Perhaps it helps to clear up the nomenclature a bit.
Saphdmt is using the word
"oil" in the sense of macroscopic physical appearance. But when talking about chemical properties, "oil" has a couple of different meanings. It could be:
- mineral oil: This is a mixture of hydrocarbons, straight chained, branched, saturated or unsaturated, aliphatic or aromatic. Diesel oil, gasoline and naphtha are refined forms of mineral oil. Mineral oil is very non-polar.
- vegetable (or animal) oil: These are so-called
triglycerides, three units of fatty acid
esterified with one unit of glycerol. Different vegetable oils may carry different fatty acids, depending on plant source. Animal fats are also triglycerides, eg. a major constituent of butter is the glycerol tri-ester of butyric acid. By action of alkalis, esters may be hydrolized into free glycerol and alkali salts of fatty acids, the latter commonly knows as soaps. Bio-diesel is the result of transesterification of glycerol tri-esters into methyl esters. The higher volatility of mono-esters makes them more useful for combustion. Esters are mostly non-polar, but still somewhat polar, due to the ester group. As the size of the fatty acid and the alcohol increases, the non-polarity increases.
- plant waxes: these are mostly esters of long chain fatty acids and long chain alcohols, but waxes may also contain some long chain alkanes.
And finally on the nexus "oil" may also indicate:
- any non-crystalline goo that is the resulting product of an extraction.
There, you see, it has very little to do with acids and bases, in terms of pH. It does have a lot to do with
polarity. The reason why dmt extractions involve acids and bases is that alkaloids such as dmt change polarity under the influence of acids and bases.
There could be a few explanations for your end product having "oily" characteristics:
- plant fats and even waxes are, although mostly non-polar, still a little polar and will dissolve a little in a polar watery extract, especially so if there is a lot of semisoluble plant matter in the solution to help carry them in the polar watery solution. Even the acetic acid can serve as a cosolvent. Perhaps even the dmt is a cosolvent (that's just a guess). If you want to eliminate the presence of non-polars from the watery extract before basifying, extract it while stil acidic with fresh non-polar solvent. This is called a defatting step.
- if your plant material contains other alkaloids that are also extracted and co-precipitate with the dmt, then that can disturb the crystallization of the dmt. Instead of nice shards, you'll get something oily, that only slowly crystallizes, sometimes taking days or weeks. Some plant sources contain a lot of nmt, some plant sources contain a lot of dmt n-oxide.
- Dmt is polymorphic, meaning it can have multiple crystal structures, not all are clear white.
- Your naphtha has impurities. Alsways test evaporate your naphtha before using it in an extraction.