Part 3: Vaporization of DMT Salts
Normally it would be expected that ions would not vaporize, just as insanely high temperature. Still there was much evidence that many Tryptamine salts can indeed vaporize. First tests showed that Tryptamine salts created from Carbonic Acids of low acidity / pKs would vaporize nearly as fast as the Freebase Tryptamine, with just 10-20 °C higher temperature needed. So what more seems like a scientific oddity, but rather useless. But it was found that these vapors are actually not harsh at all, indicating that there might not be any caustic and acidic component inside the vapor.
It seems like 180 - 200 °C is just fine to evaporate DMT salts, similar observations were made for Bufotenin salts. Interestingly also DMT salts derived from multivalent acids with more than 1 COO- vaporize. I thought their melting point must be much higher and to vaporize, a certain mobility of ions might be important prior to vaproization. But it seems they just vaporize the same way and also have a melting point around ~ 130-160 °C.
Here is a list of Tryptamine salts that are confirmed to evaporate at 180 °C:
DMT-Acetate
DMT-Benzoate
DMT-Fumarate
DMT-Lactate
DMT-Stearate
DMT-Trifluoracetate
Still the vapor
efficiency was not tested and still some of them might partially degrade while doing so. The
only and by far best salt to create an evaporating salt is benzoic acid, which will not degrade and simply shift the vaporization of the Alkaloid higher by 10-20 °C. DMT-Salts that do not vaporize are the ones derived from Mineral Acids, as these just turn black and decompose. Here is a picture of DMT-Sulfate upon heating to 250 °C:
What is the reason why Salts from some Organic Acids vaporize, while the "classic ones" dont?
It seems those organic acids of DMT are able to vaporize, while mineral acids (*HCl/H2SO4/HNO3/H3PO4) dont. But even then this is only valid for organic acids that dont actually combust themselves. But while salt vaporization not happening is quite expected in general, what is the reason why organic acid salts still can vaporize? What is the chemical nature of the vapor that is always formed from these salts starting from ~ 160 °C? Here I am simply going through some simple experiments that I was doing and meanwhile explain what kind of conclusion I got along the line. You may simply skip to the next post with the summary if you like.
Variant A:
DMT Freebase vaporizes first, the Acid vaporizes solitary later on
And easy way to prove if the Alkaloid evaporates first and the Acid evaporates later or not at all is a Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA). Here a sample is constantly heated and the respective weight is measured at all times. What you get at the end is a graph that shows the sequential vaporization of the substance with the corresponding temperatures at which vaporization happens. Now a potential reason why Tryptamine Salts can be evaporated could be that the Alkaloid simply back-dissociates into the Freebase and therefore starts evaporating. Then the Acid may or may not evaporate later on too. In this case the TGA would show a curve starting at 100 % (the initial weight) and then first shows some evaporation, which corresponds to the Alkaloid. Then a plateau would be reached and afterwards a new drop of the curve would be observable, that marks the Acid evaporating or maybe it will just stay at that plateau and never drop to 0 % (whole evaporation), because the acid just stays behind.
As you can see there is no plateau, expect completely at the end when vaporization will not happen anymore. This curve is really "harmonic" and looks exactly like a pure substance, so nothing which is an actual mixture of 2 compounds. This means that both the alkaloid and the acid evaporate completely together at the same time. Furthermore you can see in the TGA the Benzoate salt of DMT only requires minimal additional temperature for vaporization, probably just + 5 °C.
Same is observed for Bufotenin. Vaporization stops at 9 %, nearly as low like DMT. DMT Benzoate is 39 % Benzoic Acid, which vaporizes at 250 °C due to Wikipedia. Therefore if DMT vaporizes first, it could only do to a minimum of 39 %, then Benzoic Acid would vaporize solitary. This would then show us a plateau - the curve would not have a harmonic slope of a hyperbel. That would mean the vapor at any temperatures is loaded with the same amount of Freebase DMT AND Benzoic acid. Seems like they just evaporate in association, there must be some force which *carries over* the acid even if its vaporization point would be higher actually ...
Now the next step would be to try confirming if this equally-loaded vapor truly carries the Freebase and the Acid in their respective (original) base and acidic form.
Variant B:
Both DMT and the Acid vaporize at the same time together as re-dissociated Freebase and Acid
Even though that TGA is quite showing an harmonic curve of vaporization, this is contrary to the observation of a SMOOTH vapor, that does not feel caustic and therefore should have no acid inside. To further prove that the vaporizing DMT is "dragging the Acid" also into the gas phase even below its boiling temperature an experiment with a high-molecular-weight acid was made = DMT Stearate. Stearic Acid is a fatty acid and therefore insanely long Alkane wax with a Carboxylic Acid at the end. Vaporization due to Wikipedia is 360 °C. TGA was performed with pure Stearic Acid - to determine where vaporization of it would start - and DMT Stearate. TGAs are shown here:
As you can see the curve also does not have any plateaus. Therefore DMT seems to not evaporate solely first and then stearic acid later - both vaporize at the same speed and as it seems associated together. Vapor seems to have the same composition at all times. As a reference also DMT, DMT Benzoate and pure Stearic Acid is shown. You can see pure stearic acid evaporates later than pure DMT, as it is probably also the case for Benzoic Acid. Therefore from what we can see both the acid and DMT again vaporize together and the Acid pushes the overall Vaporization to higher temperatures. But we can see now that when using the even higher-boiling Stearic Acid this shift is even stronger and therefore additional 20-30 °C are required for equal evaporation compared to DMT Benzoate. That again is a strong sign that DMT will vaporize with the acid in 1:1 association, because if DMT would vaporize completely independently, the whole evaporation process would start much earlier like we see with the Benzoate and have a pleateau where the Acid vaporization starts with a delay.
Therefore it looks like it does not matter too much about the acid - it will be also carried over into the gas phase. Now as the vapor is very smooth and not caustic at all, this would be a contradiction to a back-dissociation into Freebase and free Acid. So it seems that the vapor would be still carrying the salt, even though evaporating charged molecules would be physically very unlikely. To further investigate the vapor 2 easy experiments were made:
- Place DMT salt inside of a Banger at 180 °C
- Close the Banger with the Carb Cap and wait for intense vapor to form inside the Vaporization Chamber
- Make a pH Paper wet and place inside of the vapor
The pH Paper did NOT indicate any presence of acidic compounds and just stayed at pH = 7. Therefore vapor seems to be indeed free of any potential acid. Now obviously that is indeed a contradiction to Variant B. It is shown that nearly everything of the Salt vaporizes and it does so without any of the 2 components vaporizing earlier or later.
To indeed try if any trace of unreacted Acid would be instantly recognized in the vapor, I made a small test: In the name of Science 10 mg Benzoic Acid was vaporized. Strong fumes were also present at 180 °C. While first vapor was formed, that little bit was already "tested" so probably just "smoked" like 1-2 mg of Benzoic Acid. Super strong lung irritation. 10/10 noxious. So as a consequence every experiment until now seems to prove Variant C. This shows that the vapor from DMT salts must be free of any free acid and therefore still carry the salt.
Variant C:
Both DMT and the Acid vaporize in ionic form
Now first of all this sounds pretty impossible. Vaporization of ions takes insane energy amounts and therefore temperature - way higher than these molecules would even survive probably. Reason is that the attraction between different charges based on the Coulomb's Law is extremely strong, it simply is mostly neutralized within even atomic distances. But therefore potential energy quickly rises to extreme levels when separating 2 charges very far from each other. By evaporating a molecule the mean free path of molecules quickly increases to about 68 nm at ambient conditions, making the distance of potentially charged molecules way higher than in any solid form of salt, which would be at the Anström-Scale (0,1 nm). Because of this
truly boiling away a salt would be impossible ...
... and still the vapor of DMT Salts truly contains no Freebase Alkaloid and no free Acid as you will see now! But how can that be? How can it evaporate as their salted form?
To really understand what is happening, read first what another member is describing here for the Freebase Evaporation. Here he describes that actually you do not evaporate the molecules like in a boiling process (AKA water heated to 100 °C). Instead you will form tiny droplets that will migrate into the gas phase, like mist in air. This actually still requires some heat (and increases upon strong airflow) but it still very different from actual boiling AKA true vaporization. And now it seems that this process can even happen with Tryptamine-Salts, as long as they can be liquified!
Because of this the whole process does not violate the Coulombs Attraction. Because within these tiny droplets the molecules are still in very close proximity and therefore dont "fly around far away from each other" with their charges still exhibiting forces to each other. And this is the reason why it would be physically still possible to evaporate ionized alkaloids, you simply
dont really boil them!
Variant C is the chemical nature of DMT salts while evaporating them and therefore if a suitable acid (like Benzoic Acid) is used, you are perfectly fine to evaporate them just like your freebase!
