questions regarding jungle spice & solvents...

[Leon Trout]

so after a month of tinkering & experimenting i've come to a point where i'm happy with my extraction technique (stb with heptane & a sodium carbonate wash) & am completely happy with my results... couldn't be happier in fact...

trick is, i know there's this often mentioned "jungle spice" left in my basified bark... i've got just shy of 2 dozen quart jars full of the stuff, & i want to experiment with re-x, so this seems like the perfect opportunity... i don't need the spice, so why not play with it?..

my plan is to dump all the jars into a 5 gallon gas can, then throw a bit of super basic water to warm it up a bit & dump some xylene... figure i'll let the xylene soak for a week or so, shaking the piss out of it as often as i can remember to... herein lies my question: all of these jars have traces of the original solvent in them... some are naptha (several different brands) some are heptane... a couple of them have already been hit with xylene, and are probably dead, but i didn't label as well as i should, & have no idea which ones they are... so, is this hodge-podge of solvents going to be trouble?.. my gut instinct is no, they are all petro-chems of some sort & should work well together... i don't necessarily trust my gut instinct in matters regarding improvisational science though...

also, regarding the jungle spice in general: unless i'm way off base & my spice is much less pure than i believe it to be, i'm getting pretty much 1.2~1.4% yield from 2 heptane pulls... i'm pretty sure i've read that 1.5% is damn near all the dmt actually contained in the plant matter... if my yields are as solid as i think they are, it would seem that dealing with xylene would be a lot of nasty-smelling trouble for not much yield... am i far off base here?.. i have a screen printing shop, and we use xylene regularly, so the smell of it evapping is not an issue, but all that for .3% seems excessive to me... i want some jungle for it's different character, but if this little bit is all i get from the left over bark i'd rather just pull with xylene from the get-go for jungle & maybe ditch this soup in a dumpster...

 

[endlessness]

Do not use xylene with a plastic can, please!

Appart from that, your plan sounds ok, mix in the extraction jars and pull once or twice. The small amount of left overs from the other solvents wont affect to much.

You will most likely still get some DMT out even if you got a good yield.. You'll also get some plant oils and a bit of other alkaloids. The "different character" of jungle spice might well be placebo because the difference of other alkaloids is very very small, but I cant see it as a bad thing to try it out. If you want to really concentrate the other alkaloids, I suggest next time trying to go straight for limonene or xylene pulls, doing FASI or FASA, after retrieving all the alkaloids, washing the solvent with water and evaporating the water. Then you'll have most of the DMT in the crystallized with FASI/FASA, and what will be left over in your evapped water is a bit of DMT fumarate with some excess fumaric acid, plus much more concentrated 'other alkaloids' in mimosa. Then you could convert that to freebase and bioassay, and let us know how it goes !

I would NOT evaporate xylene, its nasty as hell... Why not salting it out with vinegar and then converting to freebase with sodium carb and pulling with acetone or IPA or dry ethanol, to evap that instead?

Also, dumping stuff in the dumpster doesnt seem like a good idea.. Separate the solvent, which you can either try to find a place to properly discard it in your town, or keep them for reusing by washing them with acidic, basic, clean water and running through activated carbon, or evaporate the solvents, and with the mimosa mix, pouring down the toilet (NaOH is used for unblocking drains, so it cant be so bad), or neutralize it with vinegar before if you feel its better.

 

[Leon Trout]

thanks... i'll steer clear from the plastic jug for mixing...

i was considering salting out the xylene pulls, thinking that the fumarate would be better for some pharma... real interested in eliminating smoking from my routine...

as far as getting rid of the excess waste, that's gonna be an issue... i live in an area that's been on high alert as far as chemical waste goes for years... meth cooks are a real problem in the area, if you listen to law enforcement... i'm thinking the dumpster at work is probably my best bet... it's a hazardous waste receptacle, we pay a good bit of extra for it due to the screen printing business, and having to dispose of noxious chemicals on a regular basis... the owner of the business is a lifelong friend, and enjoys my spice with me pretty regularly, so i don't see him having any objections...8)

& again, thanks for the pointers... i've learned more here from you nexians than i was prepared to admit i didn't know...