Hello friends.
It has been many years since I have played kitchen chemist, and I found I had forgotten more than I thought there was to know.

At the end of the q21q21 Jimjam tek, one is left with a concentrated acetate solution. It is advised by q21q21 to leave the acetate solute, as it is mentioned to be “unstable” if fully evaporated. It is my desire to turn this solution into something a little bit more solid, preferably freebase. But I am grossly allergic to the use of naphtha and the like (food safety is what initially attracted me to this tek and dreamer’s veggie oil tek a decade ago).

So my question is, what stability exactly is entailed by evaporation. To my mind, acetate out of solution seems like it should be as stable as desiccated acetate sitting happily in a jar in a dark, dry place. Is this truly not the case? If so, what protocol could I implement to achieve a solid, dry product?

Also I see conflicting information about whether or not heating the acetate to 39°C is sufficient for freebase conversion. I know heat in general will convert it, but is there a specific time/temp to ensure conversion?

Failing a spoon fed answer, is there a resource one could point me to that might alleviate me of my stupidity?

Are you fishing for insults, perhaps?

I wouldn't say DMT acetate is especially 'unstable' in the chemical sense but it will be hygroscopic and tends to liquefy. Add to that its tendency towards dissociation back into the freebase and we can then see what this is about. There is an equilibrium between DMT acetate, and the freebase plus acetic acid. This equilibrium depends on the relative basicities of DMT freebase and the acetate anion.

Thinking about it a bit more, we have the volatility of acetic acid which means that at least some of it will be slowly evaporating away. The upshot here is we get a slowly increasing amount freebase DMT forming in a finely divided (molecular, even) form in close proximity to moisture. This seems to be a recipe for oxidation of the DMT base - not to the N-oxide as previously imagined but by electron loss from the pyrrole (nitrogen-containing) ring and subsequent oligomerisation/polymerisation.

This, in a way, answers the question about heating DMT acetate - increasing the temperature increases the rate of evaporation of acetic acid, the rate at which further DMT acetate dissociates, and perhaps the rate of DMT oxidation too. And DMT freebase itself starts to evaporate at some point. It could be that the 39°C value was reckoned to optimise the dissociation rate, and I would note that it is just below the melting point of the most easily fusible of the DMT polymorphs.

If it's a stable, solid form of DMT you are looking for, you might want to consider the fumarate or the citrate. And recent work - hot off the press, practically - suggests that the lactate could be the key to 'vaporhuasca' if you've ever considered experimenting with e-liquids. Fumaric, citric and lactic acids are all available as food grade materials.

Are you really saying that you would get anaphylactic shock, dermatitis, or maybe asthma, from simple exposure to naphtha, by the way?