The watch glass was not known to me, but I love the functionality! I'll have to get one. As for the smell, the heptane was barely noticeable. I had to put my face right in it to get a smell.



Weird... I never noticed anything cloudy on my last extraction. I'll keep an eye out next time. Thanks.



That makes sense. I hadn't thought about it that way. I just figured that the dmt would still be soluble in the solvent even at room temperature. At what temperature does dmt start crashing out of the solvent? I would want it in my evaporation dish before that were to happen.

It was not saturated then.

With DMT – and all other compounds – there is a maximum amount that can remain dissolved in a given volume of a given solvent at a given temperature. Usually the hotter the solvent, the greater that maximum solubility is, excluding some anomalies like NaCl in methanol. As the temperature and/or volume of the solvent decreases, at some point the concentration exceeds the maximum solubility, and the compound precipitates out. The best way to see it is to perform a normal extraction and then allow the solvent to evaporate until, previously transparent, it turns milky-white. If you have never seen it, I highly recommend it.

Another way to witness DMT in your extract without freeze-precipitation is blow a stream of cool air (using a hair drier, for example) into the extract when it is spread out in a thin layer in a dish. If the stream is strong enough to push the liquid away from the center spot, you will see "DMT icing" precipitating and covering the dry spot, only to redissolve again if you remove the air and allow the solvent to flow back.

Precipitation can happen at any temperature (below the melting point of the compound), including room temperature. The freezer only reduces solubility to its lowest achievable levels, but there is nothing special about it otherwise. In fact, DMT is not very soluble in heptane at room temperature (there was a DMT solubility chart in heptane somewhere on DMT Nexus, check it out) which is why people recommend heating it up in the first place.

Given hot enough extraction solvent and enough DMT in it, precipitation will begin right in the pipette as it cools down in mere seconds. Once you are done extracting, reheat the evaporation dish (from milky-white back to transparent) and then cool it down to crystallize, as slowly as you can.

Is this the thread? DMT Solubility

I will run that evaporation procedure to see the saturation in effect. And the hairdryer trick sounds very cool as well. Something I'd like to see. Thank you for making everything so easy to understand, I found myself having epiphanies throughout your explanations.

Sounds like the only thing special about moving hot or room temp solvent straight to the freezer is to get it done quick. I understand that larger crystals resolve when you cool as slow as possible, something that I will try on my 2nd extraction.

As you said, I could run those saturation tests and then just end up reheating the dmt and heptane until it dissolves again. That thread said heptane boils at 98C which is hotter than the temperature at which DMT breaks downn. But from your previous notes I shouldn't need to exceed 70-75C.

I guess my main problem at this point is finding an efficient way to separate the solvent form the soup layer, as when I pipette I inevitable am getting soup when transferring to a cylinder like this......



The glass turkey baster I had did a terrible job. Which is why I was interested in pouring that room temp heptane in that cylinder into a sep funnel to completely separate it from the soup. But, even after my pulls with hot heptane, once it cools to room temp and there is still the basic solution below, will the dmt go BACK into that solution? Sounds like speed is key during the pulling process. Quite frustrating, but I want to go about this the correct way, as the way I had planned it in my head is obviously not efficient as you have thankfully pointed out.

Let me clarify this.

DMT can degrade via a lot of different pathways. The molecule can break along the side chain (-C-C-N-), bond to another one to form a dimer, etc. But the easiest change, by far, is getting an oxygen atom (via a reaction with oxygen radicals in air) attached to the nitrogen atom, forming DMT N-oxide, a sticky yellow oil. If your DMT is yellow and sticky, it is likely covered with N-oxide, which you can easily accomplish if you blow hot air on it for some time. It is not too bad, since it is only on the surface. I believe I have posted a mass spectrogram that shows N-oxide presence in yellow DMT, although there are also theories that the yellow color is due to the 5-member "pyrrole" ring of the molecule losing some electrons, or that yellow DMT is just a special crystalline structure of DMT (which is polymorphic, meaning, it has more than one way to form crystals).

Oxidative degradation in air takes place at all temperatures in presence of oxygen. Higher temperatures simply speed it up. This is why people have been recommending storing DMT in dark, cold places, with oxygen absorbers in airtight containers. At 98 °C DMT is going to react faster than at 70 °C, but there is nothing new that starts to happen between those temperatures. It is just a vulnerable molecule.


I actually don't know. Since DMT can only return back to water through the area of contact between the two layers, if you do not agitate the mixture it is possible that DMT will precipitate in the cool heptane layer before it has a chance to leave it.


Do not overcomplicate it though. Heptane extractions have been done countless times, they are in every tek you can find, and the basic idea is simple: let DMT dissolve in hot heptane, concentrate the solution, and let DMT crash out in the freezer.

My favorite way is to use n-amyl acetate instead of heptane (I bet limonene will also work). DMT is very soluble in it even at room temperature. You can stir the combined extracts with benzoic acid to cause DMT benzoate to form and precipitate out. Heating that mixture up until everything redissolves and slowly cooling it down results in nice crystals that are far more stable in air than freebase. You can wash them with heptane to remove traces of amyl acetate, which takes longer to evaporate on its own. If you then need to convert DMT benzoate to freebase, you dissolve the salt in a bit of warm water, basify with NaOH, cool down, (vacuum) filter, wash with ice-cold ammonium hydroxide, and dry (ideally under vacuum). However, I think you can vape benzoate salts directly, and obviously they are good to go with the oral administration route.

Beautiful background art. Love the otter pops chillin in the freezer next to the medicine. I was addicted to those things as a child.

PS - I replied to your DM. Sorry for the delay, don't check inbox often. ;-)

I saw, thanks man.

Also, this is the old TEK, the new one is here. Enjoy!

https://www.dmt-nexus.me...px?g=posts&m=1190673

Thanks! Rocking good tek. Photos are always a huge help, especially as many speak other languages and translate. Keep up the great work. ;-)