Minimum Polymer

[Jees]

Hi IAL, some thoughts:

* the yellow is more difficult to harvest the lower the temperature is, I prefer about 50 degC / 120degF to get it (I avoid 60degC as naphtha start to boil and evap);

* My yellows are easily 25 to 50% of total yield (wood dependent) , but I'm afraid my working in denser concentrations promote yellow;

* my previous batch of wood gave me consistently more oil, the new batch is way better. Previous batch max 1.7% oil included with only 1% white, new batch easily beyond 2% total yield. Wood plays a role ime;

* I've never compared heptane vs naphtha but 'it is said' dat the shorter molecular non-polars indeed take on less-easy. At 50 degC this discrepancy is of no concern imho;

* It is also said that heptane is better suited for re-crystallizing, but I can't confirm;

* It seems a good idea to acid cook, then base.

 

[Loveall]

Great work Jess, thanks.

So for now we are seeing what we believe is de-polymerization in the PC. Possible variables:

- Acid used (so far citric has worked)
- DMT concentration (less could be better)
- Aluminum (is it needed?)
- Time (does adding more complete the process)

Very interesting that different bark had different degrees of polymerization. The plant could store DMT in more than one form (?). De-polymerizing could take care of incoming variability and make yield of whit xtals more uniform. Also, based on Northener's result, it may be even more important to de-polymerize for acacias, which may have more DMT (and NMT) stored in polymer form (?).

 

[Loveall]

Here's a question for you... Do you suppose our hypothetical DMT polymer is more soluble in naphtha versus heptane?

I ask because I always pull with heptane, and while I get beautiful white crystals every time, I struggle with yields. My latest run stands at 1.2% after five pulls, which is about as good as I've ever gotten. If you're pulling with naphtha and getting that much in crystals plus some polymerized goo as well, maybe that's part of my issue?

If that's the case, perhaps an optimized extraction protocol begins with a low-polymer extraction with naphtha, followed by a mini-A/B with a PC depolymerization during the acid stage, then a re-x with heptane.

Or for that matter, could I skip the naphtha pull and mini-A/B by simply pressure cooking the MHRB in acid during the initial workkup? I have a pressure canner large enough to fit two large beakers, maybe I'll try that this evening.....

That last option sounds good to me. Northerner's approach seems good. MHRB may not need such long times in the PC though - it could be less polymerized than acacias.

PS: Noticed I keep on posting the link to Northerner's result. It is lovely.

 

[IridiumAndLace]

PS: Noticed I keep on posting the link to Northerner's result. It is lovely.

It really is!

Ok, while I suspect these variables don't act independently, I can help isolate them and see what, if any, difference they make. Here's my experimental results so far:

(Note: all cooks and pulls were done at 70°C under gentle stirring.)

• Source: 50g MHRB, freeze/thaw/warmed x3
• Acid cooks: 200ml of 15% citric acid, 2 hours x2 with a settle and decant in between
• Coarse filter to remove MHRB solids
• After filtering, 50ml of heptane was added
• Mixture was basified with 400ml of 10% NaOH, added dropwise over 60 minutes
• Six pulls were done total. Pulls 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6 were allowed to extract for 2 hours each, pull 3 was allowed to extract for 12 hours.
• 100g of salt was added between pulls 5 and 6
• Yields from each pull:

1. 0.283g, white xtals (this was from the basifying step)
2. 0.173g, white xtals
3. 0.090g, brown xtals (lengthy extraction)
4. 0.078g, white xtals with some yellow goo
5. 0.013g, about half xtals and half orange goo, not worth the trouble
6. Haven't measured yet, looks to be about 0.075g of yellow xtals. Took 36-48h to fully precipitate.

• Final crude yield: About 0.630g, or ~1.27%. I usually lose about 10% in the recrystallization. for an estimated total yield of ~1.13%. Kind of disappointing for MHRB.

To compare techniques, I decided to do two runs in tandem, one reprocessing the "spent" MHRB from the last batch and one with a fresh 50g batch of MHRB from the freezer. Both got 30g citric acid and water to about 300ml total, and cooked in a pressure cooker at 16psi for 5 hours. The MHRB was in glass beakers in a water bath, not in contact with any metal.

That's as far as I've gotten so far. It's remarkable how much the smell of the tea changed after PCing; now it has an interesting "smoky" aroma that reminds me of smoked frankfurters or something. The "spent" tea is noticeably clearer but they're both the same watery consistency.

I figure later tonight I'll filter and rinse the solids, basify under heptane as before, and then do some pulls to see what I get. I'm particularly interested to see if I get more spice out of the spent MHRB, or if not, if I get significantly more spice out of the fresh MHRB. That'll inform me if I need to start contemplating more ways to squeeze the MHRB out of the last batch of tea, which I have set aside just in case.

(Also, I've been using used Bestine until now. I'm due to distill some fresh NPS, so maybe I'll use my remaining fresh Bestine for each pull, and from there ascertain the solubility of DMT in -15°C Bestine. I'll be sure to post my results!)

Anyone, thoughts or advice before I proceed?

 

[Jees]

... Thinking of repeating same procedure with only one variable changed: adding a piece of aluminium in the pressure cooked recipient.

Well that didn't happen as planned

Update:
so after another 2 hours PC in phosphoric acid pH 2.5 and a knife tip of citric acid, a little piece of aluminium in the glass recipient and pulled in a larger volume (less concentrated) the result is encouraging (see pic), this all started as deep yellow sticky stuff (from last pulls) and had now a total of 3 hours PC. I'm on a good track but progress gain is slower than Loveall's, 6 tiny globes of aggregated yellow/brown seemingly survived, hiding in the snow.

Next time only citric acid will be used and boiled in metal instead of a glass inside PC.
In reality there is a faint yellow hue which is not visible on the pic due a skewed white balance of the camera, but all in all it's good :thumb_up:

 

[Jees]

...for an estimated total yield of ~1.13%. Kind of disappointing for MHRB..

I know the feeling yet it is not unheard of. Previous batch max 1.7% of which half was oil, new batch 2.26% total. Perhaps working with 100gr wood instead of 50 can lift your extraction efficacy a bit.

 

[benzyme]

I’m really looking forward to implimenting CAD into the analytical workflow, as it is an excellent mass-dependent, ‘universal’ detector that yields ancilliary data to mass spec; it can easily determine the presence of polymers, as they form larger droplets in aerosol-based detectors.

 

[Loveall]

Anyone, thoughts or advice before I proceed? Big grin

No, other than I'm looking forward to your results.

Jees,

The best result I've had so far regarding acid is using vinegar, citric, and ascorbic all together. Not sure which one mattered most, if any. I think ascorbic acid is interesting and worth testing further.

Regarding metal, Dragonrider mentioned his PC was stainless as you may have seen ready.

DMT polymer (hypothesized) can indeed be stubborn. Hope we find a good way to break it down completely during the acid step (hypothesizing it is present naturally). Could remove some of the noise and confusion around extraction, and perhaps increase yields for a more xtaline product.

 

[IridiumAndLace]

I'm looking forward to your results

Well, I regret to report that I'd classify my result as Poor.

• Place 50g of pre-frozen MHRB in a beaker with 200ml of water and 30g of citric acid.

• Put the beaker in a pressure canner, and cook at 16 PSI (250°F) for 5 hours. Remove from heat and allow to cool and depressurize.

• After cooking, filter the MHRB solids, rinse with another 200ml of 15% citric acid, followed by a small amount of distilled water.

• To the resulting tea, add 190ml of heptane (all I had, which turned out to be a mistake as now I can't re-x anything until I distill more).

• S-l-o-w-l-y basify with 500ml of ~8% NaOH solution, at 60°C under gentle stirring.

• Extract for 2 hours, then separate and freeze the heptane.

I reasoned that using extra heptane for the first pull would help a minimum polymer tek because it keeps the extraction gradient high. To be sure, the heptane was yellow when it went into the freezer, usually a good sign.

24 hours later, I was very disappointed by what I had: a paltry amount of yellow xtals at the bottom of the beaker, plus a ring of brown jimjam around the top of the liquid. Drying was even more disappointing, because I was also left with an awful lot of that annoying "liquid DMT", the sticky oily stuff that takes a week to crystallize on its own. Scraping crystals through it hardens it though, so after much scraping I was left with 0.318g of crunchy yellow spice. A second pull with 50ml of used heptane produced maybe 50mg of fairly white xtals, and a third 50ml pull produced no precipitate.

Since I might not get around to distilling anything this week, I instead washed the 190ml of still-yellow heptane with 50ml of 10% citric acid solution, until the heptane turned clear and colorless. I separated the aqueous phase, added 20ml of that same heptane back in, and began basifying dropwise with 33.3% NaOH solution. It took about 2g of NaOH to turn the aqueous phase cloudy, at which point I shook and settled the mixture until the aqueous phase cleared up. A couple more grams of NaOH, plus about 10g of salt, and the heptane went into the freezer. This yielded another 50ish mg of off-white xtals.

All told I ended up with around 0.4g of rough-looking spice, much less than my previous low-and-slow test. It looks nasty, chunky and yellow, so this'll need to be recrystallized for sure.

I'm not sure what went wrong... Too much heat, too much acid, too much base, or maybe not enough of any of those things. I'm also not sure where to start looking for the missing DMT, assuming it didn't get destroyed somewhere along the way.

Ideas, anyone?

 

[Loveall]

Perhaps you can try to extract the MHRB solids again to see if the DMT is there.

Not sure what went wrong. I believe this is the first report with citric acid and pressure cooking. Perhaps that doesn't work well for some reason, I don't know.

I'm doing a similar process, but using ascorbic acid and pressure cooking in a mason jar:

- 50g of MHRB, 25g Vitamin C, and 775ml of water to fill a quart canning jar and leave 1 inch of head space
- 4 hours of pressure cooking at 15 PSI
- Shake in naphtha (~80ml), them mix in 25g of NaOH. Jar is nearly full
- 4x warm naphtha pulls (40-50C) pipetted off
- Evap until light cloudiness appeared

The dish in the freezer is looking good so far, full of what look like white xtals when I look at the bottom of it. I'll post results tonight.

Edit: attaching a picture of the dish out of the freezer after decanting.

 

[IridiumAndLace]

Edit: attaching a picture of the dish out of the freezer after decanting.

Oh wow. All that from 50g of MHRB?? Visually, that looks like about 2-3x as much as I normally get in a batch. I can't wait for the weigh-in.

I wonder, again, if the choice of solvent makes a difference? I'm very tempted to repeat your tek verbatim using heptane instead, and see if I get a similar result. Do you freeze/thaw cycle your MHRB first? (Edit: I assume you're using fresh naphtha for each pull?)

As for my batch, I think I might start with the tea, since it's the most accessible. My pulls were always just putting the heptane with the tea into a 2L Erlenmeyer flask, and putting it on the stirrer for a couple hours. Maybe some good hard shaking will help?

This feels plausible... When I did my little mini-A/B on the heptane from my first pull, I had to shake it hard and let it separate multiple times before the liquid turned clear--in both directions. Perhaps I'll try a pull like that next, just to see if a lot of agitation makes a difference.

 

[Loveall]

Edit: attaching a picture of the dish out of the freezer after decanting.

Oh wow. All that from 50g of MHRB?? Visually, that looks like about 2-3x as much as I normally get in a batch. I can't wait for the weigh-in.

I wonder, again, if the choice of solvent makes a difference? I'm very tempted to repeat your tek verbatim using heptane instead, and see if I get a similar result. Do you freeze/thaw cycle your MHRB first? (Edit: I assume you're using fresh naphtha for each pull?)

As for my batch, I think I might start with the tea, since it's the most accessible. My pulls were always just putting the heptane with the tea into a 2L Erlenmeyer flask, and putting it on the stirrer for a couple hours. Maybe some good hard shaking will help?

This feels plausible... When I did my little mini-A/B on the heptane from my first pull, I had to shake it hard and let it separate multiple times before the liquid turned clear--in both directions. Perhaps I'll try a pull like that next, just to see if a lot of agitation makes a difference.

Good ideas regarding shaking. Keep in mind that you are using citric and I used Vitamin C. In earlier de-polymerization experiments, Vitamin C seemed to do the best of all acids tested.

This was from re-used naphtha.

Agree that so far it is exciting. I have an early draft TEK for the pressure cooker and Vitamin C approach (don't mind the figures or references, they need updating if this approach works out)

 

[Loveall]

I'm doing a similar process, but using ascorbic acid and pressure cooking in a mason jar:

- 50g of MHRB, 25g Vitamin C, and 775ml of water to fill a quart canning jar and leave 1 inch of head space
- 4 hours of pressure cooking at 15 PSI
- Shake in naphtha (~80ml), them mix in 25g of NaOH. Jar is nearly full
- 4x warm naphtha pulls (40-50C) pipetted off
- Evap until light cloudiness appeared

Unfortunately, since I used re-used Naphtha, some DMT from other extractions added to the yield. Got 2.04g of off-white/yellow powder (4.1%, but not a real measurement because of the DMT present in the used Naphtha). No oil or goo. Also, the yellow color may be from the re-used naphtha from different processes.

I'm goin to control the Naphtha better next time (e.g. do not evap used naphtha) to measure the yield properly and get an accurate DMT color for this process (except for naphtha evap, that won't be done). Plan is:

1) Repeat this with fresh naphtha. No evap before freezing. This is a conditioning run for the naphtha and some DMT will be left behind as saturated naphtha at my freezer temperature.
2) Do another extraction with naphtha from 1). Again, no naphtha evap. This time yields should be accurate as the naphtha comes pre-saturated at the freezer temperature (all the DMT added should precipitate).

 

[Jees]

Loveall, is your bark powdered or shredded please?
Supposedly powder yields more.

 

[IridiumAndLace]

Plan is:

1) Repeat this with fresh naphtha. No evap before freezing. This is a conditioning run for the naphtha and some DMT will be left behind as saturated naphtha at my freezer temperature.
2) Do another extraction with naphtha from 1). Again, no naphtha evap. This time yields should be accurate as the naphtha comes pre-saturated at the freezer temperature (all the DMT added should precipitate).

When you try this run again, do you want to try it with one jar open and one jar closed? I'm wondering if that could be a variable.

I ask because after my pressure cooking, there was a small amount of white foam in the water in the pressure cooker. I didn't think much of it, but now I'm kind of wishing I'd tested to see if it was soluble in NPS before I dumped it out.

Either way, I figure I'll follow your exact tek myself (next week when I have time) and see if I get a similar result pulling with heptane instead of naphtha.

 

[Loveall]

Loveall, is your bark powdered or shredded please?
Supposedly powder yields more.

Finely shredded. Looks like it turns into mud after the long PC and NaOH addition (see images in provisional TEK).

 

[Loveall]

Plan is:

1) Repeat this with fresh naphtha. No evap before freezing. This is a conditioning run for the naphtha and some DMT will be left behind as saturated naphtha at my freezer temperature.
2) Do another extraction with naphtha from 1). Again, no naphtha evap. This time yields should be accurate as the naphtha comes pre-saturated at the freezer temperature (all the DMT added should precipitate).

When you try this run again, do you want to try it with one jar open and one jar closed? I'm wondering if that could be a variable.

I ask because after my pressure cooking, there was a small amount of white foam in the water in the pressure cooker. I didn't think much of it, but now I'm kind of wishing I'd tested to see if it was soluble in NPS before I dumped it out.

Either way, I figure I'll follow your exact tek myself (next week when I have time) and see if I get a similar result pulling with heptane instead of naphtha.

After my latest cracked jar, I'm gonna skip canning. Just pressure cook directly in the pot like Northener did. Transfer to a jar at the end after reducing the volume to ~800ml (no filtering). I've updated the provisional TEK to reflect this. A little bit messier but more consistent and no more broken jars or jar leaks.

Definitely move everything over to get based. Leave nothing behind. Lye breaks down the emulsion (at least with vitamin C) - so no foam concerns

 

[IridiumAndLace]

After my latest cracked jar, I'm gonna skip canning. Just pressure cook directly in the pot like Northener did. Transfer to a jar at the end after reducing the volume to ~800ml (no filtering). I've updated the provisional TEK to reflect this. A little bit messier but more consistent and no more broken jars or jar leaks.

Hrm, ok, my test run will differ slightly then because I don't have a pressure cooker, I have a pressure canner. I can't cook directly in that, unless I'm processing a half a kilo of MHRB in a batch I suppose. The white foam I mentioned was floating in the water bath after I removed the beakers.

I don't think that'll make a huge difference though, do you? Aside from the hassle of broken jars, do you think there's an advantage to PCing directly in the pot versus in a beaker/jar in a water bath?

Also, do you freeze/thaw cycle your MHRB? Do you think it'd matter, given the aggressive cooking it gets?

 

[Loveall]

After my latest cracked jar, I'm gonna skip canning. Just pressure cook directly in the pot like Northener did. Transfer to a jar at the end after reducing the volume to ~800ml (no filtering). I've updated the provisional TEK to reflect this. A little bit messier but more consistent and no more broken jars or jar leaks.

Hrm, ok, my test run will differ slightly then because I don't have a pressure cooker, I have a pressure canner. I can't cook directly in that, unless I'm processing a half a kilo of MHRB in a batch I suppose. The white foam I mentioned was floating in the water bath after I removed the beakers.

I don't think that'll make a huge difference though, do you? Aside from the hassle of broken jars, do you think there's an advantage to PCing directly in the pot versus in a beaker/jar in a water bath?

Also, do you freeze/thaw cycle your MHRB? Do you think it'd matter, given the aggressive cooking it gets?

I don't think it should make a difference, the experiments should tell us. Small chance that oxygen affects vitamin C. If so, canning may be better.

The bark is essentially turned into mud, so I don't think freezing is nneeded.amd I don't do it (that has also caused my jars to crack by the way).

 

[Loveall]

Ok, so it is possible that DMT aggregation happens through pi bond stacking of aromatic rings. Benzyme has shown UV emission evidence for that in this post.

Here is an interesting snippet:

An early model for the role of substituents in pi stacking interactions was proposed by Hunter and Sanders.[7] They used a simple mathematical model based on sigma and pi atomic charges, relative orientations, and van der Waals interactions to qualitatively determine that electrostatics are dominant in substituent effects. According to their model, electron-withdrawing groups reduce the negative quadrupole of the aromatic ring and thereby favor parallel displaced and sandwich conformations. Contrastingly, electron donating groups increase the negative quadrupole, which may increase the interaction strength in a T-shaped configuration with the proper geometry. Based on this model, the authors proposed a set of rules governing pi stacking interactions which prevailed until more sophisticated computations were applied.

Vitamin C is a strong electron donor, so it could affect DMT aggregation strongly and disrupt parallel displaced and sandwich conformations.

PS: This is all new to me, so please take it as a tentative guess.