If the acetate salt is smokeable, should I stop there?

[Transform]

I have a question, en passant. What if CaCO3 is used to precipitate tannins? Does it work? Obviously that won't convert any salts to freebase, but say one just wants to detanninize the solution.

I ask because I brewed my acid tea in a steel pot with tap water and then thoroughly filtered (through Whatmann paper) and reduced in the same (cleaned) pot, and now I have a very thin film of what appears to be calcium (and/or magnesium) tannate on the bottom.

The main problem with using calcium carbonate here is its lack of solubility, so you'll get soluble tannins bound to the surface of each particle and then the reaction will stop, leaving a kind of greasy sludge.

The film you're observing most likely results from the small amounts of soluble alkaline earth salts in your tapwater, as well as tannins simply precipitating from water of their own accord.

There's no harm in doing a few test tube experiments to get started, before deciding to commit to trying with a larger amount.

 

[lazloz]

After pondering what to do I got frightened I'll loose my spice and I reverted back to lye+NPS. I left you with an acidic maceration of 150g of MHRB. I macerated the bark for 24 hours in 400 mL of boiling citric acid 2% solution, shaking multiple times during the first 4-5 hours and then letting it settle for decanting. Repeated 3 times. I went for some short microwave burst in between the shaking. Filtered the bark (and kept it) and reduced the brew to 400 mL. Added 75g NaCl, the previously clear brew became a quite dense suspension, like I suddenly decreased the solubility for tannins. Anyway I added around 50g of NaOH and put it in the fridge. After 12 hours I was able to retrieve some floating crystals with a teaspoon, after whashing with Na2CO3 water in a paper filter they amounted to 360mg.

Went ahead and split the soup in 2, doubled the volume, added some 20g of NaOH in both jars and pulled 3 times with 50 mL of white spirit. It was the only thing I had around, on the label it says toluene, C9-C11 (alkanes, isoalkanes etc), heptanes (alkanes, isoalkanes etc), methylacetate, methanol. I lost a fraction to the soup (probably the metAc and MeOH) but it came out fairly saturated for the first 2 pulls. Did a 4th pull/rinse and it was clear.

Proceeded with adding the strained bark, half in each jar with the intent of exhausting it with a STB. Added another 25g NaOH per jar (I know, a lot of lye!) and let it act for 6-7 hours. Repeated the 3/4 pulls with white spirit.

I tried to freeze precipitate a test amount of white spirit and although it worked to some extent, the presence of toluene hinders the viability of this route (being listed first means it is present in higher %??).

I then went on with a backsalting with vinegar, but it is the first time I'm doing it, so please help me in my reasoning.
I'm pretty sure Brennendes Wasser study on salts is spot-on, and therefore the acetate is made of 1 molecule of DMT, 1 of acetate anion and 4 of water. Anyhow I don't see how more than 1 acetate anion could be necessary. Therefore I went like this: added 50 mL of 6% vinegar to the white spirit to be sure of excess acid (let's posit a wishful 2% yield=3g, one mole of DMT weights more than 3 times 1 mole of acetic acid, thus 1 g of the latter would be sufficient, I have 3 g in my 50 mL). This should take care of neutralizing possible lye that got dispersed in the NPS, but I was extra careful.

Now I have a urine yellow vinegar layer at the bottom and a milky white spirit (was yellow before) and cant seems to get clearer. On the nexus I read both that you should ad vinegar until your NPS clears and that the milkyness of NPS is not an indicator that DMT is still present in it.

Sorry for the long and rambling post, but how should I proceed?

PS: I do have citric and benzoic acid but wanted to use a volatile one to get rid of the excess by evaporation.

Thanks!

 

[lazloz]

An update: the white spirit cleared itself overnight, leaving some brownish gunk at the vinegar/NPS, It was easy to decant and separate. Reduced vinegar yielded 4g of acetate goo, that, according to the formula DMTH+•CH3COO-•4H2O equals to roughly 2.3 g of freebase. These plus the 360mg previously retrieved means around 1.8%. Satisfied! Made a nasal spray but I guees acetate is not the right salt. Granted the solution is extremely hypertonic (20% acetate + 1% citrate buffer), but it stings and makes the nose runny for many hours, it is quite effective though at 0.2 mL (40 mg acetate = 23mg freebase), milder than complete hyperspace but longer duration (15-20 mins + 30 mins afterglow).

Planning of converting to benzoate, since such salt has bene patented as a nasal spray. Thinking about freebasing, pulling with minimal amount white spirit and salt out with benzoic acid in slight excess. Remove excess by NaHCO3 addition to have hypersoluble sodium benzoate and leave poorly soluble DMT benzoate behind.

 

[Transform]

the only thing I had around, on the label it says toluene, C9-C11 (alkanes, isoalkanes etc), heptanes (alkanes, isoalkanes etc), methylacetate, methanol.

I'd have considered having a pop at distilling out the methyl acetate and methanol because they have fairly low boiling points, and also don't belong in "white spirit". A water wash would have gone some way to clearing them up from the solvent before doing the pulls as well.

Glad to see you appear to have got away with it as is. It's brave of you to stick that acetate juice up your nose! How's your plan for benzoate formation looking?

 

[lazloz]

I'd have considered having a pop at distilling out the methyl acetate and methanol because they have fairly low boiling points, and also don't belong in "white spirit". A water wash would have gone some way to clearing them up from the solvent before doing the pulls as well.

Glad to see you appear to have got away with it as is. It's brave of you to stick that acetate juice up your nose! How's your plan for benzoate formation looking?

Ahahah yeah brave is the right word, it burns like hell but better than vaping it through e-cig. I'm under the impression that the acetate is not a strong salt, it feels like freebase, pH notwithstanding. In the e-cig it makes you barf and ruins the experience because of the taste it leaves on the tongue, in the nose it stings and if it travels down to the throat...I'll let you Imagine.

Re: benzoate, I was going to redissolve my acetate+buffer in a modest amount of water and basify with NaOH. Then pull with white spirit (might water wash it as you suggested, great idea). Then I was going to prepare a saturated benzoic acid solution in white spirit and mix the two. Put in the fridge after thorough mixing and then decant. Wash with a modest amount of cold water + bicarbonate, hoping to convert the slight excess of benzoic acid to sodium benzoate and eating up the possible yield loss. Or I could add let's say 3/4 of the needed amount of benzoic acid solution, let it crash out in the fridge, decant away and repeat the addition drop by drop to see if more DMT benzoate crashes out until exhaustion. This should grant me at least 3/4 purer benzoate and then I'll wash the rest as stated above. What do you think?

PS: what's the solubility of the benzoate in water, give or take?

 

[lazloz]

I'd like to report that I succesfully converted the acetate goo into benzoate crystals. I redissolved the goo (4g) in hot water (50mL) + a teaspoon of vinegar, basifyed with 10 g NaOH and pulled 3x with 50 mL white spirit. I prepared a saturated with spirit benzoic acid solution by dissolving 3.5 g of BA in 200 mL, not all of it dissolved, not even bringing the temperature to 40°C. Eyeballing 1g stayed undissolved, so the solubility is around 12.5 mg/mL. I added half of this solution to the DMT laden white spirit and it got cloudy with an orangey goo-ish precipitate on the bottom. I added another 50 mL drop-wise, the solvent became clear and the goo crystalized during the 10 minutes it took. The majority of crystals were "glued" to the bottom of the jar, I let it sit in the freezer for a couple of hours and then decanted the clear solvent away. I scraped the crystals and dried them on a mildly hot plate under a fan. Once dried they weighted 4.89g. If my math is not wrong I ended up with roughly 600mg more than what I calculated when drying the acetate goo. I'm inclined to exclude BA contamination because I went really slow with the last 50 mL of BA saturated white spirit, stirring every 5 drops and sighting against a lamp to see clouding, I might have gone 5 drops long maximum.
What happened is probably that I dried the acetate goo too much before weighing it and I converted part of it to freebase. Or the 4 hydrate proposed formula is wrong and it is 3 hydrate. Either way is fine, no loss on my part.

The 4.89g benzoate salt dissolved in 30 mL hot water but precipitated once cooled. Right now I upped the volume to 75 based on eyeballing the amount that precipitated, I'll let you know when I have a precise solubility figure.

Cheers

EDIT: the approx. 5g of benzoate dissolved readily in 75 mL of hot water (60-70°C) and just a handful of very tiny speks appeared on the walls of the jar upon cooling to 20°C. At 5°C around half of the solute crashes out in beautiful organized crystals, would be curious to see what happens between 0 and 4°C, one might be able to recrystallize most of the benzoate from a saturated hot water solution put in the freezer for a short and controlled amount of time.

As it stands the solubility in dH2O I obtained is <60 mg/mL at 20°C and around half that at 5°C.

EDIT 2: pH of the above mentioned 60mg/mL solution, with litmus paper, is around 8, the same as sodium benzoate. I thought It would be closer to the mean of the 2 pKa (around 6.5), I brought it in the 6-7 range with citric acid, I'll report back on the effects on solubility.
The solution, when heated to 40°C smells strongly of our favourite thing.

 

[lazloz]

No apparent change in solubility with the addition of citric acid to bring pH in the physiologic range.
Nasal spray is just as painful as the acetate, a little less because it is less concentrated but the effect is less intense too, so adjusting for the number of sprays I'll say they both hurt the same.
It's time for a different ROA. @Transform and @blig-blug would sublingual work without mao-i? I'm struggling to get ahold of some rue.

 

[Transform]

would be curious to see what happens between 0 and 4°C, one might be able to recrystallize most of the benzoate from a saturated hot water solution put in the freezer for a short and controlled amount of time.

An ice-water bath will keep things close to 0°C, until all the ice melts.

 

[lazloz]

I know that this thread derailed from its original purpose, after all I derailed it! Still, I'm going to report some infos that might be useful for someone browsing through the search function.

DMT benzoate is a very convenient salt, it salts out beautifully from alkanes and toluene (xylene too IIRC), allows you to immediately reuse the solvent for another pull because it sticks to the bottom/sides of your collection jar. To obtain it, it is sufficient to saturate a fraction of your NPS with benzoic acid, I calculate an optimistic yield, and I weigh an amount of benzoic acid corresponding to 150% molar ratio of said yield. In simpler words, if I expect 1g of DMT from the extraction, I weigh 1g of benzoic acid (mw = 189 and 122, respectively) and dissolve it in sufficient volume of NPS at room temperature. Once dissolved I add another 10% that is going to stay on the bottom. I add this BASS (benzoic acid saturated solvent) to the pulled solvent drop-wise until it doesn't cloud anymore. Let it sit 10 minutes and decant away the supernatant back in the extraction jar. Repeat until satisfied, depending on the pulling strength of the solvent used.

At the end the crystals are glued to the bottom/sides and I decant away the solvent in a "cleaning jar" (more on that later). I break the benzoate crust and dissolve with minimal water placing the jar on a bain-marie, I let it there for at least 1 hour, adding few mL of water, this allows the residual solvent to evaporate (I'm using heavier alkanes, might not be necessary with naphtha, probably just spread and dry the crystals under a fan. It's useful for toluene though).
Once it doesn't smell of solvent anymore I reduce the solution to a runny goo and move it to a glass plate, rinse the jar with minimal amount of everclear ethanol and put it in the same plate. Next day you're going to have a plate full of dry, scrapable crystals.

The benzoate is vapable in a GVG or similar contraption, is edible and is not too awful tasting sublingual, but it is not vapable in e-cig liquid. After trying frebase and acetate I'm convinced the best e-cigable salt is the citrate (thanks @Loveall). You can easily convert the benzoate to citrate (diDMT•hydrogencitrate•x hydrated).

Weigh an amount of benzoate, let's say 1g, it contains about 600mg of freebase. Dissolve it in water, you might add few drops of vinegar but not really necessary. Base with NaOH (minimal amount, like 200-400 mg is more than enough) and pull 3-4 or more times with your solvent of choice. Now that you know with how much DMT you started with, you can prepare a solution of citric acid, in this case its going to be 300 mg of acid in 350 uL (0.35 mL) of BOILING water. Add this hot solution to your solvent and shake like a fool. Let it sit for an hour, a bright yellow honey forms at the bottom and you can decant the solvent away for the major part, resort to a glass pasteur pipette for the last drops. Repeat the bain-marie heating to eliminate solvent residues. Once done, add roughly the same volume of PG and mix. Your e-juice is going to be around 2 mL with 600mg of freebase equivalent. It is super smooth and strong, strong enough for breakthrough with 4 ten seconds hits as I discovered 2 hours ago.

Bonus for cleaning your solvent from fats/check if it is still loaded with spice.
You collected your solvent in a cleaning jar, prepare 1/5th of its volume of white vinegar and put sodium bicarbonate in it around 2% (you have 500 mL of solvent, prepare 100 mL of white vinegar with 2g of bicarbonate). Mix the two solutions in the jar, shake several times over the course of 2 hours and let it sit for 24 hours. The next day plant fats and junk are to be found between the two layers, your solvent is going to be transparent and so should be your vinegar. Decant away the clean solvent and reuse at libitum. Should the vinegar be yellow, basify and pull with clean solvent to harvest the spice.

Cheers

EDIT: the cleaning procedure works because sodium acetate is the simplest of soaps and the acidic medium in which it is dissolved promotes the agglomeration of plant junk.

If you cannot source benzoic acid, you can convert sodium benzoate by dissolving 40 g of it in 100mL warm water. Add equimolar or slight excess of HCl (do your math based on which concentration HCl you have) SLOWLY while stirring. Benzoic acid precipitates out of the solution. Remove excess water (that contains excess HCl and NaCl) and place your benzoic acid in a coffee filter. Wash with room temperature water roughly 2x the volume (eyeballed) of obtained acid. Spread the crystals on a plate and air dry (or ventilated oven 50-60°C if you're in a hurry). Ta-daaa!

 

[lazloz]

@Transform Hi, I wanted to let you know my recent "discovery". It's going to sound pretty obvious to you but I gather you like experimental data, so I'm going to provide some.
I wanted to convert 2.5g of DMT benzoate to DMT citrate. First option would be solubilize/basify/pull with NPS/backsalt with CASW. But tonight I didn't feel like using perrochemicals, so I thought about what would happen if I mix the correct amount of citric acid with my benzoate and solubilize everything together in a modest amount of water. Surely the mono-citrate would form since the first pKa is stronger than that of benzoic acid, but I wanted the diDMT-citrate. I posited that if I heat everything to 80-90°C everything will dissolve and upon cooling, being the 2nd pKa of citric acid so close to that of benzoic acid, the first would be preferred for salt formation, due to much higher solubility. Guess what, a spongy mini-cristalline precipitate formed upon cooling and stabilized in the fridge. I filtered through a 0.2 micron cellulose filter, the screw-on kind for 10 mL syringes, washed the filter by filtering 15 mL of water and obtained a compact precipitate that I removed from the syringe and placed in a glass vial. Now the real proof, if it doesnt dissolve in water but it dissolves when NaOH is added yielding a clear solution I can call a success, if it coulds the solution I'm going to extract it the regular way with NPS.
Fortunately it dissolved completely and the solution was transparent albeit slightly tinted. I might have lost something but upon dehydration (ventilated oven 70°C) of the citrate, the weight yielded the sum of DMT freebase, citric acid and 1 molecule of water to a T. Therefore I'm inclined to say it is possible to swap salts (benzoate to similar strength, more soluble acid/salt) without a mini A/B.

Cheers

 

[Transform]

@Transform Hi, I wanted to let you know my recent "discovery". It's going to sound pretty obvious to you but I gather you like experimental data, so I'm going to provide some.
I wanted to convert 2.5g of DMT benzoate to DMT citrate. First option would be solubilize/basify/pull with NPS/backsalt with CASW. But tonight I didn't feel like using perrochemicals, so I thought about what would happen if I mix the correct amount of citric acid with my benzoate and solubilize everything together in a modest amount of water. Surely the mono-citrate would form since the first pKa is stronger than that of benzoic acid, but I wanted the diDMT-citrate. I posited that if I heat everything to 80-90°C everything will dissolve and upon cooling, being the 2nd pKa of citric acid so close to that of benzoic acid, the first would be preferred for salt formation, due to much higher solubility. Guess what, a spongy mini-cristalline precipitate formed upon cooling and stabilized in the fridge. I filtered through a 0.2 micron cellulose filter, the screw-on kind for 10 mL syringes, washed the filter by filtering 15 mL of water and obtained a compact precipitate that I removed from the syringe and placed in a glass vial. Now the real proof, if it doesnt dissolve in water but it dissolves when NaOH is added yielding a clear solution I can call a success, if it coulds the solution I'm going to extract it the regular way with NPS.
Fortunately it dissolved completely and the solution was transparent albeit slightly tinted. I might have lost something but upon dehydration (ventilated oven 70°C) of the citrate, the weight yielded the sum of DMT freebase, citric acid and 1 molecule of water to a T. Therefore I'm inclined to say it is possible to swap salts (benzoate to similar strength, more soluble acid/salt) without a mini A/B.

Cheers

That's a great example of using differential solubilities and temperature change to drive what would otherwise be an equilibrium reaction in one desired direction - nice work!

The solubility behaviour of benzoic acid and its DMT salt seem to be making it rather useful.

 

[lazloz]

That's a great example of using differential solubilities and temperature change to drive what would otherwise be an equilibrium reaction in one desired direction - nice work!

The solubility behaviour of benzoic acid and its DMT salt seem to be making it rather useful.

I might add that the pH of the resulting citrate solution tested between 6 and 7 with litmus paper, closer to 6, and sprinkling a couple crystals of sodium bicarbonate produced effervescence. This tells me that I might still have some benzoate in it, probably way less than what its solubility allows (that is 50-60 mg/mL), because otherwise with 15 mL of total solution it would be 500mg benzoate, that is 300 mg not salted with citric acid, in other words 150mg of free citric acid in 15 mL = 1% = pH 2.2

True there's the citrate salt that constitutes a buffer with the acid, but it must be much less than 150 mg because upon reducing, no precipitate formed, and without water, if not that of hydration, neither DMT benzoate nor benzoic acid stay in solution. I'm inclined to think that the 6 and something pH is mainly driven by the 3rd proton of citric acid together with a tiny amount of free acid.



Safety-wise I'm going to stick to <170°C with my e-cig.



PS: the citrate is miscible with both PG and VG, it's more similar to VG as far as density goes and I went with PG only for this reason. I had 2.35g of citrate (~1.5g freebase) and added PG up to 5g, thus 30% w/w but I suspect way more w/v (should be around 35% if the citrate has a density in the ballpark of the arithmetical mean of its constituents and PG = 1.04).

I aimed for this concentration with the intent of vaporhuasca and not one-hit breakthrough. I suspect the citrate is vapable in a cartridge as-is though!

 

[flacod69960]

Sí, eso es cerrado, pero cuando terminas fumando todas esas cosas que sí aparecen en tu extracto, creo que probablemente sea mucho más dañino que simple usar armas químicos para hacer un extracto limpio. Al mismo tiempo, obviamente se trata de una elección personal. Fumar DMT probablemente no sea muy saludable para nadie en primer lugar.
En cual quiero caso, puedes probar el aceite vegetal pero diez mucho cuidado ya que la saponificación es real.

hola que tal queria saber si ahi algun método para hacer cristales o el jim jam aptos para fumar me refiero a que no sean tan duros para fumar

ayer hice el jimjam con limoneno quedo una tinta roja, se seco un poco quedo eso espezo pero a la hora de vaporizar en una pipa de vidrio explotaba y tenia un sabor horrible y me revento los pulmones jaj
con los cristales me ah ido un 50% bueno y otro malo no se a que se debe si es solo la manera bruscaa de calentar con soplete o que ya que lo eh echo lento y otras rapidos en algunas fue infumable y otras se pudo fumar algo aspero pero fumable en fin ahi alguna manera suave de fumar esto ? gracias

 

[Transform]

hola que tal queria saber si ahi algun método para hacer cristales o el jim jam aptos para fumar me refiero a que no sean tan duros para fumar

ayer hice el jimjam con limoneno quedo una tinta roja, se seco un poco quedo eso espezo pero a la hora de vaporizar en una pipa de vidrio explotaba y tenia un sabor horrible y me revento los pulmones jaj
con los cristales me ah ido un 50% bueno y otro malo no se a que se debe si es solo la manera bruscaa de calentar con soplete o que ya que lo eh echo lento y otras rapidos en algunas fue infumable y otras se pudo fumar algo aspero pero fumable en fin ahi alguna manera suave de fumar esto ? gracias

Try again, but use something to translate back to English. You managed to translate Varallo's post into Spanish, after all

Just the way we do things here, I can understand much of your post as it is - sounds like you burnt your product through using too much heat, and it could probably do with an extra purification step as well.

 

[lazloz]

Hey @Transform, I might need your help and that of the forum. I need a way of converting the benzoate to freebase. The purpose is to obtain an e-juice, and you know I was doing the citric acid anion swap via differential solubility, but in doing so I end up with a huge (in proportion) amount of water in which the citrate is dissolved. This water takes time to evaporate even in a ventilated oven, and I'm always left with the worry of partially evaporating preciuos spice carried away by the water vapour.
As a brief recap, I was dissolving 1.65g of benzoate (=1g FB) in 15 mL of boiling water, adding 0.5g of citric acid and let it cool to room temperature and then 4C in the fridge. Benzoic acid crashes out and upon filtering the solution through 0.2 micron syringe filters it is retained in the syringe while the aqueous solution of citrate is collected on a plate for evaporation. It is also difficult to collect the citrate honey from the plate btw.

I don't want to abandon the benzoic tek because it is very easy to retrieve the spice from the NPS, allows for unconventional NPSs to be used and the benzoate is very handy to store.

What if I dissolve my 1.65g of benzoate in the same amount of boiling water and then add an excess of sodium carbonate (like 1:1 to be sure)? Unused carbonate and sodium benzoate should stay in solution while freebase should precipitate, right? I then could wait until it settles and then decant away as much aqueous layer as I can and placing the wet freebase on a coffee filter to dry. Does it makes sense? I don't know, today is one of those days I doubt myself...

Thanks

 

[Transform]

Hey @Transform, I might need your help and that of the forum. I need a way of converting the benzoate to freebase. The purpose is to obtain an e-juice, and you know I was doing the citric acid anion swap via differential solubility, but in doing so I end up with a huge (in proportion) amount of water in which the citrate is dissolved. This water takes time to evaporate even in a ventilated oven, and I'm always left with the worry of partially evaporating preciuos spice carried away by the water vapour.
As a brief recap, I was dissolving 1.65g of benzoate (=1g FB) in 15 mL of boiling water, adding 0.5g of citric acid and let it cool to room temperature and then 4C in the fridge. Benzoic acid crashes out and upon filtering the solution through 0.2 micron syringe filters it is retained in the syringe while the aqueous solution of citrate is collected on a plate for evaporation. It is also difficult to collect the citrate honey from the plate btw.

I don't want to abandon the benzoic tek because it is very easy to retrieve the spice from the NPS, allows for unconventional NPSs to be used and the benzoate is very handy to store.

What if I dissolve my 1.65g of benzoate in the same amount of boiling water and then add an excess of sodium carbonate (like 1:1 to be sure)? Unused carbonate and sodium benzoate should stay in solution while freebase should precipitate, right? I then could wait until it settles and then decant away as much aqueous layer as I can and placing the wet freebase on a coffee filter to dry. Does it makes sense? I don't know, today is one of those days I doubt myself...

Thanks

You can try the sodium carbonate, it should work and if it doesn't you can add a few drops of caustic soda.

 

[lazloz]

You can try the sodium carbonate, it should work and if it doesn't you can add a few drops of caustic soda.

Well, I tried, it kind of works but retrieving a manageable product is cumbersome, not advised. Must come up with another way, maybe ditching benzoic acid altogether since I apparently have acid contamination in the final yield.