Questions on ethanol based extractions/drytek

[fathomlessness]

So, I've been looking for a way to eliminate the water component and the boiling component of A/B & STB teks for a while now and the suggestions on this forum by some users for using ethanol looks promising (400mg of DMT is soluble in 1mL of alcohol ). If you aren't familiar with these procedures here's some threads to read:

Extracting DMT with ethanol, vinegar and sodium carbonate
Is there a way to reduce without evaporation?
Acacia Extraction Workspace
Solubility of DMT freebase in aqueous ethanol - some observations

My questions:

1) How easily will DMT move from plant material to a basic solution that is very concentrated (low water content) and the plant materiel is non-powderized & shredded?
(this is in relation to endlessness dry tek). My understanding of this extends only so far to the A/B procedure where if shredded bark is heated with water and acid, the heat will lyse the cell and the dmt will move in to the solution and react with the acid to form a salt (either dmt-hcl or dmt-acetate, etc.). This really doesn't seem to my limited understanding to be very viable with concentrated basic solutions because freebase dmt isn't soluble in water so it has no where to go, which would mean ethanol would be exceptionally handy at picking it up, if it has a solubility of 400mg of DMT in 1mL of alcohol but..
2) is sodium carbonate strong enough to open cell walls of plant material that is shredded and not powdered?(ie 2-5mm size range)

3)How are you guys boiling your ethanol mixtures? (in relation to nen888 phyllode Tek Experiment 1 & 3 in the Acacia Extraction Workspace thread).
There was no talk of induction heaters in the threads linked. I read "90% ethanol with H20 will not easily catch alight (like 100% ethanol)"( nen888 ), however, from my tests of ethanol mixed with water on a gas stove with about 50ml 50/50 ethanol/water sent the pot up in flames :lol: I'm thinking I will skip this tek and borrow a bit more from endlessness dry tek, for ease of use and also maybe because lye is more effective at removing DMT from plant cells than combining heat and acid?...

4) Are there any problems with the below method I should be aware of?
After following the drytek properly and witnessing the lack of shredded bark drying, I will skip drying and simply pour basic water/ethanol solution off and dry, which after drying can then be cleaned up with anhydrous acetone (sodium carbonate insoluble in acetone) or water (freebase dmt insoluble in water). I also will experiment with other methods like this post which involves freezing a 50/50 basified water ethanol solution and pouring it off after frozen.

My procedure is as follows:
a) base shredded material with lye and minimal amount of water, enough to ensure saturation. (sodium hydroxide is used because I have assumptions that sodium carb might not be strong enough to lyse the cell walls of shredded bark).
b) skip the drying step and mix ethanol in basified bark solution
c) filter of liquid
d) mix a small amount of pure 95% ethanol in to shredded bark to remove any excess basified solution or dmt in the bark,
e) filter off and combine liquids
f) dry under a fan
g) result is freebase alkaloids + sodium hydroxide crystals
h) use multiple acetone or water washes to remove the DMT or the lye crystals.

 

[Hailstorm]

3) Use an electric hotplate.
4) Ethanol may pull a lot of junk from the bark. Also, if you attempt to dry it out completely you are likely to get some sticky wax that may not be easy to wash.

 

[endlessness]

1- No simple answer, depends how thick the plant material is, and how long you let it stand, etc. I'd just break it down as much as possible, get some coffee grinder or strong blender and get it as close to powder as possible.. And let it soak for long.

2- Not sure about how well sodium carb breaks down cells, not even sure on what kind of cell is DMT produced and stored in plants. What you can do is compare and share results. For example, compare sodium carbonate vs calcium hydroxide, or compare short vs long soaks, or compare powdered vs shredded, or whatever.. Any comparison helps the whole community learning the science behind this.

3- Out of principle I would personally never boil anything flammable with open flames, either use a safe laboratory hot plate or just use hot water bath with freshly-boiled water to get things hot enough to increase solubility.

4- The idea in general makes sense for the most part but I would not use Sodium Hydroxide mostly because it reacts with acetone which you want to use later in the extraction to clean up, but also for general safety i'd be very careful with strong concentrated caustic solutions, and it just makes things simpler if you're already going to this kind of tek, to keep things "foodsafe".

 

[fathomlessness]

1- No simple answer, depends how thick the plant material is, and how long you let it stand, etc. I'd just break it down as much as possible, get some coffee grinder or strong blender and get it as close to powder as possible.. And let it soak for long.

2- Not sure about how well sodium carb breaks down cells, not even sure on what kind of cell is DMT produced and stored in plants. What you can do is compare and share results. For example, compare sodium carbonate vs calcium hydroxide, or compare short vs long soaks, or compare powdered vs shredded, or whatever.. Any comparison helps the whole community learning the science behind this.

3- Out of principle I would personally never boil anything flammable with open flames, either use a safe laboratory hot plate or just use hot water bath with freshly-boiled water to get things hot enough to increase solubility.

4- The idea in general makes sense for the most part but I would not use Sodium Hydroxide mostly because it reacts with acetone which you want to use later in the extraction to clean up, but also for general safety i'd be very careful with strong concentrated caustic solutions, and it just makes things simpler if you're already going to this kind of tek, to keep things "foodsafe".

Thanks for taking the time to reply endlessness, I very much appreciate it!

I was unaware sodium hydroxide reacts with acteone (aldol reaction), I am now thinking I swap acetone for xylene instead (as it has a higher solubility than something like naphtha). I think a long lye soak may be necessary as my plant material is quite fibrous, this being said I am seasoned in using lye and am very careful (unlike the 50/50 ethanol/water escapade!).

Thanks for letting me know that any experimentation data on this is useful here, I wasn't sure if my research focus is something that has already been tried and tested a thousand times. I will collect some more in depth data on few experiments with different bases, soak times, shredded/powdered. I also want to look at evaporation times of water with different bases.

 

[fathomlessness]

3) Use an electric hotplate.
4) Ethanol may pull a lot of junk from the bark. Also, if you attempt to dry it out completely you are likely to get some sticky wax that may not be easy to wash.

Yes, indeed I wonder how much solubility (400mg DMT in 1ml ethanol) may decrease as a result of all the extra tannins etc ethanol pulls, especially because lye exudes mores tannins than an acid cook does.

 

[Jamie01]

Here’s some stuff I took out of the dehydrator last night. Extracted from MHRB with water, vinegar, iso alcohol and sodium carb and a whole lot of time.

Could be cleaned up obviously but also just vaped as is.

 

[Icon]

This study might be insightful if anyone can access it?

Statistics-Based Optimization of the Extraction Process of N,N-dimethyltryptamine from Mimosa tenuiflora Stem Bark - Revista Brasileira de Farmacognosia

Mimosa tenuiflora (Willd.) Poir., Fabaceae, is a characteristic of northeastern Brazil and is known by the population as “jurema-preta.” The barks have an indole alkaloid called N,N-dimethyltryptamine, a substance that acts in a similar way to serotonin and provides hallucinogenic, anxiolytic...

link.springer.com

"In this work, the application of ethanol, stirring, and temperature (25 °C) proved to be the best conditions for the extraction of N,N-dimethyltryptamine in the standardized extract."

 

[Transform]

Yes, indeed I wonder how much solubility (400mg DMT in 1ml ethanol) may decrease as a result of all the extra tannins etc ethanol pulls, especially because lye exudes mores tannins than an acid cook does.

This is something that gets taken care of by the "TnT" vodka/lime backwards tek.

Here’s some stuff I took out of the dehydrator last night. Extracted from MHRB with water, vinegar, iso alcohol and sodium carb and a whole lot of time.

Could be cleaned up obviously but also just vaped as is.

Have you any more details on how you did this?

 

[Jamie01]

Sure. I’ve tried it 2 ways now. First time I did dry tek on powdered bark based with sodium carb and pulled with iso…evaporated and converted to salt with vinegar/water…filtered through wet cotton balls in a baster…evaporated. Back to base with sodium carb and iso pull then back to salt once more and back to base. It seems each time salt to base cleans it up more.

This time I pressure cooked the bark after blending it up with water/vinegar first to see if it pulled more(looks like probly not), and then evaporated that down to a resin I then did the same sort of dry tek on with iso etc.

Tried a bit in a bad pen and it works fine. Il probly clean it up with naphtha because I want to but especially for oral use this is fine.

 

[Jamie01]

Sorry * dab* pen

 

[Jamie01]

Also once scraped up it became more of a uniform goo.

 

[brokedownpalace10]

I've done the ethanol/sodium carbonate thing with 99% iso and ACRB. It worked OK. Just did a quick, experimental extraction.
Then added lye to the mark at a level equal to the bark weight, and evaped. Extracted that with 91% iso (because I had a bunch of it), boiling numerous times, and evaped again. Ended up with a goo with crystals all through it (which I assume were lye).
Took that material, added distilled water and pulled a few times with Xylene and ended up with an active goo (no crystals).
Not a scientific process at all, just playing. Made me wonder if you could extract from the beginning like this efficiently. Iso is nicer to work with than Xylene and this minimized the Xylene part.
What I really think I will try next is to do a regular STB and then evap the mark and then try to get the last bit out of the bark with 91% iso.

 

[CataractSurgeon]

So, I've been looking for a way to eliminate the water component and the boiling component of A/B & STB teks for a while now and the suggestions on this forum by some users for using ethanol looks promising (400mg of DMT is soluble in 1mL of alcohol ). If you aren't familiar with these procedures here's some threads to read:

Extracting DMT with ethanol, vinegar and sodium carbonate
Is there a way to reduce without evaporation?
Acacia Extraction Workspace
Solubility of DMT freebase in aqueous ethanol - some observations

My questions:

1) How easily will DMT move from plant material to a basic solution that is very concentrated (low water content) and the plant materiel is non-powderized & shredded?
(this is in relation to endlessness dry tek). My understanding of this extends only so far to the A/B procedure where if shredded bark is heated with water and acid, the heat will lyse the cell and the dmt will move in to the solution and react with the acid to form a salt (either dmt-hcl or dmt-acetate, etc.). This really doesn't seem to my limited understanding to be very viable with concentrated basic solutions because freebase dmt isn't soluble in water so it has no where to go, which would mean ethanol would be exceptionally handy at picking it up, if it has a solubility of 400mg of DMT in 1mL of alcohol but..
2) is sodium carbonate strong enough to open cell walls of plant material that is shredded and not powdered?(ie 2-5mm size range)

3)How are you guys boiling your ethanol mixtures? (in relation to nen888 phyllode Tek Experiment 1 & 3 in the Acacia Extraction Workspace thread).
There was no talk of induction heaters in the threads linked. I read "90% ethanol with H20 will not easily catch alight (like 100% ethanol)"( nen888 ), however, from my tests of ethanol mixed with water on a gas stove with about 50ml 50/50 ethanol/water sent the pot up in flames :lol: I'm thinking I will skip this tek and borrow a bit more from endlessness dry tek, for ease of use and also maybe because lye is more effective at removing DMT from plant cells than combining heat and acid?...

4) Are there any problems with the below method I should be aware of?
After following the drytek properly and witnessing the lack of shredded bark drying, I will skip drying and simply pour basic water/ethanol solution off and dry, which after drying can then be cleaned up with anhydrous acetone (sodium carbonate insoluble in acetone) or water (freebase dmt insoluble in water). I also will experiment with other methods like this post which involves freezing a 50/50 basified water ethanol solution and pouring it off after frozen.

My procedure is as follows:
a) base shredded material with lye and minimal amount of water, enough to ensure saturation. (sodium hydroxide is used because I have assumptions that sodium carb might not be strong enough to lyse the cell walls of shredded bark).
b) skip the drying step and mix ethanol in basified bark solution
c) filter of liquid
d) mix a small amount of pure 95% ethanol in to shredded bark to remove any excess basified solution or dmt in the bark,
e) filter off and combine liquids
f) dry under a fan
g) result is freebase alkaloids + sodium hydroxide crystals
h) use multiple acetone or water washes to remove the DMT or the lye crystals\

Maybe this is a stupid comment but GordoTek just uses a small amount of water and seems to work just fine - no reduction no filtering no sep funnel etc etc - pretty easy

 

[Transform]

Maybe this is a stupid comment but GordoTek just uses a small amount of water and seems to work just fine - no reduction no filtering no sep funnel etc etc - pretty easy

Gordo tek uses naphtha as a solvent, not ethanol or acetone. Otherwise a fair observation - @fathomlessness was not explicit about a desire to avoid using naphtha.

 

[CataractSurgeon]

Gordo tek uses naphtha as a solvent, not ethanol or acetone. Otherwise a fair observation - @fathomlessness was not explicit about a desire to avoid using naphtha.

Ahh - yea I hate naphtha fumes -disgusting - when I used it with just a fan in a garage somewhere it was bad - warm heptane method more acceptable (50% more solvent is called for) I found heptane to be much less of a horror show -