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Substituting Calcium hydroxide for lye in Harmala extraction?

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AluminumFoilRobots

AluminumFoilRobots

gufyg
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Hello everyone!

So I am just finishing up my yopo extraction and am in one of those extractin' kinda moods, so I am going to be beginning my first harmala extraction! I am using The Tao of Rue Extraction as my reference.

However, I noticed that this TEK calls for lye, which I don't use. However, I love using Calcium hydroxide, so can I use it in this procedure? Sodium carbonate is also on the table, but it is weaker than lime right? I don't have a Ph meter, but in the TEK it says just add lye until the color change occurs... so the same would go for lime right?

Thanks!
 
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I just bumped a thread in the suppliers section where you can get 8lbs of food grade lye for like $13.

In order to use calcium hydroxide I believe you'd have to do a dry tek and I have no idea how to go about doing that with harmala extractions.
 
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^^^^

yeah I am realizing the fact that CaOH is only suitable for dryteks... and yeah I saw that thread but I don't need that much (impermanent address I live in my van) and I am a little concerned with lye being a watched chemical in my country (USA!) and 8 pounds pounds is just yeah way more than I need. It is a great deal though!

So I was wondering if anyone has used Sodium carbonate as a substitute for Lye in the Tao of Rue xtraction TEK? I want to avoid lye as much as possible. I don't want to bother working with extremely caustic solutions requiring substantial safety equipment, and I want to avoid being put on any more watchlists than I have to be. Sodium carbonate seems like a superior option, even if I have to use more of it. Sodium bicarbonate is cheap! A heap of sodium carbonate can be made for cheap as easily as turning on an oven! And it has a much better safety profile than sodium hydroxide. That stuff is just scary.

What is the pH necessary to start precipitating the alkaloids? Or should I just try adding the sodium carb until I see the precipitation occurring? I dunno these are all questions sorry! Does any have experience with this? It seems to me like it would work as sodium carbonate is a relatively strong base...
 
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gah!

Well can anyone comment on my fear of DEA watchlists? Is this a reasonable fear when purchasing small quantities of sodium hydroxide? It just scares me that I could be "watched" (whatever that means exactly- how far do they go and why don't we know?) on suspicion of methamphetamine production and then go down for extracting some other illegal substance? Is this mostly paranoia? Does this "watched" status only matter when one is involved in large-scale illicit synthesis?

So Sodium carbonate will apparently precipitate a good amount of the harmine, but leaves behind lots of the harmaline. But it's also just unpredictable and can cause lots of strange results (pH jumping around, or not matching estimates). sigh... does anyone know of anything besides lye I can use before I bite this bullet and find some...?
 
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another option is to use ammonia to crash out your harmalas. its strong enough of a base to get everything out, i saved my water after retrieving harmalas and added some lye water to make sure ammonia got all the goodies out, and saw no more precipitation with the lye. I like ammonia since its really easy to tell if you have some left in your end product since it has such a strong and unmistakable smell.

go for the 10% janitor's strength, though the usual 5% works just fine. check the ingredients to make sure its just ammonia and water, some brands put detergents in.


AluminumFoilRobots said:
^^^^

(impermanent address I live in my van)
Click to expand...


are you close to a river?

matt-foley-in-a-van-down-by-the-river.jpg
 
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evil804 said:
another option is to use ammonia...


AluminumFoilRobots said:
^^^^

(impermanent address I live in my van)
Click to expand...


are you close to a river?

matt-foley-in-a-van-down-by-the-river.jpg
Click to expand...

LOL! Holy shit that is the funniest thing I have seen here in a while! This is the first honest lol I have thrown up in a long time...!


Thanks for the advice on the ammonia, I forgot about her! Since it sounds like you've used it, are there any tips you can give me? I think that this is what I'll be using; you mentioned the issue of having a bit in your final product - how do I deal with that? Should I just add it until I see alks precipitating?

Thanks alot for the advice and the laugh!
 
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yes, just use it as you would lye water in gibran's or the Tao of Rue teks. add until the color stops changing, then a bit more for good measure. its easy to tell if you need to wash your harmalas some more when you think they're ready. if there is a smell of ammonia, then you need to wash and decant. rue is cheap, so i dont mind losing a few MG of harmalas to ensure a clean pure product with numerous washes in distilled water. i find 3-4 washes after using the ammonia is sufficient to get rid of any traces of ammonia, but if you smell anything when you have dried your harmalas dont be afraid to wash them a few more times.


Even if tiny traces remain, ammonia is nothing to worry about it small amounts. its easily metabolized, and is even used as a tool to fire up powerlifters before a big lift. Its a common sight to see a powerlifter crack an ammonia smelling salt tablet and take a big whiff as he approaches the platform. i can attest to its efficacy.

Marc Bartley getting a big ol whiff of ammonia before a 1050 lb squat.

Marc-B.-Ammonia.jpg
 
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Hm, so on on the hunt for janitorial strength ammonia and am not having much luck. The only ammonia I can find has detergents and such... what kind of store does one get janitorial strength, or even just plain non-sudsy 5% household stuff? All the grocery stores and pharmacies only had detergent stuff.
 
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Melodic Catastrophe said:
I don't believe that sodium carbonate is strong enough to get all of the alks out but you can get most of them out.

This thread by Endlessness states that it just isn't strong enough to get everything out. Your mileage may vary though.

Lye isn't that bad... It just requires respect is all.

I wish I had more answers for ya and I hope someone else chimes in to help you out!
Click to expand...

this may be due to the fact that my harmalas were already pure, but i recently seperated my harmalas into seperate batches of harmine and harmaline. everything was dissolved in dilluted vinegar, then harmine came out with sodium bicarbonate, and harmaline with sodium carbonate. after everything settled from the harmaline precip, i added some lye saturated water to see if anything else came out, and nothing did.

again, this was with already purified harmalas, this may be different while still in solution with lots of impurities.
 
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Welp, I actually just found sodium hydroxide and considering the variables (plus I was having a hard time locating the ammonia), I got a pound of it. lol :oops: :roll:

Proceeding to basify my harmala tea!

I'm a little scared about still... I'm reading as much safety info as I can and I have resistent gloves, a respirator, and goggles at hand.

I have also been reading about the violent reaction from adding the Lye, has anyone had this happen to them? I'll just add erm, slow 😉
 
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I found that using baking soda [[ actually, BAKED baking soda : Sodium Carbonate ]] to crash out the initial 'alks' then strain and crash out the remaining liquid with Lye, works rather well. Sometimes its hard to tell when you got all the alks out without having your 'Base' built up on the bottom undissolved so thats why I 'Two Step It'. At the end when I got all of it out of the Rue Seeds, I redissolve them both [[ Extracts ]] together with H2o and citric acid then go straight to lye until it takes no more which crashes out both harmine and harmala I believe. I know I got them all out when I strain them out and try to get more out of the liquid and it won't dissolve even the smallest amount of lye.
I was curious if I too could use Calcium Hydroxide, thats how I found this link but apparently it's not a good idea as it wont work.
 
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