Just wondered if you need a fan to assist the evaporation of naptha (re. Lazymans tech.) or can you just let it evaporate at room temperature (slowly). SWIM is at this stage of the preaparation.

Thanks in advance

Bod

Either way works fine, if you are in a hurry you can set a fan on low and let it blow on the solvent. Be carefull though that no dust and crap gets into the solvent.

no

Thanks Gammagore!

I have just asked SWIM if any dust and crap is likely to get into his solvent and he says it won't happen unless there is an earthquake.

Thanks again

Bod

Fans greatly accelerate the evap. To keep dust out cut up a pair of womens pantyhose and stretch them over the top as a screen.

Hmm Vovin, I didnt know this.. Thanks

without a fan it can take a much longer time to evaporate. A fan is a good thing except don't forget about it running.
I worry about cheap fans running continuously for too long.

Blimey, it really does take a lot of time without a fan!

Fast-forward to 2020 AD

Hope there is something left once the solvent does eavporate or there may be a pyrex dish seen flying through a window...I have great concerns about this!

Bod

hehe yes it certainly takes FOREVER without a fan..For a small amount of solvent the window sill isn't a terrible place but only if theres a breeze rolling in. I usually only evap the solvent after i've stuck it in the freezer then collected the crystals, since they're always much cleaner that way.

Thanks for the tip!

Is it OK to evaporate it a little first, then transfer to the freezer (to avoid spills)?

Bod

A quick test for stuff in your solvent is to blow across it, if it turns cloudy then you are guaranteed to have some spiceyness in your solvent.

You can evap a bit before freeze precip if so desired.

The surrounding air becomes saturated and the solvent cannot evaporate. Guys you need some air circulation to evap. If you place a plate in a rubbermaid container and seal it guess what. 2 weeks later the solvent still wouldnt have evaporated past a certain point. Why? The air inside is saturated and thus it cannot take on anymore solvent period. However it only takes a very small breeze to ensure that the air is moved enough to make evaporation possible air movement is crucial to evaporation. You dont need a strong breeze just some kind of breeze. Now the stronger the breeze the more surface exposure the air will make with the solvent and the faster the solvent will evaporate as it is being exposed to more unsaturated air.

So moral of the story is you need some circulation to do the job. How much is up to you but the laws of evaporation specify that if the same air is contacting the solvent it will not absorb more of it so there must be some kind of cycling even if it is a very minimal amount.

Evaporating before a freeze is just good chemistry. The goal with a freeze percipitation is to get the solvent at the point of full (super)saturation since chemicals that are cooled have lower saturation points than chems at a high temperature. A basic salt and water test will show you this. Put salt in a glass with 'HOT' water until it gets to the point that is super staturated. At this point the water will no longer be able to dissolve any additional salt. Now put it in the fridge ( not freezer ) and allow it to cool.... What happens? When the water temp lowers it's ability to hold the salt lowers as well and the salt falls out of the solution. This is what a freeze precip does. Now take a 1 gallon jug of water and put the same amount of salt in it and put it in the fridge. I bet you a buck that the salt that falls out if far below the amount in the glass.. why? Because the water in the gallon jug was not supersaturated and thus as it cooled it was still able to retain a bulk of the salt due to it's volume.

It is a best practice to reduce down to the point to where the dmt is no longer dissolving in the solvent and then heat the solvent to make a superstaturated solution, add small amounts of solvent if it still has not fully dissolved the DMT and then freeze precip. This way you will get the most DMT possible with the saturation method. Read my tek on how to do this it's here somewhere.


HOWEVER.... all chemicals will hold some stuff even at extremely low temperatures. For us in this field much of what is held is impurities and thus the reason we do a freeze precip in the first place. BUT part of what fell out is also impurities which is why my tek uses a solvent wash to clean things up. Realizing that some of those impurities may not be as soluble as the spice one can then dissolve the result of the freeze precip into a minimal amt of solvent and since the spice will more easily dissolve into the small amount of solvent than the impurities or at least some of the impurities, then you have another purification process. Todays extractions yield a much purer result than what we used to get which is why I developed the solvent wash to start with but it is still not a bad practice regardless when dealing with chemicals that are extremely dangerous. Since the solvent amount is small a solvent wash takes very little time and IMHO one would be foolish not to do it. A freeze precip does not replace a solvent wash period. A solvent wash is designed to get things out that cannot be done in any other way.

Basic chemistry tells us that some chemicals dissolve and some chemicals create a homogeneous mixture. A homogeneous mixture is when one chem ( the impurities) are not actually dissolved in the chemicals but are in little bubbles suspended in the mixture. Think of a muffin. The raisins in it is not chemically bonded but due to the viscosity of the liquid and the size of the raisins it will stay suspended in the dough. When you evap everything that is in the homogeneous state will wind up in the result. When you preform a solvent wash since these chems are now at the bottom in larger clumps and you are not stirring vigurously that chem, being insoluble will stay at the bottom while the spice is dissolved and thus the reason if you have a fairly pure batch a solvent wash will result in some pretty ugly stuff left over even tho you 'thought' you had a pure result.

Class dismissed.

Blimey Vovin, wish I'd paid more attention in class! The stuff we learnt wasn't quite so useful though.
Coco pops will never taste the same with naptha contaminated milk (a big drawback to the fridge set-up)

Thanks!

You young'uns got it easy. Back in the day you basically had to figure out extraction for yourself with a crappy tek as a very general guide. Good part is figuring out how to extract back then is what gave me the knowledge of chemistry I have now. Before I wrote my tek I spent I would guess about 100+ hours learning as much as I could about chemistry as it pertained to extraction.

Also keep in mind that when you freeze precip it can be in a sealed container. What I done was use a pyrex flask covered with saran wrap held with a rubber band and poke 2 needle holes in the top. Freezing has nothing to do with evaporating so you dont need the solvent to be exposed. Plus you do not want water to condense into your solvent. This happens at cold temps too look at a bag of peas in a crappy fridge where you think all that ice covering them came from? Condensation. Modern fridges greatly reduce this with a built in de humidifier but still it exists in a smaller degree.

How did it turn out?

He now makes goat's cheese in the Cantabrian mountains.