Harmaloid Extraction Tek Re-written

[lorax]

Harmaloid Freebase Technique:

1. Grind Peganum harmala seeds to a fine powder using a coffee grinder.

2. Boil the seed powder ~1/2 hour using distilled water. Strain the liquid through a reusable cloth coffee filter to another container, saving it. Do the same procedure again and strain to the same container. Boiling it 2x seems to get just about all the alkaloids out of the seed powder. You can do it 3x if you want to, just to be sure.

3. Pre-mix 1/2 liter of saturated NaCl(rock salt) solution by adding NaCl to boiling water until it won't dissolve any more. Let the solution cool and filter of the NaCl which precipitates out of the solution.

4. Reduce the volume of your aqueous solution to 1/2 liter and dissolve 23g of NaCl in it while still hot.

5. Combine the 1/2 liter of aqueous seed solution with the 1/2 liter of saturated NaCl solution. Stick it in the fridge over night.

6. The next morning you will have a lot of gunk at the bottom which has precipitated out of the solution. Siphon off and discard the top liquid and dump the rest through a coffee filter to remove the rest of the liquid from the gunk.

7. Redissolve the gunk in 1/2 liter hot distilled water. Filter the liquid again while warm to remove additional fats & oils from the solution.

(OPTIONAL for extra purity: Repeat the NaCl precipitation once more. To do this simply add another 23g of NaCl to the gunk solution after it has been filtered and while still warm. Combine the seed solution with another 1/2 liter of saturated NaCl solution. And stick it in the fridge again over night. It is recommended to go through this procedure 3x to remove the toxic uterotonic alkaloids contained in Peganum harmala such as viscine. Filtering after each precipitation is a good idea to remove more oils and fats.)

8. Add a small amount of ammonia (9% solution works fine) to the aqueous solution. Stir it up and see the alkaloids precipitate out of the solution. Let the solution settle over night as it takes a few hours for all alkaloids to precipitate and fall to the bottom.

9. Siphon off the liquid on the top and discard it. Filter the last bit of liquid out of the alkaloids. Let the alkaloids dry completly.

You now have crude harmine/harmaline freebase with perhaps a touch of other alkaloids and plant oils.

10. Place the alkaloids in a small container with a tight screw on lid. Fill the container with ammonia leaving a bit of air at the top. Shake the hell out of it and let the alkaloids settle. The ammonia will have turned dark. Siphon off the ammonia, add more ammonia and repeat procedure until siphoned ammonia is clear. The clearer the ammonia is at the end of this procedure the cleaner your alkaloids are. Dry the alkaloids completly.

Note: It may take a long time for it to turn clear. This depends a lot on the filtering equipment you use. I have seen people take like 1/2 liter of ammonia and 30-40 washes until it turned out clear.

11. Dissolve the alkaloids in just enough 96,6% ethanol for them to dissolve into it. There still might be something at the bottom which will not dissolve. This will later be discarded as only the alkaloids will dissolve into the ethanol. Siphon off the alkaloid saturated ethanol, filter it and place it in a flat pyrex dish for evaporation.
The slower the ethanol evaporates, the larger the crystals which form from it will be. It is recommended doing this at room temperature.

The resulting crystals may be recrystallized by dissolving them in more ethanol and letting it evaporate again.

Peace & Light
-the mysterious toadman from the western spiral arm of the galaxy

 

[endlessness]

Did SWIY do this, or is it just a re-write to make it simpler ?


I ask because SWIM wants to know about the filtering of the gunk+alkaloids after the salt precipitation, if its indeed as troublesome as people say, and how did SWIY deal with it..


and also, 69ron said that this ´dissolving in alcohol´ is crap, because it results in an inactive product when harmine/harmaline dissolved in alcohol is evaporated in an atmosphere with oxygen

 

[acolon_5]

A better method is just a simple A/B with the base crashing the harmala alkaloids out of soultion. No salt contamination. Check the Rue Extraction Sticky "a new level of harmala purity" or something of that nature. It works.

 

[69ron]

Yes, don't evaporate in alcohol. That is a known method of forming "harmala red" out of harmaline. There was a big industry based on making "harmala red", which was a dye commonly used for Persian carpets (now I think they use something cheaper). They made it by dissolving the alkaloids in alcohol and evaporating them in alcohol. If water is used, "harmala red" doesn't form. But if alcohol is used it does. Somehow, the water protects the harmaline from oxidizing into "harmala red", but alcohol encourages it to form. When harmaline hydrochloride is evaporated in water, it forms harmaline hydrochloride dihydrate, which is fairly stable, but when evaporated in alcohol it form harmaline hydrochloride anhydride which easily oxidizes to the inactive “harmala red”. Anyway, that's what I read in many different books on the subject, so I’d avoid using alcohol. SWIM has seen "harmala red" form right in front of his eyes when using alcohol. To avoid it, you need to evaporate the harmiline in alcohol in an atmosphere free of oxygen.

 

[endlessness]

A better method is just a simple A/B with the base crashing the harmala alkaloids out of soultion. No salt contamination. Check the Rue Extraction Sticky "a new level of harmala purity" or something of that nature. It works.

So here´s the problem.. Look at 69ron´s post:

Yes, don't evaporate in alcohol. That is a known method of forming "harmala red" out of harmaline. There was a big industry based on making "harmala red", which was a dye commonly used for Persian carpets (now I think they use something cheaper). They made it by dissolving the alkaloids in alcohol and evaporating them in alcohol. If water is used, "harmala red" doesn't form. But if alcohol is used it does. Somehow, the water protects the harmaline from oxidizing into "harmala red", but alcohol encourages it to form. When harmaline hydrochloride is evaporated in water, it forms harmaline hydrochloride dihydrate, which is fairly stable, but when evaporated in alcohol it form harmaline hydrochloride anhydride which easily oxidizes to the inactive “harmala red”. Anyway, that's what I read in many different books on the subject, so I’d avoid using alcohol. SWIM has seen "harmala red" form right in front of his eyes when using alcohol. To avoid it, you need to evaporate the harmiline in alcohol in an atmosphere free of oxygen.

and now lets look at the new harmala purity tek

The very beginning of the tek involves alcohol and evaporation.. So now Ron, maybe help us out here.. If people have been successfuly getting this.. Could it make a difference that the ethanol being used is acidified with phosphoric acid, and its not an alcohol dissolving an already made harmalas hcl ? What if the ethanol was acidified with acetic acid, would that work?


and also.. acolon (and ron if you know..).. why wouldnt a normal A/B work, without this alcohol as first step?

 

[lorax]

Yes this tek was re-written from acolon_5's tek and some other tek SWIM found here. They were all poorly written and SWIM thought he'd sum up the knowledge in a more readable fashion.

SWIM tried this the first time with the alcohol a few days ago. The result were red crystals which SWIM hasn't come to try yet. SWIM used himalaya rock salt for his tek. So SWIM thought the reddish taint would be coming from that. SWIM took the alcohol thing from acolon_5's tek. Since he hadn't read about it being bad he thought it would be a good additional cleaning step since SWIM had never heard of alkaloids being able to evaporate together with the alcohol.

Will the red crystals be completely useless? What would be a better method of cleaning the product?

But what i've read from that other thread is that alcohol seems to be no problem.. Could someone shine some light on this?

 

[lorax]

is there a way to convert the "harmala red" back to the active substance? damn.. SWIM planned on using pharmahuasca this weekend because he is in desperate need of healing. SWIM has some caapi vine.. now he is considering using real ayahuasca made from caapi and psychotria viridis.

is there a technique for extracting harmaloids from caapi?