Sodium Carbonate Wash Clarification

[Heartist]

Hi friends,

-If a giraffe had followed Cyb's hybrid A/b salt tek would it be permissible to perform a Sodium Carbonate Wash AFTER the freezer evaporation stage if lye/base contaminants were suspected to be hidden [Color does not = purity sticky thread]? Word in the zoo is that the spice extraction went smoothly with a heavenly blessed looking & smelling yield. Aside from one issue:

Being a noob at times black lye base was sucked up by the improper small dropper being used and a few drops here or there landed in the pyrex trays throughout the pulling step from jar. These were "remedied" generally at once by tilting the pyrex dish to one side allowing the sacred naphtha to flow to an opposite corner- wiping away impurity spots with paper towel (as displayed by the youtube/daily motion video "DMT Workshop" presented by" D.Barlow" at 09:29). Upon removal from freezer certain trays were quite spotless + beautiful and others had minimal yellowing(still beautiful) or even "textured" impurity symptoms of white/sometimes yellow colouring.

Upon much further research It seems that re-crystalization is a process that is useful after freezer precipitation to refine spice of plant impurities , fats, & oils and can be performed at will to obtain a more refined batch. Sodium Carbonate wash seems to be for lye and base contaminants but parameters for when and how often it can be utilized throughout many threads is somewhat ambiguous for said newcomer.. F.A.Q. wash section advises "if you have already in crystal form, redissolve in a naphtha/heptane/hexane."

-Before I throw a lovely yield of spice into a pool of naphtha can someone confirm that I am on the right track by placing a g of spice into a container of unheated(?) naphtha(to dissolve) before mixing it with the sodium carbonate base solution (pinch of sodium carbonate+100 ml water)?

-Can the Sodium Carbonate wash be performed with such liberty as the Re-x? Or only before freeze stage if required? Looking to maximize safety and add some valuable keywords for our new fam in this sub.

Any info is extremely appreciated before the breakthrough out of the zoo.

 

[leratiomyces]

Yes you can wash it with some dilute sodium carbonate solution at anytime if you thought it had some sodium hydroxide in there.
Dissolve the solid in some solvent. If using naphtha, you will have to warm it to get it to dissolve in a workable quantity of solvent.
Then shake well with a small volume of dilute sodium carbonate solution. Separate the layers. Might be an idea to evaporate some of the naphtha at this stage. Then place into freezer to precipitate.

Some people believe that this procedure reduces yields significantly due to loss of dmt into the aqueous layer. This is unlikely, but if it were to occur, the lost portion could be retrieved. So don't go throwing away the aqueous phase until you're done and dusted.

Hope that helps.

 

[Jees]

...Some people believe that this procedure reduces yields significantly due to loss of dmt into the aqueous layer...

There are teks using distilled or demin water to wash, but state that the wash should be very short to minimize losses. I tend to believe that if pH is high enough you must not fear losses with longer and heavier shakes.

 

[Heartist]

Thanks for the help everyone. It means a lot.

Upon measurement prior to the wash the one seemingly large pile was just under a quarter g when confirmed so there was a minor loss of yield with the wash; as expected with smaller piles. But I must say the smoothness and piece of mind was worth every second of time involved! It felt "CLEAN", and I could sense purity.

Also I know for a fact that the saved naphtha holds some treasures so more fun to be had.Never throw anything out till the end ppl

 

[blue.magic]

I tried the carbonate wash several times and finally given up. The loss of yield is not worth the effort. If you want to try it, use low temperatures and only a small amount of carbonate solution.

The carbonate wash is somewhat outdated and obsolete. Today's state of the art is to simply recrystallize, which will effectively remove most of the impurities.

Lye can only be present in water and water can only be present in naphtha (or other NPS) in trace amounts. If badly separated, water droplets will stay on bottom of your dish and this is where contams come from. If properly separated, you won't have virtually any water in the naphtha.

You can therefore use a drying agent (maybe calcium chloride or anhydrous magnesium sulfate) to remove the traces of water and thus lye. The naphtha is then filtered and freezed.

Yet another trick is to wash the crystals with ice cold 10% ammonia solution. If you have a vacuum filtration setup (Buchner funnel or glass sintered funnel), then turn on the pump, place your crystals on the filter and briefly wash them with the ammonia solution. This will remove most of the discoloration as well as water-soluble contaminants without dissolving your DMT. You keep the pump running for a while to dry the crystals. This should be done with good ventilation because of the ammonia gas.

 

[Heartist]

Respect blue :thumb_up: cool suggestion to experiment with.

Your points are bang on with my experience thus far. I'm levelling up hard this week.

So far on tek round 3/5 [CYB's A/B Salt Hybrid] and have almost perfected pulling technique by this third time around. Went out of the way to get all the right gear minus not having access to a proper puller, but it is forcing me to PAY ATTENTIONNN thus gaining xp: 4, 1 ml droppers ftw :twisted: