Hello everyone

I've been wondering, would it be viable for someone to use Limonene instead of Naphtha in a STB tek, Lazy Man's, let's suppose?

If so, would this theoretical person use the same amount of Limonene as he would of Naphtha? If there is some equivalency to work out, how would he calculate it?

Has anyone you ever heard of someone who has supposedly tried this? Would this change in solvent alter the yield much? Or result in more/less pure crystals?

I'd like to thank you guys in advance, and excuse my English, I'm brazillian

i am also interested in using limonene - it seems more natural than naptha - iv seen a website selling it as a bug spray claiming 90% purity and another site selling it as a fragrance at 99% purity - what is it used for and what kinda shops can it be found in ?
also what purity is required and can it be easily distilled at home ?

It can be purchased on-line in food grade form from http://www.greenterpene.com
Actually all of their stuff is food grade, but the one that is sold as “food grade” is 95% pure. Their high purity option is 98% pure, and is actually also food grade.

It’s a great solvent. It smells like oranges. Mmmmm. When properly diluted, it is used as natural orange flavoring, but there are many different uses for it. It’s great for removing sticky residue left behind from stickers.

what is the XlogP of lemonene? will it also dissolve jungle spice? what about bufotenine and 5-meo?

Limonene dissolves white spice. SWIMs imaginary friend dissolved white spice in it with no problems. The maximum saturation level was not determined but SWIM saw no evidence that it was ever reached. SWIM was using a very high grade of limonene bought from a chemical company.

Burnt,how much Limonene did said friend use? The same amount he would of Naphtha? How did it yield? It is great to know that Limonene works, though. A friend of mine is really gonna look into this. Probably do some experimentation soon.

(offtopic)69ron, I remember reading something about you working on a tek that uses only water as solvent. Any news on how that's coming up?

SWIMs friend only tested that it was soluble. Try same ratio as with naptha and see. See non-toxic limonene thread.

98% pure limonene is sold as citrus degreaser at my local bicycle shop for cleaning bike chains.

Burnt, I've just read the entire Limonene Tek thread. As of my understanding, the problem in using Limonene in STB, as in any other method of acquiring a freebase, is that Spice is too soluble in Limonene. Therefore, you wouldn't be able to freeze precipitate it, nor let it evaporate.

That sucks.. Has anyone you know hypothetically tried using an acid to precipitate the Spice from the Limonene mixture? Or let's assume time isn't a problem, if someone hypothetically were to wait for days, would the Limonene eventually fully evaporate?

An imaginary friend of mine is really turned off on trying an extraction with Limonene now, it doesn't seem very viable.

the fact that its too soluble indeed prevents freeze precipitation from working, but evaping for sure does work. the only issue (it seems, though SWIM hasnt tried yet himself) is that the result is oily, so you must find a way to smoke that (like soaking herbs and then smoking)

3.7, lower than naptha's 4-6 range. (DMT's xlogp is 2)
it would still be a good idea to heat the limonene prior to extracting
it probably will dissolve the other impurities, yet it can still be used to freeze precipitate (limonene doesn't freeze in a standard freezer).

Definitely off topic…that tech has been put on the back burner. SWIM’s been working on bufotenine purification (with lots of progress) and is now focused on mescaline extraction from various cactus (which is turning out very bad results). Most of the techs out there for mescaline extraction seem to flawed. SWIM is learning quite a bit from his tests.

The DMT water only tech works. It’s based on the fact that DMT HCl is poorly soluble in salt water. The last thing SWIM did was boil 100 grams mimosa in water and a little citric acid (making the pH about 4). Then he filtered the water, boiled it down to about 100 ml, and then added hydrochloric acid brining the pH to about 2, and then he added 10 grams of pure salt (kosher salt) and refrigerated it overnight. Lots of precipitates formed. These precipitates had DMT HCl in them. He then freebased the precipitates by covering them in ammonia. He evaporated the ammonia and tested it for activity. It was active, but you needed to smoke quite a bit for effects. Apparently not just DMT HCl precipitates out when salt is added and that is the problem. Also, SWIM is not sure if all the DMT HCl precipitates out or just a small fraction. He needs to perform more tests.

At some point SWIM will return to that experiment.


Now back to the d-limonene subject. After the freebase DMT is extracted into the d-limonene, evaporating the d-limonene takes forever, plus you’ll get some oils in your final product. It’s not the best way to go.

You really need to salt the DMT out of the d-limonene. This can be done with a vary small amount of concentrated citric acid in water. Then you cover the citric acid solution with calcium hydroxide. Use a lot of calcium hydroxide, enough to form a paste. This is then easily evaporated. The calcium hydroxide actually helps the water evaporate away faster. This creates freebase DMT, calcium citrate, and excess calcium hydroxide. Use alcohol (ethanol) to extract the freebase DMT. Calcium hydroxide and calcium citrate are both insoluble in alcohol, but freebase DMT is very soluble in it. Filter and evaporate your alcohol to get freebase DMT. It works pretty good, but you need nearly pure alcohol.

Note that instead of using calcium hydroxide you can use sodium carbonate. Sodium carbonate is insoluble in alcohol, also sodium citrate is insoluble in alcohol.

Hmm, that would be a problem. A friend of mine would probably only be able to buy 92,5% ethanol in his local markets.

It's a shame that the teks that utilize naphtha seem less of a hassle, a hypothetical friend of mine doesn't feel very comfortable using petrochemicals.

Well, acetone works in place of alcohol. Acetone is actually found in fruit and in the body of normal people, so it’s not that bad.

Another option would be MEK. MEK, like d-limonene, is natural and found in fruit.

So can it be used for freeze precipitation or not? This is my only reservation against using limonene!

in theory (because of its logp value), yes.. but you'll need to filter the crystals. limonene doesn't evap easily, as 69ron has mentioned.

otherwise you'll be left with an oily residue

....and FASA can be used to salt spice or other alkaloids out of limonene. It does work, however it is a slightly trickier procedure than using the standard FASA + xylene and it does not require evaporation of limonene. But it does work, SWIM's FOAF has succeed salting out extracted dmt that was dissolved in limonene as its fumarate salt.

SWIMs friend tried freeze precipitating spice out of limonene and it did not work. But perhaps if it was more concentrated it might have.

I don't think it will work unless you get the temperature really low. The thing is that d-limonene has a liquid temperature range of a whapping 271.20 C! That’s much larger than most other solvents. For comparison, heptane has a liquid range of 189.03 C, nearly half that of d-limonene.

The liquid range of a solvent is a very important factor. When a solvent is near it’s boiling point (near 100% of the liquid range), it can normally hold much more of most compounds. When a solvent is near it’s freezing point (near 0% of the liquid range), it can normally hold much less of most compounds. This is a general rule, which happens to apply to DMT, but not all compounds (for example, calcium hydroxide is more soluble in cold water than hot water).

Look here:

d-limonene: melting point = -95 C, boiling point = 176 C (liquid range = 271.20 C)
heptane: melting point = -91 C, boiling point = 98 C (liquid range = 189.03 C)
DMT: freezing point = 44 C, boiling point = 60 C (liquid range = 16 C)

What does this have to do with freeze precipitation?

To freeze precipitate DMT in heptane you dissolve the DMT in 50 C heptane (just below the boiling point of DMT making DMT more soluble in the solvent), and freeze at -16 C and it precipitates out. 50 C is at the 74% mark of the liquid range of heptane while -16 C is at the 40% mark of the liquid range of heptane. Going from 74% down to 40% is a 34% swing in the liquid range of heptane (-91 C to 98 C), so the solvent solubility drops a lot, enough to precipitate the DMT.

But for d-limonene these numbers (50 C and -16 C) are 54% and 30% of the liquid range of d-limonene (-95 C to 176 C). Going from 54% to 30% is just a 24% swing, which is pretty small. It will be difficult to precipitate DMT with such a small change in solvent solubility. You’ll probably need to go down to maybe -42 C or lower to get DMT to precipitate out of d-limonene if it’s even possible.