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Solvents in Australia

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DMTPanda

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Taking a stroll through a local Bunnings the other day, SWIM could really only find Shellite and Xylene as solvents for extraction.
Shellite leaving an oily residue and Xylene stinking like a major chemical spill, are there any other solvents that could be suggested to SWIM?

Toluene I believe is highly carcinogenic.

D-Limonene sounds ideal for its smell, safety, and pulling ability however I'm pretty sure it's not an available product in Australia.

Are there any other suggestions of what products that can be used for extracting Obtusifolia?
 
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Xylene perfect?? Really??
it just smells so bad and the smell travels everywhere, and from what I've read it's quite harsh on your health.
Xylene also doesn't come cheap.
Xylene is also meant to pull lots of other oils and gunk from Acacia right?

SWIM is pretty sure Shellite is Naphtha in Australia. Unless there are other brand names. SWIM recalls a Colemans? However wasn't able to find it as of yet.
 
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SWIM was thinking whether some household cleaning products would be good alternatives. They are fairly powerful solvents, smell quite nice, leave little to no residue, and are safe to spray in your home and kitchen surfaces.
Has anyone had any experience with using such products for an extraction?
 
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Shellite should work just fine if you do a freeze precipitation, it's a lot more selective than Xylene though, meaning it will mainly pull N,N-DMT and very little of any other Alkaloids. The downside to Shellite is that it takes more pulls to remove Alkaloids from an extraction

Xylene's the second option but it's slow to evaporate and smells a lot more. The upside with Xylene is that it can pull and hold a larger amount of Alkaloids, meaning you can yield "full spectrum" and also extract doing less pulls.

You could also try ordering in D-Limonene online. I know very little on using it though.

Most of the other solvents that can be used are fairly difficult to come across in Australia, so your best bet is to stick with the two mentioned above, or look into D-Limonene as a cleaner alternative.
 
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what you will find is that smell is fairly irrelevant so long as its nothing like toluene which will strip the proverbial nerves off your brain cells (reason it has been banned in some places, people can get high on it, mostly children and people who are not to bright, but it causes severe damage to your nervous system

xylene is just about the most broad spectrum solvent you can find relatively speaking, you will pick up everything you want plus a great deal of stuff you never intended to., you best bet may to do the full pull with the xylene then do a selective recrystallization with the shellite, but the stuff pulled by the xylene all on its own will be pretty amazing.

but you mentioned it before so i should warn you, you mentioned a residue, evaporate what ever your intending to use in a dish and see if it leaves an oil or anything before you try to use it, if a oil remains you do not want that stuff.

otherwise dont worry about smells too much, this isnt exactly a "smelly" endeavor, and if anyone asks just say your cleaning the house.
 
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D-Limonene is available in various stores in oz - do a google search, its easy to find!

Toluene is sometimes available form hardware stores and is quite good quality. Unlike Xylene from bunnings, which tends to leave a bit of residue.

Toluene is not THAT toxic, just wear a mask or avoid sniffing and you will be right.

Shellite seems to be SHIT these days... friends have been going for buying Zippo instead which works a whole lot better for recrystallisation etc. Try doing two shellite pulls and then a toluene pull, the toluene will normally pull more than the first two shellite pulls!

Once you go d-limonene, and figure out how to make it work for you, it is hard to go back to the chems!
 
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yeah i've noticed shellite lately is getting worse and dmt is becoming less and less soluble in it. i've been using the bunnings xylene with quite good results though I wil keep that in mind chocobeastie :) a recent extraction took me like 4 pulls to get like a gram of spice out and that was with warm shellite. I don't bother with it now.. plus you have to heat it
 
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So are there any brands of shellite that are particularly bad and should be avoided, or are you finding this with shellite in general ?

6 bucks a pop for a little can of zippo would be quite expensive without a good recovery system.
 
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D-limonene is readily available in Oz in pretty much any art supply store as a citrus based brush cleaner / thinner. Just check the MSDS. I sourced pure d-limonene this way. There is also Sceney's brand citrus solvent which is also pure d-limonene.
 
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Vitalstatistix said:
D-limonene is readily available in Oz in pretty much any art supply store as a citrus based brush cleaner / thinner. Just check the MSDS. I sourced pure d-limonene this way. There is also Sceney's brand citrus solvent which is also pure d-limonene.
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Nice! Thanks for the info, I'll definitely keep my eye out now.

Would D-Limonene be able to produce pure crystals? I've read it's more broad spectrum similar to Xylene. I know alot of people prefer the goo / jungle, but I really want to produce pure as a hobby thing.

I was also thinking about if anyone here has tried using Mineral Turpentine, Methylated Spirits, or Acetone? Does anyone know how selective these would be for crystals?
 
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My friend has used D-Limonene and but prefers to use Toluene.
Both me and my friend do around 2 pulls with Toluene (just to be sure, 1 pull would usually do), evap that to goo, and then re-xtal the goo with hot Shellite and freeze precip to get nice crystals, works a treat :)
Toluene pulls DMT very well.
I found a big ass 20L drum that I got from a motor shop, I believe it's used as a fuel additive to increase Octane level, but they would hardly ask 20 questions.
Good luck.
 
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Hieronymous said:
So are there any brands of shellite that are particularly bad and should be avoided, or are you finding this with shellite in general ?

6 bucks a pop for a little can of zippo would be quite expensive without a good recovery system.
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Shellite is the brand, Zippo is insane priced imo (for this purpose).
I find doing initial pulls with a good solvent, and rextal with hot shellite is the best of both worlds imo (easier to heat up and keep warm a small amount of shellite and minimal goo, than a huge amount of basified solution mixed with 100-300mls of shellite.
 
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Isn't Shellite a generic term for a mix of hydrocarbons over a range of fractions that comes off the still ?

I have two brands in front of me right now from different manufacturers.

One is from Sceneys (Home hardware) and the other is from KCB chemicals (Supercheap auto).

The sceneys brand pulled a lot of crap and didn't seem to facilitate precipitation effectively and I haven't tried the KCB yet.
 
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Hieronymous said:
Isn't Shellite a generic term for a mix of hydrocarbons over a range of fractions that comes off the still ?

I have two brands in front of me right now from different manufacturers.

One is from Sceneys (Home hardware) and the other is from KCB chemicals (Supercheap auto).

The sceneys brand pulled a lot of crap and didn't seem to facilitate precipitation effectively and I haven't tried the KCB yet.
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Good to know! Please update for us all when you try the KBC brand as I have not used this yet but was intending to try it out.. Thanks
 
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shanedudddy2 said:
evap that to goo, and then re-xtal the goo with hot Shellite and freeze precip to get nice crystals, works a treat :)
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Sounds like a good idea, I will try this.
I just pulled some super dark brown Xylene, excited to try re-crystallise with hot shellite.
So just to confirm its a recrystallisation and not an acid wash process you perform?
 
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acacian said:
yeah i've noticed shellite lately is getting worse and dmt is becoming less and less soluble in it. i've been using the bunnings xylene with quite good results though I wil keep that in mind chocobeastie :) a recent extraction took me like 4 pulls to get like a gram of spice out and that was with warm shellite. I don't bother with it now.. plus you have to heat it
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good to here this from you guys... been having exactly the same problem with shellite... it definitely seems to have changed recently and is not doing the job well at all... even when doing very hot (bubbling) pulls...
 
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