Getting in some columbrina, but can't seem to find calcium hydroxide anywhere, would it be easier to locate ammonia and in what department of the hardware store could it be found, does it come as a powder or liquid? thanks for the help.

hardware store? try grocery store.
some people still use it to clean with, in aqueous form.

this thread should probably be in hyperspace tavern, or extraction

Ammonia is a gas, not a powder. It's normally sold mixed in water much like hydrochloric acid is usually found.

The clear household ammonia is about 10% ammonia and 90% water.

Make sure you get clear ammonia and not sudsy ammonia. It will say “Clear ammonia” on the bottle if its just ammonia and water. It’s often found in the cleaning section at the grocery store or hardware store. These days sudsy ammonia is very popular. You can’t use sudsy ammonia.

how to find out if what SWIM has is sudsy or not? what about the concentration?

SWIM bought from a chemical supply store, not harware store, and its a 1l bottle that just says: Ammonium Hydroxide 24Be

You have non-sudsy stuff. I've only seen sudsy ammonia with the cleaning supplies.

Have you looked online...it's everywhere. Try bouncing bear...they have it.

From what I have read ammonia is not strong enough, esp. if you are trying to make the traditional snuff.

Acolon_5, that's actually a very popular misunderstanding.

Ammonia is a strong enough base (pH 11.6). You only need pH 11 to freebase nearly everything in the seeds. Bufotenine’s pKa of 9.67 is the highest of all the alkaloids in the seeds. So when making snuff, even a pKa of 9.67 is extremely effective. That’s the pH the nasal passages should be at or higher for best absorption effects.

The reason ammonia doesn’t work well for making snuff is because it evaporates.

Lime (calcium hydroxide, pH of 12.4) doesn’t evaporate away. The lime that’s left in the snuff helps the active chemicals absorb through the nasal passages. It does this by keeping the pH in the nose alkaline. Without the lime, the actives will start becoming salts right in the nose. This will prevent them from absorbing properly.

So, yes, when making snuff, ammonia isn’t very effective, because it doesn’t keep the nose alkaline because it all evaporates away. This is why lime is used.

However, ammonia is superior when making a smoking product from the seeds. This is because when making a smoking product, all you need is the freebase the alkaloids. Its better to use ammonia when you’re going to smoke the seeds. It doesn’t add bulk like lime does.

So, if your plan is to make traditional snuff, use lime, but if you’re planning to smoke the seeds, use ammonia.

Don’t use sodium bicarbonate (pH 8.3). It can’t freebase all the alkaloids and doesn’t make the nose alkaline enough for use as snuff. Sodium carbonate (pH 11.5) does freebase all the alkaloids but it’s too strong for use in snuff. It’s very effective in snuff, but will give you a bad chemical burn.

Lime is the best for use in snuff. The reason is that its very poorly soluble and stays in the nose for a long time keeping the pH in the nose very alkaline for a long time. Something like sodium carbonate is very soluble and will be washed away more quickly than lime by the mucous in the nose. So sodium carbonate is great for bringing the nose pH up really fast and really high, but its effect is short lived because it rapidly dissolves.

It’s possible that calcium carbonate may be useful for snuff. Like lime (calcium hydroxide), it’s very insoluble and should keep the nose alkaline for a long time. It’s not alkaline enough to burn you, but should be alkaline enough ( pH 9.8 ) to freebase more than 50% of the alkaloids. It will indeed keep the pH of the nose alkaline enough for proper absorption.

Has anyone tried calcium carbonate with Yopo?

btw

I know ammonia is a gas (nh3).. Ammonium hydroxide is NH4OH, achieved by bubbling ammonia gas in water

so if I just have some chemical supply ammonium hydroxide, does that mean it is pure 100% NH4OH ? So if people use just a tiny bit of 10% ammonia for things, then I will need to use a tenth of what they use? It does not state any concentration on the label..

and another thing.. the bottle which it comes in is this glass brownish semi transparent bottle.. I can see the liquid is transparent, but I can also see some smoke-like solid parts floating around.. is this normal? Its not much, some traces, but its definitely visible.

My friend's plans are smokeable hence the ammonia question

Ammonium hydroxide is a mix of 28-29% ammonia gas in water. Ammonium hydroxide is just ammonia mixed in water, it’s still a gas and you can very easily smell it floating away into the air as pure ammonia gas when you open the container. The same is true for hydrochloric acid. It’s just hydrogen chloride mixed in water. It’s still a gas, and when you open the container you can even see the hydrogen chloride gas escaping (don’t ever breath it by the way).

There should be no solids present in your ammonia because it’s just two gases mixed together. Water is a gas too, it’s just that at room temperature it’s not, but at 212 F it becomes a gas. Neither are solids at room temperature. Ammonia is a solid only at -77.72 C and below. At -33.34 C and above it becomes a gas.

Did you know that if you mix ammonium hydroxide (water and ammonia gas) with DCM, that much of the ammonia gas will enter the DCM and leave the water? And then if you distill the DCM it will have ammonia gas stuck in it? This is one problem with using ammonia in the lab. It’s soluble in almost everything, just like hydrochloric acid is. You can mix ammonia with water, DCM, acetone, diethyl ether, methanol, ethanol, and others. One reliable way SWIM found to remove ammonia contamination from nearly any solvent is to mix it with citric acid dissolved in water, that forms ammonium citrate which is a solid. Then you can distill the solvent to remove it.