I like Endlessness's ethanol, vinegar and sodium carbonate tek a lot
( https://www.dmt-nexus.me...aspx?g=posts&t=30501 ).

There are several reasons. It uses no strong bases/acids (I'm clumsy and I WILL hurt myself if playing little chemist with stuff like that), no carcinogenic stuff like xylene, no petroleum derivatives (by the way clean naphtha is hard to find around here). However, food grade ethanol (everclear) is expensive. On the other hand, I can buy acetone at a reasonable price - it isn't anhydrous acetone, but a quick evap test shows it evaps clean and I think the water content is no more than 10% (much like the drinkable ethanol).

Do you think I could swap acetone for ethanol in Endlessness's tek?

I don't see any reasons why you shouldn't try it. Go for it and report your experience!

You can dry the acetone by shaking with magnesium sulphate that has been thoroughly dried by baking in an oven or microwave. After shaking for a couple of minutes, let the acetone stand for a while until all the MgSO4 has settled and then carefully decant the dried acetone into a clean and dry bottle.

Thank you Pitubo!
At the moment I'm in the middle of an extraction made the original way (EtOH). Next time I'll try with acetone, maybe on a smaller batch. When I do I'll report. It might not be tomorrow, though.

One more question: is there a reasonably easy way to assess the water content of the acetone I have? The bottle doesn't state any percentage.

Check the msds. It may list percentages for water content.
I've never used a brand that has water listed but i have seen msds that do list water.

I would not assume that a MSDS contains all the truth and nothing but the truth. Treat it like wikipedia, as a starting point for real research.

You can test the presence of water in acetone (and other solvents) using copper sulphate. When hydrated, it has the form of blue crystals. When it is dehydrated in an oven (may need more heat than MgSO4) it will lose the blue color and turn into a white powder. The white copper sulphate is the anhydrous version. If you add a pinch to a sample of your acetone, the copper sulphate will turn blue again if there was water in the acetone. You can even use the dehydrated copper sulphate as a substitute for anhydrous magnesium sulphate drying agent. Keep adding the anhydrous copper sulphate until it stays white.

Even if there was a bit of water content it wouldnt be the end of the world, you can always clean out later.

If you used calcium hydroxide as a base it would probably be even less present in final product since its poorly soluble in water.

One indicator of water content would be if during evap test the last bit would take ages to evap. If it goes fast, its probably quite dry.

In any case before over complicating it and finding ways to measure water content or buy things to dry, I'd try as it is and see what you get, and proceed from there.

@concombres - no MSDS for the brand I have.

@endlessness - since your advice comes straight from the source, I'll take it and go ahead: next batch will be processed with this acetone. I eyeballed water to <10% based on evap speed indeed.

I am not planning to refine that much if sodium carbonate isn't harmful. Would it be ok to have a little of it in changa?

Thank you for your replies!

Sodium carbonate has a very high melting point, so you won't get any turning into vapour. Sodium acetate has a bit lower melting point but still very high (324c) so that it shouldnt be an issue.

In any case, it is conceivable that tiny unvaporized particles of those salts will come across carried over by the DMT vapor and go to your lungs. In such small quantities I doubt it would be a problem but just for the sake of argument, that could be potentially irritating to the lungs. In that case, you could do 1 of 2 easy fixes:

1- Do a quick water wash on your alkaloids which would remove the sodium carb and sodium acetate and leave dmt behind

or:

2- Smoke/vap through a water bong. That way the sodium salts would theoretically stay in the water.

You can always try it as is first and see how it feels. As I may have mentioned before, if you put a lighter fire close to your alkaloids, the dmt should melt, while the sodium salts will stay solid. So if you put the fire close to a bit of your alkaloids and you see a lot of something which stays solid, you'll know you have a lot of contam, while if it all melts, then you have nothing or negligible amounts of those impurities.

This makes sense, Endlessness. I normally use a bong anyway. Thanks I will surely report in a couple of months when I process a new batch, or maybe I will use acetone already for the last step of the current batch - at the moment it's evaporating the merged alcohol from the 3 pulls. Thanks for bearing with my questions!

Good luck!

Some anonymous kids on the Internet worked out through the extractions up to a certain point and sent me a private message about it.

The anonymous persons wrote they followed the tek first as specified originally by Endlessness and then by substituting acetone for EtOH. The pic shows the results of combining 3 acetone/EtOH pulls. This is before filtering, salting, re-basing and re-pulling. Acetone is the pinkish stuff. EtOH is the shinier, darker stuff. The acetone solution seems milkier and harder to filter, they say. Both containers smelled of delicious alien candy after the solvents were fully evaporated.

The acetone-based stuff was processed by some other guy: salting with vinegar, filtering, evaporating, re-basing with sodium carb, re-pulling (last pull was done with anhydrous EtOH).
The whole procedure yielded 2.40g of oily material (1.6% of 150g MHRB). The resulting product had a definite vinegar smell, but after staying a few days in a dark place most of the acid smell went away. This product hasn't been bioassayed yet, but is going to be as soon as the right circumstances are met.

The EtOH-based stuff has been stored for subsequent processing.

A comparison of yields will be published if and when the anonymous kids send me more messages.

UPDATE - The 2.40 g of jungle spice were made into changa by dissolving in EtOH along with 0.2 g of rue extract on 1.5 g of leaf material. The bioassay results are disappointing according to the anonymous reporters: there is strong sedation with just a little "light". The mixture doesn't burn easily. The bottom of the bong cone still contains a solid residue. Maybe all the good stuff has dripped down there? I hope they will tell me more, so I can keep you posted.

What could have gone wrong? I'm asking because those guys still have the EtOH-based solution, evaporated and salted, and hope not to repeat their mistakes.

Both are really non carcinogenic classified, as shown on the data sheets.
Then if you compare oral toxicity, acetone LD50 is 2gr/kg, and xylene's = 3gr/kg.
There is a hoax toward petrols.
I like the works with petrol alternatives though, thanks.

Update

The anonymous guys sent me a message: after their first try with the acetone extraction, they managed to process the EtOH-extracted stuff too. The result is just under 2 grams of material: whitish goo with a few embedded crystals, all immersed in a thick brownish-red liquid. The smell is encouraging, much less acidic than it was with the acetone extraction (if at all). The refiner says he's changed a few details in the last steps of the procedure. I'd like to hear about the details, so i can report here.

The results are going to go into changa, too. They say they'll tell me if it's any good - the disappointing changa made with the acetone-processed stuff is still lying there unused. Maybe they will choose to enhance THAT stuff with the new product.

I hope I am eventually able to provide a sound quantitative/qualitative comparison. It might take quite some time though...

It took some time as I expected, but I'm back as I said I would.

Both extracts - ethanol based and acetone based - have something wrong about them. I think it must be pilot error, because as far as I understand the theory works out, and what's more important, guys more skilled than I have tried the teks with success.

I wrote about some changa a couple posts ago:


I can confirm - it doesn't burn well, it is not very potent (barely felt) and it still smells of vinegar a little. I suspect the final basification wasn't done properly, but I have no idea what happened.

The other extract also has similar characteristics, although it hasn't been made into changa. It still lies there. What a waste. I am very disappointed with the results.

By the way, can anyone suggest a way I can recover what's recoverable?

I still have a good amount of MHRB, and I have no idea what to do with it. Extractions with naphtha or xylene are a bit complicated for me. I so much liked this tek... ah, if only I could have made it work! A few special friends are waiting for me to help them as I did many times before, and I'm really annoyed at having to fumble "uh well yes as soon as I manage, promised!".

Can you suggest a nearly idiot-proof extraction technique for MHRB? What I'm actually going to make is mostly (or only) changa, so I suppose maximum purity is not an issue.

You could put the changa in acetone, filter and dry again then do another acid/base and pull with acetone. This is to recover the dmt but not sure how to separate the rue extract.

Edit: I'm sure you can put changa straight into vinegar, filter, add base to vinegar to make paste then dry, pull with acetone or ethanol dry or add leaves again. People usually suggest making 1:1 dmt:leaf ratio not sure if it is due to issues smoking later with too much plant oils or just better control on dosage.

I don't see the point in evaporate all the vinegar and just add the base to the small volume until it is a thick paste. After drying pull with acetone(or ethanol)



Better steps for endlessness's tek (saves solvent this way as it is used on smaller volume of material)
- Mix Mimosa powder with vinegar and boil
- Strain vinegar and repeat 3x
- Reduce vinegar volume to a manageable volume 100-200 mL
- Add excess sodium carbonate to make a paste, and spread it to dry
- 3x pulls with 95% ethanol, filter the pulls
- Evaporate the ethanol
- Make changa or rerun a/b again.


Edit: Did you start with 100g of bark at start? If used less the end material likely had a sodium bi/carbonate contamination maybe making it harder to burn? Also how pure is your ethanol I don't have access to 95% so I opted for acetone as I can get 100%. I didn't dry as mine seemed very dry from dry test.

Hello modern, thanks for your helpful reply! Sorry I couldn't show up earlier - life's been busy recently.

So I'll try to recover that changa; but more importantly, I will have another go at Endlessness's tek. I think I will get around to it in mid July. I might post questions and requests for help before that; I will post results after that.

Thanks again. This place is really a beautiful place.

-


EDIT 1 I realize I haven't answered your questions. Sorry. Yes, it was 100 g bark. And the alcohol was 95% food grade ethanol.

EDIT 2 I would like to use acetone for the last pull, since ethanol is horribly expensive and slower to evaporate. Would that be all right too?