purification question

[alohawanderwell]

My boyfriend and I are doing the heptane tek, using a lye bath and then heptane in a beaker to extract the dmt from the bark powder... We had 3 trays in the freezer and there were tons of big crystals forming. We dried and scraped them out. Then my boyfriend attempted to purify the crystals and remove any remaining lipids or other impurities by putting it in a cup and heating it over the stove in a boiling pot of water. The lipids separated. I am not sure exactly what he did after that, because I went to bed... but I do know that he put the remaining "purified" liquid back in the freezer and now looking at it this morning, there are not as many large crystals as there were before he did the purification process... we have no idea what went wrong... (this pyrex dish is only like 10" btw)

 

[_Trip_]

The 'lipids' were likely polymorphic dmt. Dmt won't always crystalise depending on environmental factors, solvents used etc sometimes it'll form waxes and or oils. Different conditions create a different crystal growth too.

 

[alohawanderwell]

Hmmm ok so do you think that this tray looks fine at this point even if the crystals are much smaller and there is less liquid than before we tried to purify? I took some of the "unpure" dried crystals that my boyfriend had separated and was going to throw away, and I heated them again to separate the "junk" again to the bottom, and put the remaining liquid back in a dish in the freezer, there are now some crystals forming in there too, but still smaller than before... Just worried we wasted some of the medicine after many days of work. What is the best way to purify without losing the good stuff?

 

[_Trip_]

Without knowing what kind of bark or process you used its hard to tell what extras you may of pulled. But since heptane is a fairly 'narrow' spectrum solvent compared to say xylene I'd guess you've pulled a decently clean dmt profile. Therefore at a guess, I'd wager you've likely thrown out some perfectly good polymorphic dmt. You likely won't achieve 99.99% pure dmt unless you are synthesising in a lab, this after all is "kitchen chemistry". Having said you can definitely get some very clean dmt. The issue is there's a good chance that your dmt is forming polymorphic dmt and you're discarding it. Crystals and colour don't always necessarily equate to purity. This has been explored in many threads and research from fellow nexians. If you want crystals you can try re-x (which sounds like you kind of did) or a mini a/b.
Is there particular impurities you're concerned with or are you just trying to get your dmt to form crystals only?

Some of the analysis threads might give you a clue of potential impurities you might of pulled and put your mind at ease that it is still safe to use.

 

[alohawanderwell]

my boyfriend is the one who has done all the research on the process and he seems to believe that we have to purify it after freezing it to remove "lipids" and any residual plant matter. but he did throw out a bunch of yellow crystals that I think were probably good. we used mimosa hostilis, pre-powdered bark

 

[fractals4life]

Lipids are fats and oils, which are very soluble in solvent, even at freezer temperatures, so will get poured away with the excess solvent when you drain the dish fresh out of the freezer. MHRB has little in the way of fats in it anyway, I believe acacia may be a different story though.

Even with Acacia the "defatting" gets done *before* the base is added, by mixing in non polar solvent and pipetting it off (with its load of dissolved lipids ) while leaving the DMT in solution in the bark soup as it is insoluble in NPS when in natural salt form. After adding the base it becomes freebase DMT which is now soluble in NPS and can be pulled from suspension in the soup.