A lot of people or even TEKs recommend heating Naphtha prior to applying it to an extraction. Heat increases solubility of DMT in Naphtha by far and this will accelerate the migration of DMT into the Naphtha.

Sounds logically and as we think *Naphtha has to get hot for extraction* one would conclude to simply heat the Naphtha, thus achieving this effect.

But in reality heating the Naphtha is like heating nothing at all. The reason comes in physical chemistry: All matter has a heat capacity that defines how much heat is needed to be transfered into the object to raise its temperature.

Along with other surprising properties derived by its molecular structure, the heat capacity of water is also exceptionally high.
In contrast the heat capacity of hydrocarbons is very low.
This means the same amount of heat will induce a much higher temperature increase in hydrocarbons, but only a slight increase in water.

Now coming from the opposite direction you will see the consequence:

Making Naphtha hot and making it touch water, thus equilibrating their temperatures in the middle based on their heat content, the total heat taken up by Naphtha is still quite low and this will make the water not rise in temperature at a noteworthy level.

Now here is the calculation so you have some actual numbers to see what I mean:
(Scenario: 100 ml Naphtha is used to extract from 500 ml soup)





Conclusion: Heating only the Naphtha and not the soup will not make ANY difference. A mixture of Naphtha/Water will always be around the initial temperature of water, except you would mix 100 ml Water with 5000 ml Naphtha. Therefore the water need to be heaten up. Everything else is like leaving it at room temperature in the first place.

PS: I would even advise to not only heat to 50 °C, but to 60 °C. I just typed 50 as people call it *make it a little warm*. But I would say heat it as much as possible, just as high that it wont start to boil (common boiling range 60 - 80°C). It is often told
"higher temp will cause more impurities". But when using MHRB you will still not even get any real impurities with 60 °C. So just do it, you will see, it will just produce as clean Spice as low-heat-Naphtha.

Is what I did last times, heat soup in microwave until touch warm in an open glass jar with a loose plate on it to semi-close it, take out of microwave and added the NP and simply swirled the np with an inert spoon in the soup, no shaking. (vapors!! -> ventilation)
Since the jar is open when swirling there's no pressure build up what you have by shaking a closed recipient.

Yep. Here is a step from the popular Max ION tek:



I find it rather misleading. In general, that tek contains multiple recommendations and statements ( "a yield of 3% is theoretically achievable" ) that feel like "snake oil", and I wonder if it is time for the Nexus to assemble its best minds and produce a new tek based on better science.

These observations are correct, I've noticed a strange incremental increase of yields over the years, but I have a feeling it isn't because the MHRB has gotten more potent

I think more likely people weigh their yields too quickly out of excitement, naphtha traces are not so easy to remove, samples almost always contain solvent visible in NMR even when well dried. Also there is a tendency to push improvements, ends up looking a lot like housing market inflation.

The OP is correct as well, water has a very high specific heat density, the TEKs should be updated to reflect the science

The TEK obivously tells to only heat Naphtha, which is not a good suggestion due to the reasons above, but ...



that sentence does not make sense in any case.

If waiting to shake the mix, then Temperature Equilibrium will be fully reached after ~ 5 secs (due to low heat capacity of Naphtha) ... but if shaking as soon as both are combined, Temperature Equilibrium will be reached INSTANTLY!

So this implies we vaporize traces of naphtha? I wonder if we should be drying the spice crystals out of naphtha more somehow. Or is the ammount inconsequential?

Benz mentioned an acetone re-x works for DMT (it freeze precipitates). Would spice out of that re-x dry cleaner?

In this picture there are no traces at least of Naphtha and the sample was just dried with a fan for some short minutes after freeze-precipitation. Maybe it would be more a problem regarding decanting Spice and instantly starting to scrape it for a weight measurement? Otherwise I would say after *regular* drying there is no Hydrocarbon smell and normally even traces would produce a strong odor.

When applying *regular dried* Spice on a hot plate it does not make any cracks upon melting and I guess it would do so, if there are still relevant solvent amounts inside.

If one was too concerned one could buy some super-low boiling Naphtha (40 - 60 °C) and immediately after decanting the regular Naphtha used for extraction (60 - 80 °C) one could pour the low boiling into it, swirl the whole thing and then decant. That super-lower boiling really evaporates fast, faster than Acetone. 1 single blow with your breath and wet material is dry, so fanning it for 1 minute should 100 % remove everything. Still I dont think that hassle would be worth it if you could just let it sit in a dark place over night.

How was the sample prep/analyzed after the fan dry? Mindlusion mentions naphtha complexes visible in NMR. I'm not sure MS could detect that.

It's 1H-NMR, I have no MS of that sample - just a regular 300 MHz in CDCl3. I removed Y-Axis, so it may look like a chromatogram with peaks on a solely X-Axis. =D
Just fanned it for like 10 min until it did not smell like Naphtha anymore, just the faint tryptamine-smell. Then went to Analysis department and gave em the sample in Chloroform-D.
I guess it was more a concern of not weighing your Spice before not making sure its dry and not that it wont get dry by itself.

Thanks for the details.

Do we know that any potential (not smelly) naphtha/DMT complex in the original product was not separated by the chloroform? If it was, would the naphtha still show up?

Yes any residual Naphtha should still show up. 50 mg of Spice were dissolved in ~ 0,6 ml of Chloroform-D, so everything that was stuck inside of the DMT also came into solution for NMR. And everything in solution will deliver signals upon excitation in that magnet field. So when any Naphtha is in the DMT sample it would also show up in this spectra. Would be a broader "multiplett" far to the right side.

Understood. Thank you.

I've never followed that advice, but I assumed the logic was that the partition coefficient is optimal when only the solvent is heated (i.e. due to the solubility in the soup increasing with temperature). Not defending that idea though.

Heating the soup tends to break emulsions, so that's nice too.



Not sure where you got that time estimate, but yeah I doubt it makes a difference.

Thanks a lot for bringing this to light.

Thanks for this excellent information Brennende wasser! I am going to invest in a cheap sous vide machine before my next extraction.

Blessings

An Erlenmeyer flask on a magnetic stirrer hotplate can make an extraction almost hands-free, safe and fun. It does lose on the 'kitchen look' front, though.

Just want to thank you for this!!

I had a 3 week old extraction standing around that i wanted to throw away.
I have done 2 pulls on it and the second pull didn´t yield much.
But i had a feeling there is more so i heated the soup more then usual.
There was some vapor rising from it. I think it was around 90 C.
Did the pull and got more out of it then i ever did before.
Since trying extractions i always used the same bark out of the same pack.
My yield increased overall by 70 % then usual.
I always thought my bark is not the best but i am now getting almost 1.7 % DMT out of it.

This is probably nothing special for alot of people here but for me its like christmas.
You guys always amaze me. I´m an absolut idiot and within a year i´m really starting to get
an idea how this stuff works.

Thanks alot to all you experts in this forum.
And thank you brennendes wasser for making me heat my soup more and not heat my Naphta

Have a gud one everybody

I did Q21Q21's "fluffy white fun fest" extraction (it's an A/B extraction using Calcium Hydroxide and vinegar, then is washed with light naphtha to extract the pure N,N,Dimethyltryptamine.

I had good results the first time, but I had a proper kitchen to make a double boiler with adequate ventilation.

I don't have that now, so I have 2 questions.

I got all the way to the lighter fluid wash (haven't done it yet), so I just have my "soup". It has totally dried out, at first I thought it was like concrete but after realizing it CAN be rehydrated, I'm waiting until I'm ready.

SO my main question is: Do I need a hot plate and window like before, or can I just lightly rehydrate it with tepid water then add enough boiling water to make it soup, then add the light naphtha? Should I keep it on a hot plate, I always had trouble getting the light naphtha back out of the soup... Any help or suggestions are much appreciated

Question number 2: will my dmt breakdown in it's current state? (soup that has dried out totally)... It's in the dark, and kept at about 25 C inside. I don't see why it would, but I'm a street chemist, never went to school for it so I am constantly checking that I'm not missing fundamentals.

Thank you! (I know its 2 year old post... I posted my first extraction w pics n everything but got no responses a few months ago when I asked similar questions there...)