Hello brothers,

I've been deciding which non-polar solvent to use for my first extraction and decided for n-heptane.

Would you advise a petroleum ether instead? If so, which fraction? 40-60°C maybe?

What do you guys consider optimum in terms of extraction?

I think I made my mind about n-heptane but would love to have some inputs.

Thanks!!

I'm going to do my first extraction in a few days, and I also have the same doubt. I was very convinced that heptane was the best solvent, but I also read several good things about naphtha. So, I'm waiting for your response to proceed in the most optimal way.

Heptan truly is the best solvent of any, no other can take the lead:

1. Heptane has a really high solubility at it's boiling point (~ 100 °C)

2. Heptane has a nearly as low solubility as Hexane when being in Freezer

3. Heptane is less toxic than toluene / xylene / DCM

4. Heptane is still very selective towards DMT and pulls less junk
(allthough I have the theory that this "less junk" is only the result of carrying over less of the water-phase into the NPS, resulting in a lesser contamination of your DMT with colorants/other substances from the bark, which is on the other hand simply getting more if you move from

Pentane > Heptane > Toluene > DCM > Ethyl Acetate

Due to the higher solubility of water inside of this row)

5. Heptane evaporates slower than Hexane, but still faster than Naphtha
(this is counter intuitive, as [the ideal] Naphtha is a mix from heptane/hexane, but in chemistry a mix of closely related chemicals can be harder to evaporate)

And besides the Naphtha with 40-60 °C is not really good. It contains Pentan-Hexane and Pentane is bad at dissolving DMT.

The only downside of Heptane is it will be probably > 4x as expensive to get as Naphtha.

I understand heptane and naphtha perform best when heated. So what is the recommended best solvent for room temperature pulls?

For room temperature Toluene would be a compromise between lower toxicity and not unnecessary hassle ...

Ethyl Acetate would be way safer, but it will require additional drying from water via (in best case) 2 steps.

But using toluene just to not heat your soup to ~ 60 °C is really not worth it. It's quite unhealthy so as long as you have a stove you should simply put the soup on that stove prior to extraction.

Additionally using toluene will then require to collect your goodies from that solvent ... and that only works via evaporation (takes long, bad smell, unhealthy to inhale) and then you end up just with a brown slime. With Heptane/Naphtha you will go straight to crystals without any of the downsides.

Really no advantage of using a room temperature solvent

With Toluene, instead of evaporating, would it work to salt the solvent directly with an acid, such as succinic acid or benzoic acid?

For ethyl acetate, what water drying steps are necessary? Does freeze precipitation work with Ethyl Aetate? Or does it need to be evaporated? And would salting direcrly with an acid work with ethly acetate?

Is DMT freebase more soluble in Toluene or Ethyl Acetate?

Thank you very much for your answer and also for your post debunking "jungle spice" myths.

I realize now I was not heating it enough, will check on the temps.

What's your favorite A/B tek?

Thanks again