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preferred wash?
- Thread starter TTommy
- Start date
Sodium carbonbate seems to be a good solution. Somewhere I've read that folks are starting to use activated charcoal to get a very clean product. I'd love to hear more about that.
Swim did it this way. But you could also do it after dissolving the spice for recrystallisation but then you have to make sure, that everything is really dissolved. A plus could be that you'd pull out the yellow goo with your wash.
OrangeShift
Rising Star
I'm confused now, how do you wash a liquid?
With a sodium carbonate wash do you just make a solution, if so what's the ratio?
With a sodium carbonate wash do you just make a solution, if so what's the ratio?
69ron
Rising Star
Why are people not using ammonia for washing? Why use sodium carbonate? I don't get it.
A solution of sodium carbonate can get up to pH 11 and so can ammonia. At that pH over 99% of the DMT is freebased so it's not very soluble in either solution.
Ammonia evaporates cleanly, sodium carbonate doesn't. So why use sodium carbonate as a wash? Am I missing something here? What's the logic behind that?
A solution of sodium carbonate can get up to pH 11 and so can ammonia. At that pH over 99% of the DMT is freebased so it's not very soluble in either solution.
Ammonia evaporates cleanly, sodium carbonate doesn't. So why use sodium carbonate as a wash? Am I missing something here? What's the logic behind that?
Ammonia is toxic, more expensive, harder to obtain. It does wash away dmt according to noman.
A sodium carbonate solution is pretty easy to seperate, because it forms a strong layer at the bottom of the jar. You can also shake the hell out of the jar and it doesn't form an emulsion.
And I think it's 1 part sodium carbonate solution and 3 parts naptha but I could be mistaken. There's a thread somewhere explaining the procedure in more detail. I think acolon 5 explained it pretty well.
A sodium carbonate solution is pretty easy to seperate, because it forms a strong layer at the bottom of the jar. You can also shake the hell out of the jar and it doesn't form an emulsion.
And I think it's 1 part sodium carbonate solution and 3 parts naptha but I could be mistaken. There's a thread somewhere explaining the procedure in more detail. I think acolon 5 explained it pretty well.
yea both compounds work fine if the pH is right. the key is pH. personally SWIM never washes crystals but only washes his final non polar solution. then does freeze precipitation. its the easiest and no noticable yield loss.
69ron
Rising Star
obliguhl said:
burnt said:
Does no one agree on anything about DMT extraction!
SWIM has a headache now.
SWIM likes facts and sees a lot of conflicting information on the web about DMT extraction. SWIM believes most of the info is not based on facts.
On another forum, people said that sodium carbonate doesn’t work well for freebasing DMT from a MHRB extract because it forms emulsions and that’s why sodium hydroxide is used because it knocks down emulsions. Now obliguhl is saying sodium carbonate doesn’t form emulsions. SWIM agrees with obliguhl and finds that sodium carbonate doesn’t form emulsions much because its sodium based. That’s one reason SWIM uses sodium carbonate all the time as the main base in an extraction (he never uses sodium hydroxide anymore).
SWIM uses sodium carbonate sometimes to backwash the non-polar solvent. SWIM also sometimes uses ammonia to backwash it. SWIM didn’t really notice any difference in yields when using ammonia. But obliguhl is saying noman reports diminished yields, and burnt is saying both work just as well! SWIM has not seen diminished yields when using ammonia, but then again SWIM uses DCM and NOT NAPHTHA. So this may explain the difference.
Why would a solution of ammonia with a pH of 11 wash away DMT when a solution of sodium carbonate at pH 11 wouldn't? At pH 11 more than 99% of the DMT is freebase. DMT should be equally insoluble in both solutions shouldn't it? Is there something I'm missing here? It doesn't seem to all add up to me. There is the fact that sodium solutions are usually more polar. So maybe this is at play here?
As far as being toxic, ammonia is much less toxic than naphtha is and people use naphtha all the time. Ammonia evaporates more cleanly and faster than naphtha does. So the toxicity thing doesn’t make sense to me. Now the smell is horrible and the fumes get all over the place and are irritating and that’s one reason I can see for not using it.
Here are the toxicity facts. These are the oral LD50 values in rats for some common stuff used in extractions listed from least toxic to most toxic:
Sodium carbonate: 4090 mg/kg
Ammonia: 3500 mg/kg
Citric acid: 3000 mg/kg
DCM: 1600 mg/kg
Hydrochloric acid (37%, in rabbits, not rats): 900 mg/kg
Sodium hydroxide: 140 - 340 mg/kg
Naphtha: 5 mg/kg
Talk about toxic! Naphtha is super toxic, and ammonia is only slightly more toxic than sodium carbonate.
You see why SWIM uses sodium carbonate, citric acid, and DCM instead of sodium hydroxide, hydrochloric acid, and naphtha for most of his extractions? They are far less toxic and DCM is also not flammable while naphtha is highly flammable. DCM is shown to be slightly carcinogenic in animal lab tests, but new animal lab tests report that naphtha is also slightly carcinogenic.
SWIM never uses naphtha for extractions. SWIM uses small amounts of heptane (about as nasty as naphtha) for freeze precipitation only. He likes to limit his exposure to it. He easily gets sick if he accidentally breathes in any of it.
69Ron,69ron said:
I have never had a problem with Sodium Bicarbonate or Sodium Carbonate forming emulsions. I shake the hell out of my jars and they separate instantly.
People have conflicting results because they are not chemists are using household equipment. They observe what happens and report it...this causes some discrepancies.
Over time forums like this will find what is working for the majority of people and that will be the popular method.
Ammonia lost popularity because people were not washing their NP solvent, but washing their spice crystals and loosing a lot of their yield. I personally do not use it because it smells to high hell and associated with methamphetamine production.
DMC while being a much better solvent for DMT extractions does have its drawbacks:
1) It is not as easy to come by
2) It is hard to get in a pure state
3) It is more expensive than naphtha
4) It requires more clean up steps in the end to get relatively pure DMT
I'm not downing DCM, just stating why most people choose to use Naphtha.
69ron
Rising Star
acolon_5 said:
Those are all true. However, here are the disadvantages of using naphtha:
1 ) Naphtha cannot extract DMT N-Oxide, 5-MeO-DMT N-Oxide, “Jungle Spice”, bufotenine, bufotenine N-Oxide, psilocin, mescaline, LSA, LSH, and many other alkaloids. DCM can extract all of those and more. Because most plants that contain DMT also contain large amounts of DMT N-Oxide, you’re losing a lot of active material by using naphtha. EDIT: according to a few sources psilocin may be soluble in naphtha. SWIM hasn't verified it either way and finds conflicting information about it on the net. He is concerned that the information about psilocin he read may be confusing psilocin with psilocybin. He's seen this many times where psilocin is written down, but the author meant to write psilocybin.
2 ) Naphtha is extremely flammable. DCM is not flammable.
3 ) Naphtha is 320 times more toxic than DCM.
4 ) Naphtha boils at a temperature that would boil away all the freebase DMT so you can’t distill it down to concentrate the DMT. DCM boils at a lower temperature than DMT, so you can distill it down to concentrate the DMT.
5 ) Naphtha evaporates many times slower than DCM does, so it takes longer for your spice to be free of solvent if naphtha is used.
6 ) Naphtha holds far less DMT per ml than DCM does so it requires larger volumes of solvent to extract the same amount of DMT.
7 ) Naphtha takes far more energy to distill than DCM does.
8 ) Naphtha takes many times longer to distill than DCM does (hours instead of minutes).
9 ) Naphtha smells stronger and much worse than DCM does.
I don’t see any benefits to using naphtha over DCM. It’s more dangerous, more toxic, evaporates slower, boils slower, and doesn’t extract DMT N-Oxide. If you don’t want DMT N-Oxide, then using naphtha maybe is some sort of a benefit, but I can’t see why someone would want to lose DMT N-Oxide. SWIM likes it more than DMT.
If you extract with naphtha and don’t do any cleanup steps, you get some oils and some DMT.
If you extract with DCM and don’t do any cleanup steps, you get some oils, more DMT, DMT N-Oxide, and “Jungle Spice”.
If you do a clean up step, such as freeze precipitation in heptane, and you used naphtha as the extraction solvent, you’ll end up with pure DMT. The leftovers will contain only oils and maybe a little bit of new DMT N-Oxide that formed from the DMT you just extracted.
If you do a clean up step, such as freeze precipitation in heptane, and you used DCM as the extraction solvent, you’ll end up with pure DMT, the leftovers will contain oils, and maybe a little bit of new DMT N-Oxide that formed from the DMT you just extracted, plus lots of DMT N-Oxide extracted from the plant, and some “Jungle Spice”. So you end up with more products. How is this not better?
69ron said:
I don't dispute any of those points. In fact you have already convinced me to use DCM in my next Mimosa extraction.
I was simply stating the reasons that most people are using naphtha in their extractions.
The simplest reason is convenience...also most people do not have the equipment to distill solvents and most DCM on the market needs to be distilled before being able to use it, right?
Maybe you could write up a detailed extraction using DCM instead of naphtha? That would be very helpful (esp. since I am about to attempt using it as a solvent instead of naphtha!!!)
Did you mean to write psilocybin instead of psilocin? My understanding was that psilocin could be recrystalized in hot naphtha or bestine.
69ron
Rising Star
I don't know. SWIM has never done any such tests with psilocin and maybe that tech works as is and SWIM's information about psilocin is wrong. I'll have to look into this more.
If that tech is right, it's news to SWIM. SWIM doesn't have any psilocin to test right now, so he can't verify anything first hand. He only knows what he's read about it being insoluble in heptane and soluble in ethyl acetate.
I'll need to back away from that one until SWIM can verify it one way or another.
...
SWIM is looking at some other references and they state different information that doesn't match up. It seems that some references report having used a mix of hexane and ethyl acetate to crystallize psilocin. Hexane evaporates faster than ethyl acetate, so psilocin must be more soluble in hexane than ethyl acetate, or crystallizing in a mix of hexane and ethyl acetate wouldn’t make sense.
...
acolon_5, thanks for pointing that out about psilocin. It seems that there is conflicting information about psilocin and what I posted above might actually be incorrect. Psilocin may in fact be soluble in naphtha.
Can someone verify this? SWIM has no psilocin to test with and won't have any for a long time.
A guy named triptamine at www.shroomery.org states that "naptha does not have good solubility for psilocin". He's indicating that it is soluble, but just poorly soluble in naphtha. Here is the link: Notes from a failed psilocin extraction (update: 2nd attempt) - Mushroom Cultivation - Shroomery Message Board
If that tech is right, it's news to SWIM. SWIM doesn't have any psilocin to test right now, so he can't verify anything first hand. He only knows what he's read about it being insoluble in heptane and soluble in ethyl acetate.
I'll need to back away from that one until SWIM can verify it one way or another.
...
SWIM is looking at some other references and they state different information that doesn't match up. It seems that some references report having used a mix of hexane and ethyl acetate to crystallize psilocin. Hexane evaporates faster than ethyl acetate, so psilocin must be more soluble in hexane than ethyl acetate, or crystallizing in a mix of hexane and ethyl acetate wouldn’t make sense.
...
acolon_5, thanks for pointing that out about psilocin. It seems that there is conflicting information about psilocin and what I posted above might actually be incorrect. Psilocin may in fact be soluble in naphtha.
Can someone verify this? SWIM has no psilocin to test with and won't have any for a long time.
A guy named triptamine at www.shroomery.org states that "naptha does not have good solubility for psilocin". He's indicating that it is soluble, but just poorly soluble in naphtha. Here is the link: Notes from a failed psilocin extraction (update: 2nd attempt) - Mushroom Cultivation - Shroomery Message Board