Tryptamine420 said:
I had ~2g of yellow spice. Recrystallized last night & the yellow will not go away.
i dissolved in ~90ml hot, fresh naphtha, some goo fell out & then i freeze precipped only to get spice that was just as yellow.
Tried again today & have the same problem. When the spice is dissloved into the solvent, the solvent turns yellow & any goo dissolves in when stirred.
Right now i have 1.5g dissolved in 80ml solvent sitting in a heat bath returning to room temp but the solvent is showing no signs of color loss or impurities precipitating.
How hot is the naphtha? If the naphtha is too hot, it will dissolve the impurities along with the spice. I was having the same problem as yourself, I would end up with just as yellow spice. I thought i wanted to dissolve the spice into the hot solvent, but that just dissolved the impurities too. but I have fixed it now. i just did this earlier today so it's fresh in my mind, i was working with 1.3G of yellow dmt. I have a hot plate, so I set it to 50 degrees celcius, and warmed up some water. I put 40mL of fresh naphtha in a beaker and placed the beaker in the water to warm up. I put the 1.3G of yellow dmt in a separate jar, and did NOT put this jar in the warm water. ** this is key, if you put the spice into a too hot heat bath, the impurities will melt with it. so it is best to just warm up the naphtha to 50C and work it into the spice yourself, without melting the spice**
after a couple minutes, i touched my finger to the naphtha and it was warm, not hot (you dont want it to be hot, just warm). I took a pipette, and sucked up some of the naphtha, not all of it, and, holding the jar at an angle so that all of the spice was in a corner, I slowly dripped the naphtha in the spice jar until it covered the 1.3G, making sure to hold it at an angle so that it was all contained in a corner rather than sitting flat, and then added a little bit more naphtha on top, so that a) i could see the naphtha over the spice and b) i could put my pipette in the naphtha and suck the naphtha up without pulling any spice into the pipette. note that this is only like 1/4 or 1/3 of the total naphtha i had warmed up, like 10 to 20 mL, it is best to work with small amounts rather than too much, in my experience.
from here, I swirled the naphtha around in the jar, but i noticed this would cause some of the spice to be stuck around the jar, so I sucked naphtha up and tilted the jar again, and then squirted naphtha around to get all the spice back into the corner. then I sucked up the naphtha, and squirted it into the spice to mix the goo around. i did this for a little bit, but made sure not to be overly aggressive, we want the naphtha to remain clear. the dmt immediately dissolves into the naphtha, so after a minute or so, I separated the naphtha into a separate pyrex dish. you can do this by first sucking up all the naphtha on top of the goo, then, because you have kept all the goo in one corner, you can roll the jar so any remaining naphtha rolls to the other side where the goo is not, and you can suck it up cleanly.
then, repeat with a little bit more warm, clear naphtha. keep sucking the naphtha up and squirting it back into the goo, keep mixing the goo around and then getting all the goo back into one pile, then while it is still clear, separate the naphtha into a separate dish and do it again and again. each time you do it, the goo will get smaller, but the naphtha will remain clear. you can be sure that there is dmt in each batch of clear naphtha by blowing into the naphtha for a couple seconds until you see clouds appear.
keep doing this, little bit of naphtha at a time, until the goo pretty much disappears. eventually you will notice a glob of stuff which doesn't dissolve, and is probably mixed with hair, just pull this out with your finger or the eyedropper. i was only doing 1.3 grams, and had to add a little bit more naphtha to my beaker, and let that warm up for a couple minutes before using it to completely wash all the goo in the other jar. all this naphtha that you combine together in a separate jar or pyrex dish, you can freeze precipitate or evaporate. It should cloud up as soon as you put it onto a pyrex plate, or into another jar, and because you are using such a little amount of naphtha, you could set it under a fan and it will evaporate pretty much before your eyes. although, this might leave a very very light yellow tint to SOME of the crystals, which you can just wash again like this and get rid of. or you could freeze precip and probably bypass that yellow.
i ended up with 1.15 grams of shiny white crystal, although there was a very very light yellow tint to SOME of it, which I will wash out by doing this again.
if doing two grams, you will probably need more than 40mL, so you could start with 80mL warmed up in a beaker, just don't add all of it to your spice at once. (you could, but i have better luck doing it little by little. this way you don't use too much and it will evaporate quicker)
key points:
A) do not heat the naphtha up to more than 40 - 50C, I use 50C, but you may be able to do this with 40C.
B) do not melt the spice down, add the warm naphtha to the non melted spice,
C) Warm up all the naphtha at once, but only add 10 to 20mL at a time to the spice, just enough to cover the spice and some more on top so you can separate it from the spice easily, but not a whole bunch
D) swirl the naphtha around, use an eyedropper and suck the naphtha up and push the naphtha into the goo so that goo moves around, or physically move the goo back and forth with the eyedropper itself, but this might get goo stuck to the eyedropper, but keep the goo all together on one side of the jar, it is easier to work with in my opinion
E) ** this is the big one for me ** -- you want the naphtha to remain clear while this is happening, and it will unless you made it too hot... but while the naphtha is still clear, separate it into a different container and then repeat with another small amount of naphtha.