this may be a silly idea but i just thought of it so here it goes.
Because hamalas dont disolve in acetone, but all the other gunk in plant matter does, couldnt the plant material be crushed and soaked in acetone a few times in fresh acetone, dried, then soaked in plain water?
In theory, this should work, but in theory comunism works so who knows.
Any ideas guys?

who says harmalas dont dissolve in acetone?

Traveler appears to here.

Edit: figured out how to link directly to the post.

Maybe a very tiny bit of harmala-freebase dissolves in acetone but most of it just sinks to the bottom.


Kind regards,

The Traveler

Freebase harmalas have difficultly dissolving in acetone and ethanol. DCM works best with them.

Hard to say about their salt forms, maybe they are even more stubborn when trying to dissolve in acetone.

that acetone is quite coloured though, no? I guess hard to say how much of that was impurities that dissolved or how much of the stuff that didnt dissolve is alks or impurities, dont you think? Would be good to test this with cleaner harmalas to see..

also, what temperature was it?

Acetone's xlogp is not too far off from IPA (https://wiki.dmt-nexus.me/Psychedelic_Alkaloids_Chemical_and_Physical_Properties#Solvents_and_Alkaloids_XlogP_and_XlogP3), and IPA does dissolve some freebase harmalas. Not very well but it does.

Another thing to consider is that the OP is talking about doing acetone washes on the seeds. The harmalas will be in an unknown salt form in the seed annd we dont know the solubilities of that. What we do know is that people do IPA soaks (and acetone too if im not mistaken) with caapi to make enhanced leaf and claim to have good results. So since harmalas are basically the same (though the salt form may be different in caapi and rue?), then its possible that doing acetone or IPA soak/wash will result in loss of alkaloids in rue.

Personally I've been a bit doubtful of how efficient these soaks for caapi are, considering often alkaloid salts do not have good solubility in IPA and Acetone. I think it would be interesting to do an A/B on washed/soaked caapi or rue and see how much alkaloids are left behind.

The acetone turned that darker brown the moment that it was poured over the harmala-freebase. I guess some impurities were dissolved immediately. It may be that the still mysterious 'harmala-red' is playing a role there and that it was also responsible for making the harmala-fumarate darker as the freebase I started with (even while the end result weighted more as the starting value).

So yes, a small part of the harmala-freebase and/or contaminants will dissolve/convert in the acetone but it is not much. I will do a small test now: pour acetone over harmala-freebase, then decant the acetone and dry the solids that are left behind. I will weight before and after, that will give an indication.

Trust is good, testing is better.

p.s. the temperature was about 20C.


Kind regards,

The Traveler

UPDATE!

Please see this thread.

Conclusion:
* 50ml of acetone can dissolve about 200mg of fairly clean harmala-freebase.
* endlessness was correct with questioning the statement that harmala-freebase could not be dissolved in acetone.


Kind regards,

The Traveler

Thank you for taking the time to investigate this further, Traveler, and for your awesome input Endlessness.

is the solubility of hamala salts unknown? Otherwise it would be quite simple to acidify some acetone with hydracloric acid gas or pure citric or tanic acid? If citric or tanic acid could be used, it would yeald a very simple extraction method.
Edit: traveler, your the shit thanks for some great info