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White precipitate during DMT A/B

H

His_Holiness

Rising Star
So recently I did an A/B extraction and during the basifying step, when I added the NaOH to my acidic brew, the mixture turned a cement gray. So some white or gray solid precipitated. After adding a bit more NaOH, it quickly dissolved again and the mixture became the nice black clear liquid it should be.
Do any of you know what it could be? Is it the alkaloids? If so it's probably possible to design an A/B that foregoes the stinky solvents, right?
Also my solution had HCl and lots of NaCl in it, but I feel it is unlikely that what precipitated was salt.
 
The stinky solvents are there to selectively remove the alkaloids and leave a lot of other stuff in the soup, also the subsequent freeze precipitation leaves behind only the DMT and any fats or other things that are soluble in the NPS get poured off with the solvent because they are not so selectively soluble and stay dissolved even when cold.

They are the simplest way of getting the DMT out, ventilating the stink is probably much easier than any alternative :)
 
His_Holiness said:
So recently I did an A/B extraction and during the basifying step, when I added the NaOH to my acidic brew, the mixture turned a cement gray. So some white or gray solid precipitated. After adding a bit more NaOH, it quickly dissolved again and the mixture became the nice black clear liquid it should be.
Do any of you know what it could be? Is it the alkaloids? If so it's probably possible to design an A/B that foregoes the stinky solvents, right?
Also my solution had HCl and lots of NaCl in it, but I feel it is unlikely that what precipitated was salt.
Click to expand...
Salt may well have precipitated, only to become obscured as the solution darkened while the pH increased. The grey colour is quite normal - the change from purple-red to black goes through intermediate shades rather than being instantaneous.

It is possible to collect DMT freebase by adding base to a solution of a DMT salt, but the DMT salt needs to be fairly pure to start with. That last bit is where the 'stinky solvent' comes in.
 
I mean in total I had about 50g of NaCl and 5g of NaOH in 300ml of water, so should have been well within the solubility range.

And now that I think about it, I don't think whatever the precipitate that briefly appeared got simply obscured by the darkening liquid as you proposed, because I can distinctly remember how clean the solution looked, and there wasn't anything at the bottom of the flask when I was turning it. It's really like some white substance precipitated at roughly neutral conditions, only to be dissolved again.

Maybe next time I do an extraction I'll try to recreate the conditions and see what this white precipitate is
 
His_Holiness said:
I mean in total I had about 50g of NaCl and 5g of NaOH in 300ml of water, so should have been well within the solubility range.

And now that I think about it, I don't think whatever the precipitate that briefly appeared got simply obscured by the darkening liquid as you proposed, because I can distinctly remember how clean the solution looked, and there wasn't anything at the bottom of the flask when I was turning it. It's really like some white substance precipitated at roughly neutral conditions, only to be dissolved again.

Maybe next time I do an extraction I'll try to recreate the conditions and see what this white precipitate is
Click to expand...
OK, great to know the details, thanks! Sounds like either some amphoteric substance like amino acids or similar, or something else that will react with increasing levels of base with the solubilities you observed. Either way, there's plenty of possible biomolecules that will fit the bill - it just being rather more difficult to be more specific than that without analysing a sample of the (now disappeared) material in question. And it was a good question, well observed (y)
 
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