Sodium carbonate wash. Very little yield?

[nnn-yan]

Hi there. So swim has been extracting dmt for sometime. This was the first a/b cook. The extract went successful, about .5g from 250g of plant matter.

As proceeded to do the sodium carbonate wash (as always as swim does) this time Heptane was used instead of naphtha.
But now swim has very little to 0 crystals in the freezer.

Was this because Heptane was used instead of naphtha ?
The heptane solution was very minimal. ~30ml/0.5g

Thanks for your help!:
Peace and Love

 

[Jees]

0.5 out of 250 grams: what plant matter is it? Leafs?
If it is regular bark, something in the workflow is retaining the yield.
Heptane is very much ok, don't search for a weak link there.

 

[nnn-yan]

Yes P viridis leaves. Swim has does sodium carbonate washes before. Many times, using naphtha.
Is there a target pH of the water? Most teks read just say use a pinch.

 

[Jees]

Relationship of pH to freebase dmtee:
pH 8 --> 17%
pH 9 --> 67%
pH 10 --> 95%
pH 11 --> 99.5%
pH 11.6 --> 99.9%

If you haven't: read this very relevant recent thread/post:
What does a sodium carbonate wash do?
About that mentioned 5% solution:
What is PH of 5% Sodium Carbonate solution?:

...From a paper by Rio Tinto (borax, etc), the pH of a 5% solution of carbonate shall be 11.6...

I hope you have sodium carbonate, because a 5% of sodium bicarbonate will get you in the range of 7 to 8.5 only, typical 8.

Yet:

a 5% sodium carb/bicarb wash is used to wash any polar components,...

So I'm a little puzzled here, prolly contact time is important in how much the pH plays a role.
There is mentioning in some tek of doing a water-wash, no carb/bicarb , but then they emphase doing that really short to limit the potential loss.

About that yield difference between your used naphta vs. heptane, a thought:
Leaves seem to hold dmt-oxides (more than bark) which are active though, but those are not very well soluble in strict aliphatic hydrocarbons like pure heptane, maybe you have witnessed that? Perhaps your previous used naphta (some naphta does hold cyclics indeed) had some aromatics that catches the oxides better? This I wonder. Please chime in if my line of thoughts need steering.