I have an idea!

[mush_mage]

Greetings Nexus,

SWIM has roughly 5 extractions under his belt at this stage and like many others here, he has noticed that each extraction gets a little easier and more efficient. This is obviously very rewarding and as many of you may know there is nothing quite like watching your babies grow in the freezer over the course of 24-72 hours. It's amazing how fast they grow up. It was just a few hours ago that they were still twinkles in the MHRB powers eye and now look at them! Transparent crystals in their own right, ready and willing to take their creator to the deepest depths of the unknown... Ahhh creation is a wonderful thing! Anyway being the creature that SWIM is he is always looking for ways to improve things, especially if it involves making things less toxic and this got SWIM to thinking...

SWIM doesn't know how many of you have heard of Water ionizers and what they do but having played with a few over the years, SWIM is fairly familiar with them and what they do. Now most good water ionizers can create water that has a PH of 12. This more or less occurs by running the water through a series of precious metal plates inside the unit that charge the water molecules, ionizing them. With these units one can make water as acidic as 2 or as alkaline as 12.1.

http://www.chansonalkalinewater.com...-miracle-m-a-x-water-ionizer-counter-top.html

So some of you have probably guessed what SWIM is thinking. What if one could eliminate lye all together and use very alkaline ionized water for the Basification? No more lye means cleaner crystals and happier times in the kitchen right?

What does everyone think? Obviously there would also be no need for a chemical for the acid step either. Combine this with say a natural orange based solvent and there would be very little chance of toxins getting into the spice at all...

SWIM would love to hear some comments on this so share your thoughts. SWIM is pretty sure he's going to give it a shot soon.

 

[mrdruid0]

SWIM over here would LOVE to hear how it goes for SWIM over there

 

[tony]

It's a nice idea, but I think 12 is to low. Always heard it had to be 13 or above. I could be wrong.

 

[mush_mage]

SWIM has done quite successful extractions with a PH of only 12 using Lye, it actually seemed to reduce tannins and oils in the final product in comparison to his extractions with a PH of 13. Both extractions yielded in the .9% range. The attraction to SWIM is in the idea of doing the basification with just plain old h20.

 

[Kash]

Sounds like a great idea, looks like it would work. If you have 2k dollars to spare I would say go for it by all means. Not really economical but viable.

 

[nigl]

Hi, I don't want to destroy your dreams but I think you are missing the point here.
The DMT is converted from it's salt form in the plants to the freebase form by another base (NaOH, KOH, Ca(OH)2); Therefore you use a very strong base to get all your DMT out of the salt.
If you just ionized the water you raise or lower the H+ level of the water thereby changing the pH but you don't transform the Salt-DMT into freebase DMT because H+ as a base is not strong enough to displace DMT.

For example: Let's say you put NaOH (lye) into water: It dissociates to Na+ and OH- and the OH- react with the H+ to H2O and therefore the pH is raised (less H+ in solution). The Na+ reacts with the DMT-Salt forming a Na-Salt and freebase DMT.

Now if you just raise the pH there is less H+ ions in solution so I don't think the salt would at all change.

 

[Icon]

It's a nice idea, but I think 12 is to low. Always heard it had to be 13 or above. I could be wrong.

I've read dmt's pka is 8.68, so a ph of merely 10.68 would be enough to get 99% converted to freebase.