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Extracting DMT with ethanol, vinegar and sodium carbonate

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Another question . When sodium carbonate is rehydrated it's becoming bi-carbonate again right? So the only by-product left in the final product would be sodium bicarb? As I have read elsewhere that people are known to use vapourising bi-carb to help with asthma anyway.

Well except for maybe plant fats .
Sodium carbonate rehydrates with up to ten molecules of water, which is the usual form of 'washing soda' - the decahydrate. Sodium bicarbonate has an extra molecule of carbon dioxide, and will form slowly when sodium carbonate stays exposed to the atmosphere.

It's most likely ultrasonic nebulization of sodium bicarbonate solution that will be used to help asthma. Sodium bicarbonate starts decomposing at just below 100Ā°C so thermal vaporization methods appear to me as though they'd be unhelpful.

Not sure what you mean about the plant fats.
Edit: I see now; the other byproduct would be sodium acetate from the reaction of SC with vinegar, but that would largely get left behind by the solvent pulls. The plant "fats" might possibly be flavonoids and/or sterols in this instance.
 
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[Good this thread got bumped, it reminds me that a related method still needs some experimental trials. Derived from a tannin extraction method, heating MHRB in vodka (1:10) followed by tannin precipitation with calcium hydroxide should, after filtering, leave a solution of crude freebase, which may possibly even oil out in a very cold freezer.]

I should write up the idea for the tek based on acorn tannin removal so more people get the opportunity to test it.
Here are some salient, interim lab notes:
Calcium tannate from mimosa requires filtering and washing with additional vodka (S-L-O-W-!), so the resulting concentration of alkaloids in the vodka seems likely to be a bit on the low side compared to that used in the initial oiling-out experiment. Also, after heating some of the alcohol will have evaporated from the vodka meaning the entirety of the liquid may freeze solid when put in the freezer on the turbo boost setting. On "warming" to -26Ā°C a darker liquid should separate from the icy material, which can then be poured off. The solid and liquid phases can be further examined to determine the composition of the solute and any precipitates.
 
Update:
I read through this entire topic again and really like Eaglepath's post.
I combined his/her procedure with other knowledge /input and came up with the following plan:

1. Obtain base
Sodium Carbonate "SC" or Calcium Hydroxide "CH". Go for food grade. SC can be made by heating easily obtainable baking soda. CH is preferred for its low solubility. If the CH is less than 100% pure it can contain Calcium Carbonate.

2. Obtain alcohol
Food grade 96% grain ethanol, or >99% lab grade Isopropyl Alcohol (IPA). Optional: choose one of the following drying agents: Calcium Oxide, Sodium Sulphate, or Calcium sulphate to dry your alcohol with.

3. Extract
- cook bark 3x, preferably in (distilled) water (don't use vinegar etc.)
- discard plant matter and evaporate solution down to a low volume
- add base after cooling and evaporate dry (optional: use a vacuum desiccator)
- pull based mix with alcohol
- optional: cool the alcohol to -15c to -17c, filter precipitated base away
- optional: distillate the alcohol down to 10% volume prior evaporation
- evaporate the alcohol containing the actives
- the yield is (less pure) DMT

Alternative:
Instead of cooking and discarding plant matter, do a STB on the bark with minimal water, then evaporate dry and pull the plant mix with alcohol. This saves cooking time, but a larger amount of alcohol is required to pull. Can be expensive if grain ethanol is used and not distilled.

4. Clean up (optional)
- dissolve yield in carbonated water, filter away solids and evaporate dry
- pull with alcohol, filter away solids and evaporate dry
- the yield is (more pure) DMT

Notes:
No vinegar or other acids are used, as these form calcium /sodium salts when combined with bases, contaminating final yield. Carbonated water has a low pH and everything in it fully evaporates prior basing (no acids reacting with bases forming salts). If you choose to use acid, choose citric or fumaric over acetic. Said to give a cleaner result.

As endlessness suggested and doubledog reports success with, the final yield can be washed with a minimum amount of water to dissolve and get rid of base and salt residues. In this case the use of acids prior basing, or the use of SC as base leaving residue in final yield can be counteracted.

Ethanol probably cannot be dried with Anhydrous MgSO4. It can be dried with Calcium Oxide. This can be made DIY: Buy Calcium Carbonate (chalk), convert into Calcium Oxide using a oxy-propane blowpipe. Optional: convert Calcium Oxide into CH by slowly(!) adding water (danger: very intense exothermic reaction).

Further research:
Maybe a sufficiently small amount of alcohol can be used to pull the based mix (with no plant material), saving costs without needing to distillate the alcohol for reuse.

Maybe you can simply use (wet) 96% ethanol to pull moist CH/SC base mix (either boiled down actives or plant mix) by placing the pulled alcohol in the freezer, precipitating all base residue.

Maybe freezing dry alcohol is not required if CH is used as base and the based mix is fully dried prior pulling.

Maybe the initial yield is clean enough and no clean-up procedure is needed.

Conclusion:
Still some research to be done, but the goal is to use all food grade products to obtain pure freebase DMT with zero base and zero salt residues. Thank you endlessness for all the inspiration! I will experiment and report results.

Hi everyone, sorry for the noob question but, regarding step 4: is the ethanol pull to be done on the solid material or rather on the carbonated water? I have read that freebase DMT is not very soluble in carbonated water, so I'm confused on what actually is the solid that's not been dissolved, as I suspect that a lot of it is genuine DMT. Could anyone elucidate this for me? Thank you in advance!
 
Hi everyone, sorry for the noob question but, regarding step 4: is the ethanol pull to be done on the solid material or rather on the carbonated water? I have read that freebase DMT is not very soluble in carbonated water, so I'm confused on what actually is the solid that's not been dissolved, as I suspect that a lot of it is genuine DMT. Could anyone elucidate this for me? Thank you in advance!
Hello and welcome!

The main thing to be aware of is that you're reading a plan, and I'm not specifically aware of this having been tried out with any success. Way back, some people did report modest success with extracting mescaline out of nonpolar solvent using carbonated water, but then mescaline spontaneously forms a stable carbonate on exposure to the atmosphere. It is indeed entirely plausible that DMT freebase will have poor to minimal solubility in carbonated water.

Moving on to your actual question, the (putative) solid remaining after the evaporation of the carbonated water would be what gets dissolved in the ethanol, presumably to clear it up from any mineral salts and remnants of water. It would not be possible to use ethanol to extract from carbonated water in the sense of water with excess dissolved carbon dioxide because the two liquids are completely miscible, although ethanol will phase separate from concentrated sodium carbonate solution.

If you were feeling like trying out this carbonated water process you wouldn't lose anything even if it turned out not to work, although with that said, I'm a bit sceptical of processes that require the evaporation of significant amounts of water (unless I'm cooking plant material). As long as you haven't burnt it, spilled it, dropped it on the carpet, destroyed it with harsh chemicals, or thrown it in the trash, you'll be able to recover your DMT with a more conventional approach.
 
Hello and welcome!

The main thing to be aware of is that you're reading a plan, and I'm not specifically aware of this having been tried out with any success. Way back, some people did report modest success with extracting mescaline out of nonpolar solvent using carbonated water, but then mescaline spontaneously forms a stable carbonate on exposure to the atmosphere. It is indeed entirely plausible that DMT freebase will have poor to minimal solubility in carbonated water.

Moving on to your actual question, the (putative) solid remaining after the evaporation of the carbonated water would be what gets dissolved in the ethanol, presumably to clear it up from any mineral salts and remnants of water. It would not be possible to use ethanol to extract from carbonated water in the sense of water with excess dissolved carbon dioxide because the two liquids are completely miscible, although ethanol will phase separate from concentrated sodium carbonate solution.

If you were feeling like trying out this carbonated water process you wouldn't lose anything even if it turned out not to work, although with that said, I'm a bit sceptical of processes that require the evaporation of significant amounts of water (unless I'm cooking plant material). As long as you haven't burnt it, spilled it, dropped it on the carpet, destroyed it with harsh chemicals, or thrown it in the trash, you'll be able to recover your DMT with a more conventional approach.

First of all, thank you for the invaluable insights.

So, do you think that sticking to the original tek by endlessness reported in the first post of the thread would be a better use of my time? I would just use 100% pure liquid citric acid instead of vinegar (would regular 5% vinegar do anyway?) though, since I have already bought it and have it at home, if you think it would be at least as viable as using vinegar for the ethanol pull. If instead something more has been discovered to perfect the tek, I'd be interested to know, especially if it's been tried and tested successfully.

(For background, I am interested in these kinds of teks because where I live I am only able to get dirty Zippo Premium lighter fluid which does not pass the evap test, and it's impossible to get n-heptane or other petroleum-based NPS because they are mostly only sold to companies; applying endlessness's tek would almost be my only chance to get a glimpse of hyperspace)
 
First of all, thank you for the invaluable insights.

So, do you think that sticking to the original tek by endlessness reported in the first post of the thread would be a better use of my time? I would just use 100% pure liquid citric acid instead of vinegar (would regular 5% vinegar do anyway?) though, since I have already bought it and have it at home, if you think it would be at least as viable as using vinegar for the ethanol pull. If instead something more has been discovered to perfect the tek, I'd be interested to know, especially if it's been tried and tested successfully.

(For background, I am interested in these kinds of teks because where I live I am only able to get dirty Zippo Premium lighter fluid which does not pass the evap test, and it's impossible to get n-heptane or other petroleum-based NPS because they are mostly only sold to companies; applying endlessness's tek would almost be my only chance to get a glimpse of hyperspace)
Well, I personally think my vodka limetek (or should that be Lime/vodkatek?) will be the quickest way to crude alkaloidal extract, and this could be cleaned up in any number of ways.

I also strongly suspect that DMT can be extracted using pure paraffin wax (for candlemaking) but this hypothesis remains to be tested.
I'd drip the de-tanninised MHRB vodka slowly into just molten wax with slow stirring, observe if any solids separate and skim them off, then recover the DMT using aqueous acid after first removing any water residue left over from the vodka. Cooling would allow smooth separation of the wax from the acidic water. [This would be totally experimental but is based on sound enough principles.] The DMT citrate can then be converted back to freebase with sodium carbonate or lime paste, dried, pulled again with 96 - 100% ethanol, and relatively pure freebase goo should remain after evaporation. Theoretically.:)

100% pure citric acid is a crystalline solid. You will need to check the percentage content of the descaling liquid you've bought, because unfortunately, you've been sold some rather expensive water alongside your citric acid. Although that liquid form would be perfect for the acidic back-pull described above.
 
Well, I personally think my vodka limetek (or should that be Lime/vodkatek?) will be the quickest way to crude alkaloidal extract, and this could be cleaned up in any number of ways.

I also strongly suspect that DMT can be extracted using pure paraffin wax (for candlemaking) but this hypothesis remains to be tested.
I'd drip the de-tanninised MHRB vodka slowly into just molten wax with slow stirring, observe if any solids separate and skim them off, then recover the DMT using aqueous acid after first removing any water residue left over from the vodka. Cooling would allow smooth separation of the wax from the acidic water. [This would be totally experimental but is based on sound enough principles.] The DMT citrate can then be converted back to freebase with sodium carbonate or lime paste, dried, pulled again with 96 - 100% ethanol, and relatively pure freebase goo should remain after evaporation. Theoretically.:)

100% pure citric acid is a crystalline solid. You will need to check the percentage content of the descaling liquid you've bought, because unfortunately, you've been sold some rather expensive water alongside your citric acid. Although that liquid form would be perfect for the acidic back-pull described above.

OK thanks. So, after additional reading, I now know that freebase DMT is not (or it is minimally) soluble in water, yet sodium carbonate is, therefore I could "water wash" the unpurified freebase DMT I obtain from applying the plan I quoted originally and, instead of discarding the solids (which are mostly DMT), I would keep them instead of the sodium carbonate-rich water (distilled would be better than carbonated) and again dissolve them in ethanol and let dry. All this because, according to my understanding, the wash with carbonated water is intended to purify freebase DMT from sodium carbonate residuals (correct me if I'm wrong!).

Were this whole extraction and purification fail, I would try to apply your vodkatek, or endlessness original tek, not because of any kind of discrimination, but just because I already have all of the ingredients needed for applying the user's "some one" tek ;)
 
OK thanks. So, after additional reading, I now know that freebase DMT is not (or it is minimally) soluble in water, yet sodium carbonate is, therefore I could "water wash" the unpurified freebase DMT I obtain from applying the plan I quoted originally and, instead of discarding the solids (which are mostly DMT), I would keep them instead of the sodium carbonate-rich water (distilled would be better than carbonated) and again dissolve them in ethanol and let dry. All this because, according to my understanding, the wash with carbonated water is intended to purify freebase DMT from sodium carbonate residuals (correct me if I'm wrong!).

Were this whole extraction and purification fail, I would try to apply your vodkatek, or endlessness original tek, not because of any kind of discrimination, but just because I already have all of the ingredients needed for applying the user's "some one" tek ;)
Well, as a point of clarification the idea with carbonated water is that the carbonic acid formed by the reaction between carbon dioxide and water might be sufficiently acidic that it can dissolve DMT by protonation like any other sufficiently strong acid. The solution would effectively be DMT bicarbonate, and there is a strong precedent for bicarbonates which are stable in solution in the form of temporary water hardness - calcium and magnesium bicarbonates. On heating or evaporation, the bicarbonates in hard water decompose into the carbonates (plus CO2 and water), whereas DMT bicarbonate would simply turn back into the starting components - freebase DMT, CO2 and water.

Rinsing out the sodium carbonate seems like a viable idea, although I would still be wary that some DMT bicarbonate might get washed away so it would be prudent to test the washings for alkaloid residue before throwing them away - in keeping with the Golden Rule of Extraction: Don't throw anything away until you're certain you've got [all] the goods!

The other thing about dissolving the DMT in ethanol is that some of the inorganic salts will be trapped inside the DMT and might not get removed by a water wash. So, by all means try the water wash, but it would still be prudent to at least test a portion of the water washed DMT by dissolving it in ethanol (after the water has completely evaporated) and carefully observing for insoluble residue.

The difference between @some one's tek and the vodka tek is that the vodka tek has, to a large extent, been tested - have you checked to see whether any positive results have ever been reported for some one's? In fairness, it would probably be helpful to get a write-up done for the lime/vodka method, although I'm reluctant to spoil the fun of people getting to piece the puzzle together for themselves šŸ”Ž
 
the wash with carbonated water is intended to purify freebase DMT from sodium carbonate residuals
Revisiting this, I realise there may have been a misapprehension over the term "carbonated water". I take this to mean water with dissolved carbon dioxide, but there's a conceivable misuse of the term to mean "water with dissolved sodium carbonate" in this context. That should be referred to as "sodium carbonate solution" or "aqueous sodium carbonate" to avoid confusion.
 
I finally got around to trying this with ~15g ACRB. I'm excited with this process. I made a paste with 15g Sodium Carbonate and set it to dry. Takes a while.

One nice thing is that you can play with smaller parts of the whole, so I took a couple tablespoons, oven dried it, and pulled with 99%IPA. Got just enough to determine that the result is active and heavy on NMT (same as a traditional method would produce, probably less pure).

I have also done this process with the "spent" ACRB from a traditional method and gotten a little more out.
One thing I find exciting is that traditional STB and also A/B seems to require a lot of pulls with ACRB (especially STB, but A/B too). The stuff seems to be hard to get out of the bark. I'm thinking one could do a STB on the bark, pull a few times, and then dry the "spent" bark and pull with 99% IPA. The result could be cleaned up by dissolving in Xylene and water and pulling the Xylene. The goal is to minimize nasty Xylene use.

I also wonder if anyone has taken any spent bark from any process and used it in an Aya brew. A few quick pulls, then reduce in volume and add vinegar. Possibly you could get effects in an Aya brew from the result?? It would take more, of course.

As ordering the bark becomes more of a worry, getting every last drop becomes more of a thing.

I do have a couple questions.

Literally for a friend. If someone used Sodium Bicarbonate instead of SC, is that a problem? It still seems to work. Is there a problem with the finished product, or at all?

Question for me, I got a fair amount of 91% IPA at a yard sale quite cheaply. However, it had gotten hot in a garage and the bottles had actually swollen. I intend to use this 91% IPA for a few more pulls after a couple pulls with the 99%. Of course, I will have to clean it up because of the added water. If I do so with Xylene and water, will it get rid of any plastic nasties which may have leached into the IPA.


**************

Unrelated: Is there a DMT source for Aya which is not watched at all? Something maybe hard to extract but still suitable for Aya but just anything completely under the radar now.
 
If you use Bicarbonate rather than carbonate the pH will not get basic enough to freebase NN-dmt. IDK enough about NMT. When pulling with 99% IPA you can salt with a dry acid of your choice and get a precipitate rather than evaporating it all. You can also reuse the IPA by neutralizing with an excess of dry sodium carbonate.

Only issue I've had with 99% ipa salting is the original material that is mixed with sodium carbonate needs to be completely dry. A few microwave bursts is needed. If there too much water it'll pull into the alcohol but will NOT precipitate regardless of the amount of acid added. You can salt then freebase again and pull again for more purity since the first alcohol pulls when evaporated will have more material

If you have issues sourcing plant material best option would be growing your own. Acacia and psychotria seem to be the best options from what I can gather.

BASI method
BTW using IPA on plant material is quite wasteful and works best on dried water pulls IME. IPA seems to have poor penetration or maybe I'm just using too little to save on solvent.
 
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Literally for a friend. If someone used Sodium Bicarbonate instead of SC, is that a problem? It still seems to work. Is there a problem with the finished product, or at all?
If it works, it works. Bicarbonate decomposes easily into carbonate on heating (ā‰„100Ā°C) though so it should be simple enough to check whether the yield can be improved.
 
For those of us growing P. viridis, does anyone know an eco friendly way to defat? I'm seeing some evidence of seizing vegetable or soybean oil in past comments, but none seemed very successful or promising. P. viridis leaves also require a defat more than root barks. I'm typically working with fresh leaves if that matters (I don't suspect it does).
 
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Only issue I've had with 99% ipa salting is the original material that is mixed with sodium carbonate needs to be completely dry. A few microwave bursts is needed. If there too much water it'll pull into the alcohol but will NOT precipitate regardless of the amount of acid added.
Adding a bit of fresh, anhydrous sodium carbonate to a damp IPA extract should dry it enough for precipitation to work. Any more moisture than that and it gets a bit fiddly.
 
For those of us growing P. viridis, does anyone know an eco friendly way to defat? I'm seeing some uses of soybean oil in past comments, but none seemed very successful and promising. P. viridis leaves also require a defat more than root barks. I'm typically working with fresh leaves if that matters (I don't suspect it does).
Aqueous ethanol will dissolve freebase DMT preferentially over fats, although this would be an experimental procedure that I haven't personally tried. There may also be other oily substances in the leaves/extract [e.g. phytol, ubiquinones] which aren't actually lipids, bringing a potential for complications.

Also, it depends exactly what you mean by "eco friendly".
 
Aqueous ethanol will dissolve freebase DMT preferentially over fats, although this would be an experimental procedure that I haven't personally tried. There may also be other oily substances in the leaves/extract [e.g. phytol, ubiquinones] which aren't actually lipids, bringing a potential for complications.

Also, it depends exactly what you mean by "eco friendly".
Thanks for the response! Is naptha production / use alright for the environment? I have always just assumed that it is bad compared to acetone, but I guess I don't have any empirical data that suggests this.
 
Commercial acetone and naphtha are both products of the petrochemical industry, so in some sense there's little difference in their environmental impact productionwise. I don't know if there's a bio-produced version of acetone available commercially; this would take some looking into, but non-petrochemical methods for acetone production do exist.

There are two main petrochemical methods for acetone production, one of which is nominally 'cleaner' than naphtha production and the other a little 'dirtier', but all these things are intimately interrelated making the question somewhat moot.
 
I dont like the amount of solvent which has to be used. Personally I'd rather evaporate an equal amount of water than solvent.

I prefer to pull alkaloids from basified water with dlimonene and salt out with vinegar then evaporate.

Then add water to the acetate goo and calcium hydroxide to make a paste, dry it and make into a powder then extract with acetone and evaporate, leaving good clean freebase jungle goo.

Ingredients used is:
Citric acid
8% Vinegar
Calcium hydroxide
Dlimonene as non polar solvent.
Acetone.

I find doing a proper defat with dlimonene during acid phase before basifying helps prevent nasty emulsions.
 
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I did the acetone extraction on straight to base method using calcium hydroxide as base with 50 grams acacia melanoxylon bark.

First defatted the dry bark with 2 x 100 ml of dlimonene non polar solvent. 5 minutes, swishing it around and it letting settle before pouring off. Then dried the bark in a pyrex dish on portable gas stove, low heat. Took about 15 minutes until completely dry of solvent as the bark is finely mulched not powdered.

Then wet bark with water and covered with calcium hydroxide powder and mix thoroughly for 10 minutes. Dried it the same way as before, until completely dry. Nice smell.

Poured about 300 ml of dry acetone over bark and mix it around and let it settle, then poured of acetone through paper coffee filter into pyrex dish. Did this 3 times. About 900 ml acetone in total.

Evaporated overnight took about 12 hours. Could be speed up by warming on hot plate (no open flame). Acetone evaporation sucks in heat making the dish cold. Sustaining a temperature of about 60 degrees celcius can speed up the evaporation of acetone.

From 50g of mulched bark after evaporation of acetone I was left with 2.26 grams of dry waxy powder, smelling strongly of tryptamine alkaloids. The powder would consist of freebase alkaloids, resin and waxes.

Next step I suppose would be convert back to salt using 8% vinegar filtering out the solids and keeping the liquid. Evaporating the vinegar, basifying with calcium hydroxide and pulling again with acetone and evaporating.

2.26 grams from 50 grams acacia bark is about 4.5% yield at this stage, including all the resin and waxes.

I dont know though. Is DMT wax really a bad thing? I wonder if can be taken as is. Atleast it's not a red goo.
 

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