Hello fellow hyperspace travelers

[reizel]

Hello, fellow travelers!

Although I have just now created an account, I have been visiting the forum for at least two months. I have just started exploring the world of psychedelics and I am extremely interest in altered states of consciousness and what you can bring back to your life from such states.

I had my first experience with MDMA and that was one of the most clarifying experiences I've ever had, helping me tremendously with past traumas (it's no joke when they say it helps with PTSD)! Since then I kinda have been reading a lot about the subject. And thanks to DMT Nexus I was able to extract my own DMT and have my own breakthroughs. My first breakthrough was absolutely insane and I was 100% certain I was dead. That's definetely a trip report that I want to share with everyone here eventually.

Most likely I won't be a very active member due to having a very busy live, but I want to learn more and share what I have learned from my experiences. And I am in the middle of writing a guide myself, so I hope I can share it with everyone in a couple of months!

It's a pleasure to meet everyone!

I also have a few questions which I can't yet ask on the right subforums, so I would like to ask them here Here they are:

1) On cyb's salt teks, why is the solution not being saturated with salt? On the max ion he even says that he prefers filtered water rather than destilled as the ionic strength will be higher due to the contents of the filtered water. But saturating the solution with salt would do just about the same thing, but in a much more controlled environment. So why not saturate the solution? I was too curious so I went ahead and tried saturating it, and I got much wither crystals, with no yeild loss, so I am really confused why saturating is not the suggested procedure.

2) I have been experimenting with the direct emesh technique, and I was successfull using the VV Kylin 24mm RTA, which apparently was untested so far. But due to some problems I am looking to upgrade my RDA, and the suggested RTAs are discontinued (VV mesh and VV mesh v2). So I was wondering if anyone has suggestions about which would be the best RTA for DMT.

 

[Voidmatrix]

Greetings and warm welcome

We're happy to have you with us.

I look forward to your report. I too have had a few experiences where I was pretty sure I died. Love em and will never forget them.

Can you clarify for me what you mean by "saturated by salt?" A fair amount of salt is added to the Max Ion tek. Do feel that it should be more salt added? There may be a threshold to which adding more salt doesn't increase the ionic strength anymore. Also, there's importance in keeping the solution aqueous for extracting. If there's too much salt, some won't dissolve and can potentially end up in the final yield. I could be mistaken, but that's based on my understanding from using the Max Ion tek.

There are a few other Nexians with more consice chemistry backgrounds that I hope will see this and help us out with your question.

Once again, welcome

One love

 

[reizel]

Thank you! I am very happy to be here!

Saturating the solution means adding more salt than it can dissolve, or at least max it up so adding more salt would not be dissolved:

If 100mL water dissolves 36g of salt at 40C and you have 1L of water, then if you add 360g of salt, that is 36g * 10, then adding more would not be dissolved. The solution is now saturated.

I imagine that as long as you do not saturate the solution to the point of where you have a thick layer of salt sitting at the bottom of your container, it shouldn't be a problem. As salt is denser than water, all excess salt that was not dissolved should stay at the bottom so you should not end up with salt on your apolar solution at the end.

 

[Voidmatrix]

Thank you! I am very happy to be here!

Saturating the solution means adding more salt than it can dissolve, or at least max it up so adding more salt would not be dissolved:

If 100mL water dissolves 36g of salt at 40C and you have 1L of water, then if you add 360g of salt, that is 36g * 10, then adding more would not be dissolved. The solution is now saturated.

I imagine that as long as you do not saturate the solution to the point of where you have a thick layer of salt sitting at the bottom of your container, it shouldn't be a problem. As salt is denser than water, all excess salt that was not dissolved should stay at the bottom so you should not end up with salt on your apolar solution at the end.

Thank you for clarifying. And that's what I thought. Notorious for second guessing myself lol. But that is a good question. I think it may go back to "how much salt is needed to have the effect of ionic strengthening, and at what point is it no longer contributing to added ionic strength?"

And I was thinking relative to how I mix (over under mixing), where all levels of the solution come in contact with the solvent. I am uncertain as to how undisolved salt interacts with a non polar solvent.

However, it's awesome that in doing this experiment yourself, you appear to get a finer product. Kudos! And thank you for contributing. Pending other responses I may have to give that a try myself!

One love

 

[downwardsfromzero]

Hello and welcome!

A potential problem with having solid salt in an extraction mixture is that it provides more surface area for the non-polar solvent to stick to, hampering phase separation slightly and thereby impacting yield. Extractions which contain a solid phase, whether it be STB with bark or some kind of 'drytek' with lime paste, are notorious for soaking up solvent, especially on the first pull.

It has been claimed fairly recently that adding too much salt to a MaxIon tek extraction adversely affects yield. Perhaps salt crystals would be formed from a saturated salt solution as a result of the common ion effect when caustic soda is added. This would be a reason for only using a non-saturated salt solution.

Whether this reason is correct or otherwise, it seems that there's an optimal concentration of salt which is less than the amount required for saturation.

I'm glad to hear it worked out for you, though.

 

[Voidmatrix]

Hello and welcome!

A potential problem with having solid salt in an extraction mixture is that it provides more surface area for the non-polar solvent to stick to, hampering phase separation slightly and thereby impacting yield. Extractions which contain a solid phase, whether it be STB with bark or some kind of 'drytek' with lime paste, are notorious for soaking up solvent, especially on the first pull.

It has been claimed fairly recently that adding too much salt to a MaxIon tek extraction adversely affects yield. Perhaps salt crystals would be formed from a saturated salt solution as a result of the common ion effect when caustic soda is added. This would be a reason for only using a non-saturated salt solution.

Whether this reason is correct or otherwise, it seems that there's an optimal concentration of salt which is less than the amount required for saturation.

I'm glad to hear it worked out for you, though.

Df0, I was anticipating your weigh in on this lmao. Thank you for clarifying.

One love

 

[reizel]

That's very interesting. But it seems that it would only affect the procedure if the salt was not dissolved. So if we were to get close enough to max saturation, it should increase ionic strength and not decrease yield, which is why I assume my crystals where whiter but the yield did not decrease.

I would love to see more reasons to why max ion tek uses so little salt.

That also makes me wonder if it would be beneficial to add an extra step of removing the solid bark after the basifying the solution.

 

[downwardsfromzero]

That also makes me wonder if it would be beneficial to add an extra step of removing the solid bark after the basifying the solution.

You'd have to consider that some of the resulting freebase might well end up stuck in the bark material so it would be necessary to do some NPS pulls on the bark. Also, removing the bark from an alkaline sludge would be messy and dangerous - in short, probably more trouble than it's worth.

You'll have to dig into the forum a bit to find where the problems with MaxIon salt addition were encountered. It may have been user Brennendes Wasser who looked into this.
EDIT: here we go - Salting - Yes or No - Advanced/Enhanced chemistry - Welcome to the DMT-Nexus

But it seems that it would only affect the procedure if the salt was not dissolved

To clarify, if a salt solution is near saturation, adding a load more sodium ions in the form of sodium hydroxide could in principle cause some salt crystals to separate.

Thinking about the other thread I've mentioned, there was some speculation that perhaps the excess salt forces the alkaloid into an inaccessible part of the plant material - iirc.

Df0, I was anticipating your weigh in on this lmao.

Seeing your post I was also anticipating that you might say this :lol:

 

[reizel]

Also, removing the bark from an alkaline sludge would be messy and dangerous - in short, probably more trouble than it's worth.

I was thinking it should be pretty straight forward with a separatory funnel. After running the solution through the funnel, the bark should stay behind and the liquid should go into another container.

https://www.dmt-nexus.me...p;m=1064214#post1064214

That was a good read. And it pretty much aligns with the results I got. My yield has not been affected by adding more salt (in some cases it actually increased), but the color of the crystals became much whiter. The texture is also closer to that of powder than crystals.

Could it be that salt is precipitating during freeze, giving the impression that the result is whiter? The difference in texture could also be an indication that salt is precipitating.

Just as a reference,
[*] with 120g of salt, the yield was 1.6g
[*] with 360g of salt, the yield was 1.9g

So there is a big enough difference that could very well be salt precipitating.

What do yout think?

 

[downwardsfromzero]

What do you think?

I think salt won't dissolve in the NPS so if you're freeze precipitating that's an extra 0.3g of yield. How accurately did you measure your starting material, though? Or could this be down to inhomogeneity in the bark you've used? Do you think an extra 15+% is more than can be accounted for from these factors? What other factors might lead to a variation in yield? Were your pulls done with the same volumes of NPS for both tests? Was the temperature of the pulls the same?

A separatory funnel is typically for liquids without particulate matter, it would be best not to use it in the way that you suggest.

 

[reizel]

I think salt won't dissolve in the NPS

Yes but if you are using a pipette to extract the NPS, you are going to inevitably extract some water as well. And given that I saturated my solution previous to the extraction, once it cooled down, the solution became super saturated, which would help precipitate the salt.

I did not measure accurately. There are too many factors that influenced both measurements. Here are the two main ones:
[*] On the first batch, a lot of DMT did not settle at the bottom of the roasting glass, but was suspendend on the NPS. That was lost. On the second batch I bough coffee filters and extracted at least 100mg extra from that.
[*] On the first batch I left the solution on a warm bath for only 8h, while for the second one I left it for 24h.

But both were 200g of bark, measure accurately. Both were heated at 51-54C accurately. Also I didn't Re-X. Re-Xing might be a good idea to measure whether or not the resulting product had salt or not.

 

[Voidmatrix]

I think salt won't dissolve in the NPS

Yes but if you are using a pipette to extract the NPS, you are going to inevitably extract some water as well. And given that I saturated my solution previous to the extraction, once it cooled down, the solution became super saturated, which would help precipitate the salt.

I did not measure accurately. There are too many factors that influenced both measurements. Here are the two main ones:
[*] On the first batch, a lot of DMT did not settle at the bottom of the roasting glass, but was suspendend on the NPS. That was lost. On the second batch I bough coffee filters and extracted at least 100mg extra from that.
[*] On the first batch I left the solution on a warm bath for only 8h, while for the second one I left it for 24h.

But both were 200g of bark, measure accurately. Both were heated at 51-54C accurately. Also I didn't Re-X. Re-Xing might be a good idea to measure whether or not the resulting product had salt or not.

I think you're mistaken in the supposition that one will inevitably extract water when using a pipette. The NPS does not mix with the water, so unless you're literally pipetting ALL of the NPS (which isn't really necessary imo), then there should be no water with the solvent.

Next time you have solvent with spice that won't precipitate, evaporate more of the solvent. There needs to be enough spice to saturate the solvent in order for it to precipitate.

Yes, yes yes on your Re-x idea:grin:

One love

 

[downwardsfromzero]

I did not measure accurately. There are too many factors that influenced both measurements. Here are the two main ones:
[*] On the first batch, a lot of DMT did not settle at the bottom of the roasting glass, but was suspendend on the NPS. That was lost. On the second batch I bough coffee filters and extracted at least 100mg extra from that.
[*] On the first batch I left the solution on a warm bath for only 8h, while for the second one I left it for 24h.

But both were 200g of bark, measure accurately. Both were heated at 51-54C accurately. Also I didn't Re-X. Re-Xing might be a good idea to measure whether or not the resulting product had salt or not.

That's two reasons for a difference in yield highlighted right there. Your salt experiment is, so far, inconclusive at best. Replication with the salt concentration being the single variable is the only way to gain a meaningful inference on this matter.

Have you done any more pulls on the soup? The yields seem a bit on the low side but that could be down to the bark.

AS Vm says, definitely do a re-x if you think you've been pulling water up with your naphtha.

 

[reizel]

That's two reasons for a difference in yield highlighted right there. Your salt experiment is, so far, inconclusive at best. Replication with the salt concentration being the single variable is the only way to gain a meaningful inference on this matter.

That's only for the last two pulls. I have only done four batches so far, so I haven't had the chance to experiment isolating single variables. I have been making steady improvements on all variables, so it's really hard to isolate what could be the cause of the wither DMT.

I also haven't cared too much about being accurate as I expected to find an answer if I did more research, which now it seems to not be the case.

However, on the previous batches I pulled the exact same amount (around .4g for 50g of bark) with the only difference being the texture and color of the DMT. But once again, could be any number of variables that is producing this difference on the product.

I had found a thread where someone experimented with salt and had similar results (whiter pulls), but I can't seem to find the thread anymore. I will focus on isolating variables for the next pulls to get more predictable results.

Yes, my yields have been below optimal, but I am sure it has to do with the bark quality. For 50g of bark I was pulling around .4g using cyb's salt tek, and now I am pulling around 1.8g per 200g of bark using the max ion tek.