems to be time.

I personally feel it is less messy and I like that it only requires one (or zero) filtering steps. In addition, it appears one can get a fairly clean product with a decent yield in one go. Where as a traditional A/B manske may require multiple A/B manske's steps to clean up the product. However there are of course multiple varying Tek's out there.

I seem to nearly always have trouble with the manske steps. Doing it this way I can omit even having to do a manske (And I still don't know why it came out looking more impure when i added it too this tek. My guess is the NaCl pulls impurities from the citrate water maybe, where as freebasing the citrate doesn't?).


Having said that if using this Tek, without a lab analysis there is no telling what other alkaloids are getting through into the final product. This may make the process unappealing to some especially to the aficionado's that want the purest product (and rightly so).

It's a shame the wet process you were using didn't quite work out, i thought it was looking very promising.

For now, I'm going to work on fine tuning it a bit more and possibly adding a quick clean up step at the end (mini A/B in EA) to see how much cleaner it comes out.

But I must say Loveall, I have really appreciated the input so far as well as the experimenting you have done. I look forward to seeing what you come up with in modifying Sakkadelic's TEK.


Just for fun I thought I would add these, taken at 1000x magnification, (I believe).

Harmala from a A/B manske x3

Harmala from the EA approach.

 

[Loveall]

Looks very good _Trip_

I'm pretty sure you will find that no filtering is needed with Na2CO3 if our results match.

If the EA pull and Citrate precipitation would have been more selective to harmalas (like it is for mescaline) this would have been a dream Tek. Still, after the FB water washes the product looks pretty clean. As mentioned above, I'm pretty sure the FB from this approach has other stuff besides harmalas in it because of the subsequent manske water testing. Your product pictures look very so good I'm doubting myself a little, but that is what I got.

 

[_Trip_]

I think I will be going the Na2CO3 route next time in the hope of cutting out the filtering step. This may make the Tek more appealing to some. But for now I don't think it needs too much fine tuning unless one is trying to experiment with pulling other harmala alkaloids or getting a purer product etc.
(I definitely need to try a mini EA A/B at the end to see if it can be cleaned up a bit more.)

Everyone experiments and finds Tek's that work form them, now I may be bias but for now I personally favor this approach. There's always room to fine tune later down the track as well.


I would think there are likely impurities in there but one can't be sure the ratios or amount without a lab test. There may even be very few impurities, who knows. Since there's no manske and depending on citric acids binding ability, there is also the slim possibility that other harmala alkaloids may also be present. So there could be a trade off there.

In any case there's likely a good ratio of harmaline and harmine. But what this experimenting has reinforced is that EA is a good method for pulling harmala. And other's may want to adapt this to their own Tek going forward.
There's a chance someone may even work out how to crash out harmalol from the EA or get a pure product by changing acids or bases etc. Who knows.

 

[Loveall]

I tried this:

-Current Sakkadelic TEK: Extract -> base to crude FB with NaOH -> decant -> Dissolve in acidic water, filter -> base, decant, water wash (multiple) -> Dissolve in acidic water -> manske

- Experimental test to Sakkadelic's TEK: Extract -> base to crude FB with Na2CO3 -> Pull with EA -> Pull EA with acidic vinegar -> manske

Interestingly, the harmala precipitate disappears from the water. However the EA because a thick nasty emulsion. I added NaCl and NaOH (which can degraded EA over time) and the emulsion broke up eventually, but the FB residue didn't dissolve completely (admittedly there could also be impurities), it floated in the EA and stayed away from the water.

The emulsion was hard to work with, to me it doesn't seem like this proposed shortcut is less work.

 

[_Trip_]

I've never had any emulsion. What's causing it the vinegar? Is it reacting to impurities and causing it to form in the EA?

Would you say it's a better idea to crash it out with another acid than use 'wet' vinegar? As in do you think it's a better idea to crash and decant rather than use a wet style approach and mixing a 'wet acid' with the EA?

I thought of using hydrochloric acid but I think I recall someone saying it could breakdown the EA a bit and thus potentially more impurities would crash out. I would imagine using just NaCl wouldn't work either as the harmla needs to be in an acid form to give ions to. (If my understanding is correct on that).

I'm sure there is a more selective acids other than say citric acid but perhaps whatever acid is used needs decanting from the EA. Maybe water doesn't help (ie water in vinegar). This would make sense as the citric acid crashed out like crystals not goo when a chemical dry was preformed. I would think by going straight from EA to acidic pull to manske, without separating the steps would add more impurities due to the concentrations of alkaloids present and low concentrations of solutions. I could be way of the mark here or misunderstood your process.


I also wanted to know your thoughts on using NaOH as a base to crash out freebase harmala (heard it's cleaner and better yield (that could be wrong), then do mini EA A/B at the end to clean it up but this time crash with sodium carbonate. Wouldn't add much more time to the Tek maybe another 30mins.

 

[Loveall]

I've never had any emulsion. What's causing it the vinegar? Is it reacting to impurities and causing it to form in the EA?

Would you say it's a better idea to crash it out with another acid than use 'wet' vinegar? As in do you think it's a better idea to crash and decant rather than use a wet style approach and mixing a 'wet acid' with the EA?

I thought of using hydrochloric acid but I think I recall someone saying it could breakdown the EA a bit and thus potentially more impurities would crash out. I would imagine using just NaCl wouldn't work either as the harmla needs to be in an acid form to give ions to. (If my understanding is correct on that).

I'm sure there is a more selective acids other than say citric acid but perhaps whatever acid is used needs decanting from the EA. Maybe water doesn't help (ie water in vinegar). This would make sense as the citric acid crashed out like crystals not goo when a chemical dry was preformed. I would think by going straight from EA to acidic pull to manske, without separating the steps would add more impurities due to the concentrations of alkaloids present and low concentrations of solutions. I could be way of the mark here or misunderstood your process.


I also wanted to know your thoughts on using NaOH as a base to crash out freebase harmala (heard it's cleaner and better yield (that could be wrong), then do mini EA A/B at the end to clean it up but this time crash with sodium carbonate. Wouldn't add much more time to the Tek maybe another 30mins.

The emulsion always happens when FB harmalas are crashing in water and an EA liquid-liquid pull is done. I didn't try heat to clear it up though, perhaps the harmalas being more soluble clears the emulsion (?). Emulsion doesn't happen when pulling from wet seeds (no alkaline water layer to emulsify with). Going from harmalas already in EA to vinegar doesn't cause emulsions for me.

NaOH is works well to crash the harmalas and other stuff quickly. I haven't seen it be higher yielding. It crashes junk to make a clearer solution quickly, but any extra stuff that crashes does not go back into solution during the A step (for the most part).

 

[_Trip_]

Haven't had time to do much more experimenting, but wanted to add reusing 'cleaned' EA that has been already used for the EA Harmala approach seems to work well without adding much if any impurities. However, reusing cleaned EA from cacti extractions seems to add a few impurities to the end result.

 

[downwardsfromzero]

In any case there's likely a good ratio of harmaline and harmine. But what this experimenting has reinforced is that EA is a good method for pulling harmala. And other's may want to adapt this to their own Tek going forward.

This is at least a solution to the question of which solvents can be used for mixing changa.

Time to test this out with butyl acetate.

 

[_Trip_]

downwardsfromzero, try using warm EA/ BA when dissolving harmala into ya changa. It should dissolve the harmala a lot easier than what it does at room temperature.

As for EA/ BA's interaction with DMT I can't say but it should work fine. You're more knowledgeably than me I'm sure you're all over it.

 

[_Trip_]

Just thought I'd do a quick update.

I've tried this harmala extract with changa with good results. I finally had time to give it a go for pharmahuasca.

Took 150mg Harmala with OJ.
Ate a small bit of bread.
Waited 15mins
Took additional 50mg of Harmala with 65mg of DMT in OJ.

Come up was nearly too much to handle but leveled out nicely. Great trip. And if this Tek pulls impurities I would guess it would be very little. Full MAO inhibition was definitely achieved. No nasty side effects.

Hoping to follow up with proper results soon.

 

[_Trip_]

Alright I did a extraction today in the hope of sending off some samples for a lab test.

If a chemical dry is done there is no goo formation in the citrate precipitation step, just crystals.

I microwaved off closer to 75% of the water content and then left the bowl and mix for 24hours so it dried out a bit over the 24 hours (not intentionally just a time issue).

I did 2 runs. One with a chemical dry and one without as per original tek.

Due to the dryness of the solvent crystals formed even in the sample that didn't get a chemical dry, although a small layer of yellow goo coated the walls of the jar but it did form crystals. The chemically dried sample produced tiny cleaner crystals. So this confirms for a second time chemical drying helps citrate crystals form.
If using less citrica acid and if left undisturbed the crystals may pull less impurities and crash out cleaner as per cielo tek. However the chemical dry sample does not go cloudy and appears to need a shake regardless.

A chemical dry maybe irrelevant. The end product can be cleaner (by appearance) with standard tek. I'm starting to think with this Tek the sodium carbonate and warm water ratios for freebasing are key to a cleaner end product and that may need some fine tuning.

Today the standard tek came out cleaner than any harmala extraction I've ever done before for any Tek and I believe it was a ratio issue of "citrate goo" to water/ sodium carbonate. Originally I wrote 850ml of water if using 100g seeds. This time I used 850ml in the citrate dissolving step to 50g of seed extract. Harmala was cleaner, (but yield was slightly lower) and more sodium carbonate. I have repeated this several times the key to a cleaner appearing product is on the water/FB step.

 

[_Trip_]

Big shout out to Solaris Analytical for the lab work very quick turn around.


Here we have 3 samples.

Sample A is a traditional A/B with manske (x3).

Sample B is the standard Tek EA approach.

Sample C is the EA approach with chemical dry and a mini A/B clean up at the end.

Edit need to fix images**

C hosted at ImgBB

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A hosted at ImgBB

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B hosted at ImgBB

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[_Trip_]

*(Note picfat is down and some of the previous photos on this thread aren't accessible at the moment)

Sample A is a traditional A/B with manske (x3).

Sample B is the standard Tek EA approach.

Sample C is the EA approach with chemical dry and a mini A/B clean up at the end.

The results are very similar between the two teks.

I could be completely wrong but (and happy to be corrected):
I believe 212 is harmine
214 is harmaline (and 215.) The MC LS was run in positive mode, it adds M +1.
168 is likely Norharman
200 peaks may be tetrahydroharmol and harmalol (Vasicinone maybe present there too). This seems consistent in both teks however.

 

[Loveall]

_Trip_, congrats. I think you simply nailed the spectrum of very clean harmine/harmaline as we discussed. All main peaks can be attributed to this from the loss of -CH3 (~197) or both -CH3 and -OCH3 (~169) functional groups.

If yields are the same as the classic alkaline water precipitation, it is less work, and solvent is reusable this could be a practical TEK that could be available for the kitchen alchemist. Also, nice to know EA can dissolve harmala FB for changa herb infusion.

Cheers and thanks again for a great contribution .

What is your latest process/recommendation to get the product with EA?

 

[_Trip_]

Hey Loveall, Cheers for breaking down the results a bit more. I think the biggest advantage is the speed, like the Cielo Tek its quite fast. Quickest I did it with good yields was under 2 and a half hours start to finish. Cutting out manske steps speed this tek up alot and the purity of a 3x manske can be achieved in one go.


Current process
Step 1:
-Add 300ml of water to 25g of calcium hydroxide and mix to form 'base water'.
Alternatively one can use sodium carbonate (this may negate the need for filtering later).

Step 2
-Get 100g of dried ground up rue seeds and mix with 'base water'.

Step 3
-Microwave the rue/base mix until 2/3rd's of the water content is steamed off (use kitchen scales to measure this). As a guide a 750 watt microwave at 5-7min bursts should work fine. Mix between bursts. Several burst will be required. This may be like the Cielo Tek and require more water to facilitate efficient pulls, thus may need to be fine tuned. And like the Cielo tek may not need microwaving. However for now those ratios and the microwave step should work fine

Step 4
-Prepare a warm water bath with boiling water and warm 1lt of EA. No open flames. This step helps yields.

Step 5
-Conduct 6 pulls with the 1lt of warm EA. So 160ml pulls approx (keep in mind rue seeds will absorb a little bit of EA).
-Using a french press do 6x pulls from the rue seeds (6 warm pulls at 1-2 mins each). Decant from the french press after each pull. Keep rue base mix and EA in the warm water bath to improve yield (obviously in their respective glass jar/ french press).

Step 6
-Approx just over 800ml of EA should be recovered and then filtered (filtering may not be necessary if one has used sodium carbonate as a base). Lab filter is recommended, coffee filters should work too.

Step 6a (optional)
-To increase purity one can chemically dry with CaCl2. The citrate in step 7 will not be a goo but a crystal like formation instead. (This step still requires further investigating as end product may still be the same appearance in purity). Based on lab results I don't see this being necessary anymore.

Step 7
-Add 16g of citirc acid to the combined EA and shake for 5-10mins (red/orange/yellow oil should form). Orange/red goo forms at the base of the jar and the rest of the jar gets covered with sticky yellow goo (making it easy to decant). (This goo should crystalize if left for 24hours+. This is not necessary though one can decant right away).

Step 8
-Decanted EA. (this can be cleaned and reused next extraction). One can also add a little bit of EA to the citrate stuck to the jar to clean it up a little bit. Again decant this EA.

Step 9
-Add 600-850ml of warm distilled water to the citrate goo, it will dissolve fairly quickly. 300-400ml may suffice. (Ratio it down if using less seeds). The more water the more sodium carbonate may be needed depending on yield but the more water used gives a cleaner product (in appearance anyway). This may need to be dialed in.

Step 10
-Base slowly with sodium carbonate (shake once acid is neutralized). Add enough sodium carbonate until the harmala starts to crash out then add a little bit more.

Step 11
-Harmala will crash out quickly. Some of the FB harmala will float to the top, this needs to be left to cool.
(Sticking the jar in a freezer will speed up the process and the floating harmala should settle. This should not take long). Once it has finished crashing out filter and dry the product. No need to leave this overnight, if left for too long (say 24hrs+) some impurities may crash out. The final product in this step should crash out quick and should/ can be filtered within a hour or 2 (often quicker).As a rule of thumb I wait for the floating harmala to settle to the bottom this is rarely exceeds the 2 hour mark, again usually a lot quicker. .
Once filtered and dried you have the final product.
(Keep the sodium carbonated water after filtering, more harmala may crash out overnight. It usually appears more impure by color)


Note: One could carefully decant but some product will be lost. So filtering is recommended.


Step 11a Based on lab results I don't see this being necessary anymore unless color is way off.
-This is optional but a mini EA A/B can be done on the final product to clean it up. This may not be necessary but is recommended if the final product comes out as a dark tan instead of a much much lighter grey/tan color. If each step is followed it should come out very very clean to the naked eye anyway.
-Dissolve the final yield in 50ml of warm/ hot EA or add a little more EA until all FB harmala is dissolved. Crash it out again with citric acid, decant, add distilled water, base and crash with sodium carbonate, separate/filter and dry again.

This should yield min approx 3.7% first run.
One can repeat the whole process again to increase yield to over 5%+ (recycle and cleaning the used decanted EA works fine).

 

[Nachooo]

Thanks for this Tek. I am really tired of waiting days for all those filtering and manske steps in the traditional extraction tek. Also I think lot of product is lost in all those filtration steps through cotton, coffee filters etc... and your approach helps a lot with that.

I think that the EA tek can be used also with dry ephedra powder..Used the CIELO tek adapted..although I salted it with HCL acidified water (read somehwhere that ephedrine citrate was not crystals)...got some kind of orange resin almost crystalline that was positive to ephedrine with reagent