I just noticed that my rust free steel electronic combination oven (about two years old so it's not an age thing)) doesn't like the evaporation of the Hcl solution.

It's starting to rust even the 'rust free' steel outer frame. I could neutralize it with some alkaline water and after that cleaning with water and drying with towels. It's almost unnoticeable at the frame now but in the inside you sill could see the metal darkened at places and some rusty like spots.

Quite stupid of me because I already knew that hcl itself is corrosive. I never expected though that the damps of diluted Hcl could make this happen. Now I hope the internal electronics aren't affected too much.

So for those of you who are planning to evaporate in an oven or near metal think twice

With acetic acid this was no problem.

Interesting, I was just wondering about this. I am going to attempt an Mescaline HCL extraction soon, and I have evapped Acetate in the oven at 170 and it worked great. 69Ron suggests a food dehydrator in his limo tek, does anyone have a good alternative to oven or dehydrater for evapping mescaline hcl?

After my oven inferno I used a tea pot light holder with the pyrex on top of it. Works perfectly it doesn't boil but you can see it vaporise. Watch out with the last bit. Just let the last bit evaporate overnight without added heat.

Thanks Poekus,

How are the fumes with this method?
I wonder if the heat pad from my turtle pen would work well.

SWIM's cactus HCl extract is evaporated in a ceramic shot/sake glass that was heated in a water bath on the stove with the overhead exhaust fan on high. Before all the liquid is fully evaporated (crystals have formed, but still liquidy and very acidic), the residue was washed with acetone several times, and then placed back in the water bath. This seemed to clean the extract of discoloring contaminants and some excess HCl and speed drying time. SWIM makes sure to do this with every extract, the dried extract comes out a very pearly off white colour.

I've seen worse. A few years ago I was doing some "mad science", trying to form a sulphate salt. Unfortunately, I had a slight excess of sulphuric acid. I evaporated in a glass dish in the oven. Problem occurred once most of the water had evaporated. Though there was just a slight excess of sulphuric acid, it became more and more concentrated as the water left. Eventually, it started vaporising. Inside the oven, the vapor was colorless. When I opened the oven door to check on it, it contacted the moist air in the room and immediately formed a vapor cloud. I shut the oven, and just as I was trying to think of how to save the experiment two smoke alarms in my apartment started going off. Apparently the vapor cloud got into them and they thought it was smoke. I had forgotten about the second smoke alarm and kept trying to quiet the first one before I realised the reason I couldn't shut it off was because it was the other one that was still going off.

Nice way to call attention to myself!

elphologist