Wasn't quite sure where to post this. A friend of mine was asking me if he added activated charcoal to a solution, say cactus or mimosa tea, would it remove some of the alks or just the particulates not soluble in the liquid? I didn't have the answer for him but I'm sure it's a relatively basic question.

If it would only remove impurities, what types of impurities can it remove? (ie: chlorophyll, cellulose, plant matter, etc?)
What would be the best way to implement it? Add to liquid and put on a stir plate? How much and for how long?

A lot packed into this post.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activated_charcoal

http://www.sentryair.com...ivated-carbon-filter.htm

From wikipedia:
Activated carbon does not bind well to certain chemicals, including alcohols, glycols, strong acids and bases, metals and most inorganics, such as lithium, sodium, iron, lead, arsenic, fluorine, and boric acid.

Thank you, I saw that before I posted but it didn't answer my question. Would it also filter out alkaloids and actives (ie: Mescaline, DMT, Psilocin) along with the chlorophyll and other impurities?


But good to know it will filter out burned flesh, body odor and onions. LOL
Something odd is it doesn't even list chlorophyll, which it has been proven to filter out.

I very highly doubt it. Many synths use a.c. to clean up impurities from alkaloids.

I'd go with what acolon said. But in addition, ime, AC can be a serious PITA to work with...annoying to decant from, messy to work with. I dunno, it definitely has results with DMT re-x, but I found it was easier to just go without and do multiple re-x's rather than an AC cleanup.

just my $.02

Thanks.

SnozzleBerry, would the coarse AC also be a PITA? It should filter right out. What about just putting a few tbs in the end of a filter and pouring the tea through it. No fuss but the tea should come out much cleaner.

That's actually a really good point...I hadn't thought about that as the AC I got was the powdered stuff (now for the life of me I can't figure out why...maybe that was all I could find at the time). I would think the coarse stuff would be fine, just watch out that you don't crumble or otherwise reduce the size of it too much. I'd think at that point it would be real easy to filter and potentially an effective cleansing agent. If you try this, please report back, I'd be very interested in hearing your results.

activated carbon is useful for retaining bulky molecules (which chlorophyll is) and nonpolar molecules

Thank you. So at the risk of sounding foolish... so that means it would filter out molecules that are not water soluble? (ie: would not filter out the actives in solution)

^That. I think you got it right on, ThirdEyeVision.
I'm going to do this on some DMT Acetate solution right now.

damn, didn't realize how old this thread was

I'd use AC the way I'd use bentonite, although the structure is different
(AC is porous, most bentonite has stacked plate structure). add your slightly acidic solution
to the AC, then wash the alks out with ammonia in a primary alcohol.

If I recall correctly Activated Carbon has a high affinity for ionic moeities, hence it's love for chlorophyll(Iron coordination complex).

IIRC, A standard procedure for something like this would be to dissolve freebase alkaloids inside of a non-polar solvent. Add a small amount(relative to the alkaloid weight) and let sit over-night or more preferably on a stir-plate. After the solvent has been cleaned up a bit, the solution is filtered. The activated carbon is then shaken with a little more fresh solvent, and filtered again. Combining both filtrates.

People on The Nook have been using activated carbon to clean up grungy naptha for quite some time now. Check the "Nooki" for what they do.

I wish I had have thought about AC before doing a run of 10x caapi leaf. I have a load of changa here that is close to impossible for me to smoke due to the nasty chlorophyll taste.

You should still be able to clean it up with AC.

AC could make you lose yield. That is why it is used in some cases of alkaloid poisoning, because it can trap some alkaloids. It has been documented that morphine, strychnine and many other alkaloids are absorbed by AC, its possible tryptamines too (Silva et al 1998)

I would rather follow other methods of clean up, like, say, a recrystallization. With a re-x, you can always just not throw away the decanted goo left after re-x, and add more warm naphtha and freeze seperately to pick up possible left over DMT in the goo, and/or work with TLC to see if there are active alkaloids left in it, etc.

Activated charcoal is used to remove colored impurities before recrystallization because the carbon is forming layers of graphite (see this http://upload.wikimedia....ommons/2/21/Graphite.gif). Colored impurities have a large system of conjugated double bonds, just like graphite. These impurities attach to the surface and are removed along.

I wouldn't use activated charcoal when extracting DMT, since it also has a ring system that could get attached to graphite.

that's not really a concern when you use a solvent such as dcm to elute it.
the adsorption is not unlike nonspecific binding encountered in various [protein] chromatography methods, it's predominantly van der wahls interactions; no match for dcm, chloroform, or acetonitrile.

*edit* actually, ammoniacal methonol or ethanol would elute it and leave behind fats and other nonpolar compounds