This question is related to salting mescaline HCl out of toluene/xylene.

Swim just obtained some HCl from a pool supply shop. The owner told swim that he sells commercial grade muriatic acid, and to be careful because the concentration is much higher than the typical consumer product. Swim asked about the concentration, and he said he would have to ask the manufacturer. In any case, he went in the back and poured swim a gallon for around $4.00.

Most of the extractions swim read don't really seem to deal with the precise amount or concentration of the HCl. Swim comes from more of a college chem than kitchen chem background and doesn't mind titrating the acid to figure out the concentration, but he doesn't own a fucking burette. Is it so vital?

Also, about the quantity of HCl... Swim believes swim would want to use an approximately equimolar amount in comparison to the alkaloid content. So, estimate around 2% alkaloid content for dry material and go from that.

Is Swim on the right track?

Concentrated HCl comes in all sorts of concentrations. 10% is already very very strong and 37% should be handled with care. 37% is already a 10M concentration of HCl!

For mescaline salting anything between a pH of 1-3 works fine, that is whatever concentration SWIY's HCl has, if he dilutes it 100 times he'll have a good workable concentration for mescaline salting.

In the end the actual concentration of the concentrate is not too important.

Thank you! SWIM had a feeling he was making it more complicated than necessary. SWIM guesses it's in the range of 14-16% as the owner said it smells stronger than the bottles he knows are 12%. He's just relieved he won't be boiling cabbage and buying a burette on ebay.