Sceletium

[DrRas]

Hey guys I've been looking at ways to extract sceletium most information I've found has required the use of columns and hplc and all sorts I recently was looking at the cielo method used for mescaline citrate and wondering if I could apply one of the teks and result in a sceletium that can be insufflated

 

[Transform]

Good question. If it's mesembrine you're after, it would depend entirely on how that molecule behaves in the circumstances. Given its passing resemblance to mescaline, there's a fair chance it might play ball.

I'd advise scouring the literature for any and all physicochemical data, then using that to inform one's experimental methodology.

 

[[:]]

WO2010106495A1 - Sceletium extract and uses thereof - Google Patents

A composition including as an active ingredient an extract of a plant of the family Mesembryanthemaceae with mesembrenol and mesembrenone as the two major alkaloids present. The invention also relates to the use of the composition as a PDE4 inhibitor and as a serotonin-uptake inhibitor...

patents.google.com

From the above patent:

Dry above-ground plant material is milled using a conventional industrial milling machine, for example a hammer mill, with the mesh size adjusted to achieve a particle size preferably greater than 85 microns and less than or equal to 3mm.
The milled powder is added to an aqueous, or aqueous-ethanolic solution, most preferably consisting of not less than 70% ethanol, in a suitably sized stainless steel container with an electric stirrer. The ratio of raw material to extraction liquid is preferably between 1 : 5 to 1 : 7 by weight. The temperature is preferably kept at between 25 0C - 50 ° C. The mixture is stirred slowly and continuously for 24 hours, then filtered through a suitable commercial filter of sufficient fineness to exclude particulate matter. The filtrate is spray-dried using a conventional spray-drier onto suitable pharmaceutically acceptable excipients such as lactose monohydrate. The amount of pharmaceutically acceptable excipient is adjusted by those skilled in the art to ensure a final total alkaloid content of 0.4% Figure 1 shows the typical CG-MS chromatogram of the extract with three prominent alkaloid peaks for mesembrenol, mesembranone and mesembrenone and a smaller peak for mesembrine. The CG-MS chromatogram has been annotated to show the MS spectra and chemical structures of mesembrenol, mesembranol, mesembrine and mesembrenone.
Using raw material of the specific high-mesembrenol, low-mesembrine selection of Sceletium already described herein, the extract profile could be produced by those skilled in the art using other extraction technologies and processes, including but not limited to, vacuum drying of filtrate, supercritical CO2 extraction, membrane extraction technologies, and microwave extraction.

Same patent but a different method, here quite similar to some mescaline extractions:

A mass of 5 g of the powder is weighed and transferred to a conical flask. A volume of 60 mL, 0.5 N sulphuric acid (AR grade, Merck LTD) is then added to the mixture which is shaken manually to ensure that the pulverized plant material is in suspension and then left undisturbed for 15 min. The mixture is then filtered into a 250 mL separating funnel using MN 615. 125 mm filter paper (Macherey-Nagel, Germany).

A volume of 30 mL of 20% (v/v) ammonia (AR grade, Merck LTD) solution is added to the contents of the separating funnel and gently swirled. Universal litmus paper (pH-Fix,

0-14, Macherey-Nagel) is used in this step to ensure that the pH of the flask is greater than 7 (basic).

Alkaloids are extracted from the basic mixture (prepared above) using AR grade dichloromethane (DCM) from Merck LTD. A volume of 35 mL, DCM is added to the flask which is swirled gently. The mixture is allowed to settle and the lower DCM layer is filtered into round-bottomed flasks using MN 615. 125 mm filter paper. The liquid-liquid extraction is carried out twice and the two DCM filtrates are combined and concentrated on a rotary evaporator (Bϋchi rotavapor R-200, Switzerland) at 40 0C, to a volume of approximately 2 mL. The concentrated extract is transferred into weighed 8.0 mL glass vials and then placed in a vacuum oven (Vismara srl scientific equipment-technical service, model Vo 65) at 40 0C and 0.2 bar. The mass of the dry alkaloid extract is calculated and the percentage yield determined using the formula below.

Using an acid to ensure alkaloids are in solution, then making that solution basic with ammonia and then using DCM to extract that solution is an approach that has been used for extraction of cactus alkaloids.

The patent suggests that approaches that are effective for mescaline may be effective for mesembrine, but I expect that the mesembrine is less stable at high pH and at high temps and that approaches like caustic STB extractions, which work for mescaline, may not be effective for mesembrine and related alkaloids.