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Still not possible to filter Harmalas - Do basic Extraction instead ?

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Brennendes Wasser

Brennendes Wasser

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Senior member Chemical engineer
Hello!

I wrote in another Thread some time ago that I simply cannot filter Harmalas - making the complete process impossible.

The problem:

When I grind the seeds with my (smoothie) mixer some parts of the seeds get crushed ultra fine. When I cook them I get a soup which is extremely full of sediment.

This sediment shall be filtered off - because then you want your Harmalas to precipitate (by adding salt or lye or however you prefer).

Therefore this soup can't get through a filter. I used a towel to filter it - which is not really useful as it's like not filtering at all, but at least some stuff was removed.


Now I started to add salt and it precipitated. Then I tried to filter that off - no chance.

Then I said: Ah ... then I'll add the lye and get the freebase harmalas, possibly they will be easier to filter.


But also not - I even used a MOTORIZED LABORATORY PUMP, which is insanely strong and a Büchner Funn el with 15 cm diameter. I got like 100 ml of my 2 liter soup filtered within 5 hours with this. Therefore - NO!




So my Idea is now: As it is impossible to filter it, I'd just extract the already-precipitated freebase Harmalas with an unpolar solvent. But what Solvent could I use ?

The Harmalas are already precipitated and not in the salt-form anymore. Therefore they should be jumping into a non-polar solvent in no time, when I put them together.

But now I used:

- Toluene
- Dichlormethane
- Ethyl Acetate
- Diethyl Ether

And all I got was that the organic layer got a liiittle bit coloured, but you could still see through - and the Harmalas were still sitting precipitated in the aqueous phase ...


I really don't know what I can do anymore, it's such a shame because I got such huge amounts of Harmalas I guess, as I used like 700 g Syrian Rue : /

I can see them so near and cannot get through them ...




2. Would it be possible to evaporate the water in an oven ? Yeah ... the NaOH will remain there ... but then at least I'd get something. But if I do the temperature of the oven to 80°C - will that kill the Harmalas ? Well in Solution - when doing the cooking - not ... but then they are unprotected lying at the air - I guess the oxygen will make short work of most of it, making it inactive ?


Please help me to get my Harmalas : S If this batch is working, I'd never have to extract them again. *sigh* =P
 
what about working with whole seeds? it works quite well and less trouble with filtration

harmalas freebase are not very soluble in NPS or even in alcohol, it's not practical to use them for extractions

check this

if you have a pressure cooker you can use that too to perfect it


Edit: ah sorry, you're trying to fix the extraction from ground seeds, i read it fast first time so didn't catch it


so what do we have here, harmalas soup+sediments, then salt, then base

i suggest as a first step to acidify the solution adding some water too to dilute so they don't crash out again bcz of salt, then let it sit for a day and decant slowly leaving sediments behind, and keep the liquid

top the sediments with acidic water to save any alks left in them, and again leave it for a day then decant slowly leaving sediment behind and keep the liquid, discard sediments

combine the liquids and base them, let it sit for 12 hours, decant water and keep sediments and discard liquid

dissolve sediments in acidic water, and let it sit for a day, there will be some brown sediments, decant slowly, keep liquid and discard sediments

at this point you can try to filter it as it will be easier to do so, first through a cotton t shirt then through coffee filter or cotton and funnel
 
I second using whole seeds, i tried using powdered seed once and it was an absolute mess to filter, whole seeds work fine ime.
 
Powdered: use solely settle/decant instead of filtering until clean enough to filter.

Whole seeds:
* non pressurized: squeeze method, Sakkadelic style.
* pressurized (pressure pot): no squeezing necessary
Whole seeds Syrian rue bagged and cooking. <-- outdated? - Other - Welcome to the DMT-Nexus
* maybe a first settle/decant, from there on filtering should work.

As first filter job, a paper kitchen towel in a strainer works better than a coffee filter.
 
Ok so at first I have some questions for your TEK Sakkadelic!!

1.) You say freeze thaw before cooking the whole seeds. I have read this freeze / thaw process a lot of times so far, but what is the purpose ? I never got it ... does it partly crushes the seeds top layer in the microscopic dimension and enhancing extraction?

2.) You say BOIL them vigorously - often it is said to use caution with heat - is 100°C still completely okay for the Harmalas ? If so, is it okay to cook the whole seeds like 2 h each, 3 times = 6 h at 100°C no problem for them ?

3.) Mash with potato masher: So this is I guess to get even more liquids out of the seeds before doing the next cook ?

4.) In the end: Using a hair dryer to get rid of liquids: is there a special distance which you keep between both? Again this would make me getting fear that the dryer burns my Harmalas : S

And last question:

So for 100 g of Seeds what is the typical amount of Harmalas in the outcome ?
 
1. seeds will absorb water, and water expands as it freezes, so as the water expands it will break even the cell walls in the seeds, so alkaloids are more easily released..

2.yes, no problem, harmala alkaloids in salt form are stable

3.yeah to make them more soft without really powdering them

4.again in salt form harmalas are stable so don't worry much about heat... sometimes i put it very close


a typical amount is 6g freebase which is equivalent to 7g HCl salt, even if you didn't get them all first round you can still work on them and get the rest.. so always think, "where my alkaloids at?" and don't discard that


i think the key point in this tek is to properly prepare the tea to get all alks out, so boil it well and long of not using microwave and squeeze hard
 
Brennendes Wasser said:
4.) In the end: Using a hair dryer to get rid of liquids: is there a special distance which you keep between both? Again this would make me getting fear that the dryer burns my Harmalas : S
Click to expand...
Just press the filter cake between two stacks of kitchen towels. That way, you also take out a lot of the dissolved NaCl salt, that would stay mixed with the harmalas if you only evaporate the moisture. Keep changing towels (keep the paper towels that touch the filter cake, to avoid excess mechanical loss) until the paper stacks stay dry. After that you can either air dry the cake or speed things up a little in an electric oven set at 100 degrees Centigrade (Celcius). Be careful that the oven's overhead heating element doesn't scorch the harmalas. Even though the oven thermostat may be set to 100, the heating elements get much hotter, until the set oven temperature is reached. I have found that placing the almost dry-pressed harmalas in a petri dish on the hotplate of my coffee maker is an equally fast, but much safer technique.
 
Ok, what a wonderful thing that there are so many qualified people around here.

Yeah: I had the Harmalas in the salt form, but also in the FB form sitting around in their soup for some days, I hope the time while being FB did not hurt.

I used so many seeds that I have extreme dense precipitation and now I'll try to decant it a little bit more efficiently with a extraction funnel.

The thing is: When I dragged the pH down from like 13 to 3 there was like no change in the total amount of precipitation - I was thinking that the precipitation would either be removed or get much less. But there is still extremely much hanging around, I cannot even say that I may tell if there has something dissolved again.

So now that would indicate that this all is just random plant shit? Actually I'm not quite sure, as I used so much Harmalas and now could it be that they're not so soluble to be fully solved again? I just came to this idea as I have the amount of (hopefully) 700 g Harmala seed weight in just 1L of water.

I will dry those stuff and test if it's containing MAOI later. It's just that I am quite unsure as I don't think that the soup looked like this directly after the cooking and therefore I would assume that I am still seeing Harmalas hanging in there, even at pH 3 :?

Ok and the question to the amount of 100g seeds was:

If you use 100g Seeds (not the Salt forms ;D) then how much Harmala FB do you get?
So this is not a conversion question, but just how much yield you guys have.



And last thing: You said that while being in the Salt form it's not vulnerable to decomposition (or whatever). So what about the FB form? Because my last extraction did not yield any active stuff ... and it was sadly hanging around very long time in it's soup, as I could not get around the filtering process. I don't remember if it was more in the Salt form or FB, but I'm just having a little fear for every upcoming extractions because of this :S



Ooooh and 1 more thing:

Sakkadelic I read that you told somewhere that smoking MAOI on it's own does also produce a noticeable worthy experience. How much Harmalas did you use for this ? When regarding smoking with a bong.
Of course I'm also interested in a *pure MAOI* experience, but I'd also like to test whether they're active and this may be a really good way, if I know the dosage.
Please also tell me what a regular dosage for eating is, would that be like 100 mg for a really soft and like 200+ for a strong MAOI-experience?

THXXX !
 
Well yeah that's why i suggested to add acidic water a second time and decant it again
700g rue in 1L water that's insane :p when working with 100g my tea would be like 2L.. even if the volume is big you're gonna discard it all when you add the base and decant

what love all suggests is a good way to test it

About the yield from 100g
Well i gave you the answer in case you collected it in any of the 2 possible forms... if you decide to collected it in freebase form(white powder) it should be around 6g and in salt form(yellow needle crystals) it should be around 7g

Freebase degrades in open air and turn into a red substance... in solution i think it lasts longer but maybe the high PH degrades it too, few days should be fine but i don't know about long periods... maybe someone else knows better about this..

I didn't weight it when i smoked it through a bong, a cone as they say, it was a lot, you don't need to do that, you can try small doses 10-20 mg and then smoke more... also to test it better ingest it first than smoke cz you know if there are trace base in it it is not good for smoking so make sure you water wash it to the right PH if you intend to smoke it...

50-100mg mood lifting and soft as you say, i take such doses either before sleep to enhance dreams or in the morning to have a wonderful day
100-200mg effect are stronger but still manageable
200-300mg strong
The most i took was 450mg, nit recommended
One thing i noticed is now it affects me stronger than before
 
I have put a lot of this FB Harmalas into acidic water as I said and saidly there was no optical evidence that it had dissolved again. But I used a little of this acidic extract and salted it (as you would do anyways) and yeah, there is a little bit of salt coming :)

Well ... either I will loose some if there is still Harmala left in the precipitated FB Soup, but I guess I will just proceed with the extract and toss the cloudy stuff which is left behind, I'll still get a lot out of it I guess.

Ok and for the numbers which you gave for smoking Harmala: This is for smoking right? Because it is quite similar to what I read about ingesting it, then it's not a kind of different thing. But what do you mean with: Eat it first to check it there are *trace base* in it - what is a trace base ?
And to do the correct pH: I thought putting it at pH 13 is the FB-pH and then it will be fine. Just what I think is that if the pH is too low then I dont have the FB and this is bad - but then I get the salt and not an (trace) base. So please explain ;D

And lastly: Sorry I did not understand, I thought you mean: 6 g FB is turned into 7 g salt when you convert it, but not the amount of yield from 100g. Thanks!



A last question:

I read of course 10000 times about not to ingest several stuff when being on Harmalas. Yeah, but the second important information is not given: HOW LONG?
So if I take them at 12:00 what is the time when I would be safe to ingest something which would cause bad interactions otherwise?


THXXX
 
I said start with 10-20 mg smoking then smoke more

The other doses i listed are for oral ingestion

When you collect your harmalas freebase and there's basic water in it and you dry that, if the PH was still high then there will be base in your freebase powder so you should do water washes to lower the PH i don't know how much exactly bcz i don't have a PH meter, so if your raise the PH to 13 you must do water washes..

about food interactions waiting 6 hours before and six hours after is good enough... but in the case of drug interaction you must wait longer maybe 10 days?
 
Brennendes Wasser said:
A last question:

I read of course 10000 times about not to ingest several stuff when being on Harmalas. Yeah, but the second important information is not given: HOW LONG?
So if I take them at 12:00 what is the time when I would be safe to ingest something which would cause bad interactions otherwise?


THXXX
Click to expand...

 
Ok ... now I guess I know enough about Harmalas. I just could not really dissolve them in Acetone - is Ethanol really the best way to do it?


I used it nevertheless, even if it was not really dissolved, should this be a problem regarding attaching it to the leaf? Or will it just sink to the groudn and everything will be left there when my Acetone has evapped ?



And another question:

I'll be able to do some more finally, and efficient. But how to store them?

If you say Freebase in Air degrades, then why putting it on the herb? Because then the Freebase is in the Air Oô

And if I want to keep some solely to use it along with other stuff like Mushrooms, then how could I store it for max efficiency ?


a) Use the Salt and store as crystals

b) Use the Salt and dissolve in water, putting it into the freezer

c) Use the FB as crystals (I guess not, but shouldn't it be like this when I attach it to leaves ?)

d) Use the FB and dissolve in Ethanol, putting it into the freezer


So if you can help me with this, everything should be fine finally ;D
 
You don't need to grind the seeds at all.

3 x 30 min cookings are enough. You can do one or two more, or a pressure cook if you want to squeeze last bits out.

The extra yield you get from blending the seeds is close to nothing, totally not worth the struggle with filtering.

As for the filtering, I use simple strainer as the 3rd cook is so weak that squeezeing a cheese cloth is not necessary. Then everything is passed through loose cotton filter via funnel under vacuum. Then reduced, then loose cotton again, then tight cotton and we are done.
 
Well my last Issue is regarding how to dissolve them correctly.

They don't dissolve in Acetone and now are just suspensed in the liquid and this is of course not the way to go to create Changa.

And so I shall use hot Ethanol ?



Then if I use Ethanol: HOW is this working alongside the Spice in the Acetone ?

I mean: If I do the first part with Spice in Acetone and let it evaporate, then do the second step with hot Ethanol and the Harmalas, won't I wash off the spice from the herbs when I use the Ethanol ?

And the other way around the same question.

So plz tell me what is your procedure to get Harmalas AND spice on the Herbs and with what Solvent o_O


THXXX !!!
 
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