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Extracted with Dirty Naphtha

Migrated topic.

Hypercube

Rising Star
tl;dr I extracted DMT with dirty naphtha. How do I clean the DMT?

I noticed the "Crown and Klean strip VMP have changed chemically." thread today. I tested my naphtha (Jasco VM&P Naphtha) by putting 50 mL into a jar with 50 mL vinegar and shaking. Unfortunately, my vinegar did not clear up, so I think my naphtha is contaminated. I also just finished my first extraction - the recrystallized product is drying as I write this. I plan on vaporizing 10 mg of the DMT tonight to test the quality, but, having never tried DMT before, I am not confident that I would notice impurities introduced by the contaminated naphtha. So, I think it would be best to just assume that I need to clean it.

My question, then, is this: how do I clean the impurities from the DMT? As noted in the thread, a recrystallization with cleaned naphtha may leave trace amounts of the impurity behind. Syberdelic says that the residue obtained is an acetate salt, so I would expect that trying a mini-A/B would not work. The impurity would form a salt just like the DMT during the acid portion and, I assume, basify and become non-polar during the base portion. So it would just end up in the final product again. I expect that it would also form a fumarate salt, although I have no idea what the solubility of that would be, so I can't really guess at how well cleaning it that way would work.

Might recrystallization with another solvent work? My vinegar does not evaporate cleanly, so I can't obtain a pure sample of the impurity to test its solubility in various solvents. Since there is not a consensus on what it is, I cannot really look that up either. But heptane, for example, is supposed to be a very selective solvent. So, my thought is that the impurity might not be soluble in heptane even though it is soluble in naphtha. Or less soluble, at least. Even if this would work, other suggestions would be greatly appreciated, as I am having a difficult time finding heptane.

If I have misunderstood something and am overcomplicating this, please feel free to correct me. I am still trying to learn all the different chemistry that goes into this sort of thing, and given that it is not even known what the impurity is here, this seems especially complicated to me. But I am very interested in it and I am willing to learn, so corrections are welcome.

Also, I was not sure whether or not this would fit in the "official extraction help thread". If this should have been put there, or anywhere else, instead of in its own thread, please feel free to move it.
 
That I believe was the thread I ressurected, based on finding out literally last minute about the contaminents in (my) vm&p. Heptane is extremely easy to procure. Found out about the contaminents at 11am yesterday, had ordered lab grade reagent by 9 last night.

On the nature of the contaminent, I'll have to defer.

Due to this happening, certain issues have surfaced for me regarding precise differences in tek with heptane as my solvent that I can't seem to find, or get an answer to. After searching, user: endless was a great help from comments on old thread, but I still need a precise accounting.

Anyway, I hope you find your answers. Definite bummer about vm&p: either I was not searching the nexus properly, or this was buried when it should IMO definitely be displayed more prominently.

Best of luck.
 
It is the thread you resurrected. Thank you for doing so. I probably would not have found out about this issue otherwise. I guess I should have just replied to that thread, but I forgot I could post there until a few minutes after I made this one.

The main reason that I am having difficulty finding heptane is that I would prefer to avoid ordering chemicals online. I am not a chemist nor am I part of an industry that uses heptane for other reasons, so it would probably look suspicious. Especially lab grade heptane, and especially since I have already ordered the plant material and other suspicious things in the past.

Thank you for your kind words. I hope you find what you're looking for about using heptane. And I definitely agree that this should be displayed more prominently. I would vote for stickying that thread, given how many people use naphtha.
 
My two cents (don't take my word for it, I'm also not a chemist):

I would try to clean up the naphtha using activated charcoal (AC) and then filter it through Celite or food-grade diatomaceous earth powder (DE). This at least removes discoloration and many impurities. You can then recrystallize your DMT in the cleaned naphtha.

AC and DE are not very expensive (I was able to found them in organic food store - they also supply chemicals for homemade cosmetics, cleaning etc.). The cleaning however requires vacuum filtration set - it's possible to get one on eBay quite cheaply.
 
I looked into the vacuum filtration thing a little bit, but I have some questions. Searching ebay for "vacuum filtration" gives me a bunch of vacuum filtration adapters, which I'm guessing are meant to be used with a regular Erlenmeyer flask instead of a Büchner flask. Is that safe? It seems like the vacuum might collapse the flask. Also, would it be better to buy the whole setup as a kit or buy the parts separately? Aside from Pyrex, what brands of glassware are good (won't break when heated, vacuumed, etc.)? Lastly, how suspicious is it to buy something like this? It seems like it does not really have any uses outside of a laboratory, and as I mentioned before, this sort of thing makes me nervous. I do not want the DEA knocking on my door because I bought some glassware, but I will buy it if it is not too risky.

All that being said, I found this post from benzyme:
benzyme said:
activated carbon is useful for retaining bulky molecules (which chlorophyll is) and nonpolar molecules
and in the other thread, syberdelic said:
syberdelic said:
Those are much larger molecules than I was expecting to see.
So it seems like activated charcoal could work, since the impurity is apparently bulky. I'm not too confident with that line of reasoning, but it's much better than nothing.

Thank you very much for your help, blue.magic. You may have saved my spice.

Going down a different path, benzyme also said:
benzyme said:
if it was purely a nonpolar compound, the detector wouldn't have given a signal.
Was this only because it had been mixed with the acetic acid? If not, could I possibly wash the freebase DMT with some polar solvent to try to clean it? That seems like a much cheaper option, but this is all a little over my head, so I do not really know if what I am saying would be possible.

Does anyone know a brand of vinegar that evaporate cleanly? If I could get a pure sample of this stuff, I could try to test its acetate's solubility vs. DMT acetates' solubility in a few things, although that may get to be expensive if I do not find something good quickly. I would prefer testing the freebases' solubilities, but I am not sure how I would get the freebase of the impurity, aside from what is already in my DMT, since it does not leave a residue when evaporating the naphtha.
Actually, now that I think about that, could I just dissolve the DMT in a small amount of naphtha and evaporate the naphtha instead of freeze precipitating? Would that cause the impurity to evaporate?

Edit: Just tested the spice. That was a trip. I thought I only weighed out 11 mg, but my scale is +- 5 mg... I still feel a little weird. That was really intense. Not a breakthrough, but holy shit. Regarding its quality, though: I burnt my tongue. Not sure if that's important, but it happened. Due to the dim lighting (one candle, otherwise darkness) I couldn't actually tell if it was vaporizing or not, until on the third hit I saw smoke come out of nose and then had to put the pipe down because I could barely hold it. But I couldn't feel it in my throat or anything, so I think that's good. Like I said before, though, without a reference, I can't really judge any impurities. I do feel a bit better about it though.
 
Be careful! As I said, idk what the nature of the contaminent(s) are, but I really wish some1 would figure out what it is & how to clean the naphtha/spice.

If possible, keep us updated as new info emerges.
 
Running Bear and syberdelic posted new info in the other thread today. Syberdelic says that after recrystallization, his stuff was fine. Running bear reposted a picture from earlier in the thread that I had missed, since I was not logged when I first read the thread. My vinegar is not nearly as cloudy as Running Bear's, and my DMT did not burn my throat. I also have done three recrystallizations (with the possibly dirty naphtha), so based on what syberdelic said, even if the naphtha is dirty, I'm probably fine. I think for now I'm going to ignore it, and just closely monitor that thread for updates. Thank you Portals2Eternity and blue.magic for your help. Sorry if I over-reacted to the dirty naphtha thing.
 
Hypercube said:
Running Bear and syberdelic posted new info in the other thread today. Syberdelic says that after recrystallization, his stuff was fine. Running bear reposted a picture from earlier in the thread that I had missed, since I was not logged when I first read the thread. My vinegar is not nearly as cloudy as Running Bear's, and my DMT did not burn my throat. I also have done three recrystallizations (with the possibly dirty naphtha), so based on what syberdelic said, even if the naphtha is dirty, I'm probably fine. I think for now I'm going to ignore it, and just closely monitor that thread for updates. Thank you Portals2Eternity and blue.magic for your help. Sorry if I over-reacted to the dirty naphtha thing.

Did u try it post reX?
Before reX, u said it burnt your throat?

Thanks for the update. Things are seemingly looking better...
 
I tried after the recrystallizations. Yesterday was the last one, and the first test was last night. It did not burn my throat. I DID burn my tongue, but I doubt that was due to contamination. I don't know that for a fact, due to having never tried known clean DMT, but I doubt it. Aside from burning my tongue, it was very smooth. Since I could not see the vapor in the pipe, due to the low lighting, I did not even realize it was vaporizing until I saw the smoke come out my nose and everything became covered in geometric shapes. Definitely no throat burning.
 
Ok, thx for clarifying.

Just fyi: after redoing an evap test, there were slight traces of residue. Went to aces, found klean strip vm&p manufactured date 7/15. Evap test: no residue whatsoever. Acid test: clear.

Needless to say, I'm beginning extraction within the hour.

See u on the other side!😁
 
Hypercube said:
I tried after the recrystallizations. Yesterday was the last one, and the first test was last night. It did not burn my throat. I DID burn my tongue, but I doubt that was due to contamination. I don't know that for a fact, due to having never tried known clean DMT, but I doubt it. Aside from burning my tongue, it was very smooth. Since I could not see the vapor in the pipe, due to the low lighting, I did not even realize it was vaporizing until I saw the smoke come out my nose and everything became covered in geometric shapes. Definitely no throat burning.

What do you think caused the burning tongue? What was your vaporizing method?

Thanks for reviving this topic. I never would've known about this potential problem
 
Charoite said:
What do you think caused the burning tongue? What was your vaporizing method?
I used an Inspirator MkII, Night Elf variation. I did not put it in a bong as intended, but rather used a 4 inch long eye dropper to make it and used it as a pipe. I think this is probably why I burnt my tongue. Smoking out of an eye dropper is a bit awkward - you sort of have to put the small end in your mouth a little bit. I doubt my tongue made direct contact with the glass, unless I moved it forward without noticing, but the vapor may have been directed at a weird angle or something. This definitely does not happen when I smoke weed out of a pipe. I may try to make another Inspirator and test it with weed to see if it is a DMT issue or an issue with my method. If so, I'll report back here.

Charoite said:
Thanks for reviving this topic.
Not sure if you are talking to me here, but just in case, I want to say that all thanks for that should be directed at Portals2Eternity. He (or she) was the one that revived the other thread, which is what brought it to my attention.


EDIT: Sorry I never updated this. Real life has been crazy, and I've been having computer problems. I tried vaporizing weed, and burnt my tongue. After a little work on my technique, I've learned how to avoid this. So it was just a problem with my technique. The DMT was fine. Since this thread is old, I'm just making this an edit instead of bumping it.
 
No credit needed, though I'm glad some have found it helpful. I simply stumbled upon the info and was a bit shocked it wasn't displayed a bit more prominently, as I iterated to Hypercube.

Idk if the problem persists, as others have stated they've recently acquired klean strip that was perfectly fine.

Mine that clouded the vinegar was from 6-16. I went back and purchased 1 from mid 2015 and it was absolutely fine. So idk, jury's out.

That said, be vigilant and be well.

Regards.
 
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