NaOH contamination?

[tryptographer]

Hi all,

Just registered, first post here!

There seem to be some worries about lye contamination of the final product.

But... everybody seems to forget that lye eagerly binds CO2 in the air and turns into sodium carbonate. I don't know exactly how long it takes but I guess a product more than a few days old cannot have any lye in it unless it's stored airtight immediately! Correct me if I'm wrong.

It's like mortar based on slaked lime. It hardens because the lime absorbs CO2 from the air and turns into calcium carbonate.

Anyway, don't take any chances with lye, it dissolves living tissue better than strong acids!!
Washing the product helps of course and should always be done.

 

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[Sakkadelic]

It also absorbs moisture from the air and liquify but eventually it reacts with CO2 to form sodium carbonate, which also absorbs moisture from the air.

I'm not sure about this but I think if there is a significant lye contamination the dmt won't dry easily with a fan and would hydrate quickly when stored.

 

[Transform]

It also absorbs moisture from the air and liquify but eventually it reacts with CO2 to form sodium carbonate, which also absorbs moisture from the air.

I'm not sure about this but I think if there is a significant lye contamination the dmt won't dry easily with a fan and would hydrate quickly when stored.

The sodium carbonate eventually absorbs more CO₂ from the air, to become sodium sesqicarbonate, which is essentially a mixture of sodium carbonate and sodium bicarbonate, with the proportion of bicarbonate increasing up to a point where the material essentially stays solid - unless, perhaps, the humidity's exceptionally high.

There are some suggestions that high humidity and CO₂ may cause DMT to form an unstable solution of its bicarbonate, but this remains an hypothesis to be tested scientifically.

As maybe an even weirder hypothesis, it even has me considering whether a DMT subcarbonate can form as an ionic liquid, with more than one molecule of DMT combining with at least one of the two protons per molecule of (nominal) carbonic acid.

One place to start would be some fun experiments in attempting to dissolve DMT freebase into carbonated water.

Note that the last couple of ideas don't necessarily require any sodium hydroxide to be present.