Swim has noticed on his last two extractions w/ mexican Mimosa Tenuiflora Root Bark, during the freeze precip., he is getting yellow crystals, even w/ one defat.

This has never happened when using bark from the brazilian or peruvian region.

I'm wondering if mexican bark is filled w/ more tannins,lipids,fats and ect... or is swim not doing something right.

Has anyone else noticed this?

swim is gonna have to do an ammonia wash and mabey a few re-x's but from what he understands,he'll still most likely end up with yellowish crystal.

He's alittle bummed due to the fact that he took the xtra step and did a defat...although,he broke his sep. funnel,so he had to defat in a pickle jar and pull the naptha out w/ a turkey baster and when it got down to that very thin layer of naptha,he had a difficult time getting it out, without sucking up a bunch of the mhrb solution,so he let the thin layer of naptha evaporate,untill he did not see two distinct lines of solution mabey there was still some dirty naptha in the solution.I dunno???

I'm just wondering if swim did something wrong or if others have noticed mexican bark to be more fatty.

Is this from the vendor from Mexico?

A defat really should have taken care of almost all of the oils. Sounds like what you got was very oily.

Do a recrystalization but if you can, try a sodium bicarbonate wash while your spice is in a NP solvent, I have noticed that the baking soda wash will take out some of the oils as well. It may take a few recrystalizations, but you can get oily goop into white/clear crystals.

Anyone else have any ideas?

There is usually nothing wrong with yellow crystals...

If the yellowness does not dissolve in warm naphtha (out of which Dwitty's extract can of course be recrystallised) it is likely to be N-oxide. This is perfectly fine, SWIM's FOAF would not bother further.

If it is really plant oils the ammonia wash will not help, oils are not supposed to be very soluble in aqueous solutions. Same goes for sodium carbonate, whereas sodium bicarbonate will have fairly disastrous results on the yield because it is not very basic; it gives a pH of around 8.6, which is enough to lose more than half of the spice.

I have to disagree with your statement on sodium bicarbonate washes. I use them frequently and have not noticed more than a 2-5% loss. I've even tried to recapture any losses by bringing wash water up to a pH of 12 and add naphtha...didn't recover more than 20mgs on a gram of spice. I would not suggest leaving the sodium bicarbonate in contact with the naphtha for very long, a minute of swirling/shaking at most.

If he did a defat he really shouldn't have seen much, if any, oils in his final product!

SWIM gets no noticable yield loss by doing washes. But then again SWIM does his washes while the spice is still in its non polar solvent and only uses sodium carbonate as it can bring the pH higher then sodium bicarbonate (thats they key most important thing!). Its quickest easiest and most effective way to clean a sample.

Yes, But he also bought mexican bark from another vendor that is extremely reputable (located in the netherlands) and found the same to be true w/ this bark but swim has a sneaking suspiscion that it all came from the same place.

I'm not trying to say anything bad about any vendors but i'm more curious about a differnce in bark from the mexican region and brazilian/peruvian region.

It might be possible that mexican bark is just filled w/ more fats,tannins and so on...

He was wondering if anyone else found this to be true aswell.

Sometimes plant material is adulterated too although SWIM sees no reason why this is the case but it can happen.

This is very interesting and weird at the same time! SWIM's FOAF has never done any sodium bicarbonate wash simply because conventional theory would predict that at that pH most spice would be salted and washed away. Indeed, he just dissolved some pure sodium bicarbonate in water and no matter the amount added he could not raise the pH above 8.1.

But again, "conventional theories" and "spice" do not mix together very well, do they?

Possibly the secret could be the fact that you do not wash for extended periods of time? Maybe freebased spice actually takes some time to be salted at this marginal pH? Or your baking soda could contain other things as well, like sodium tartrate?

I think the freshness of the product could be an explanation of this phenomenon too. I once did an extraction with bark that i had just kept for a few months. I don't know where the bark was from, but it was the worst result i ever had. I blamed it on the fact that it was probably just too old.

Swim got about 3g of yellowish spice and from the above mentioned bark.

Infundibulum or anyone... if the ammonia wash doesn't help w/ the oils,what is the ammonia wash used for? trace amounts of lye?

Swim doesnt care about the crystals being yellow n-oxide... but he would like to take further steps to clean it up and it doesnt sound like the ammonia wash is the way to go,is that correct?

Just re-x ?

You are right, ammonia wash can help get rid of any residual lye if its presence in the product is suspected. Still, the only way lye can find its way in the NP solvent is if any parts of the aqueous solution found its way in the NP solvent.

Re-x definitely the way to go to separate the N-oxide from the dmt. Plus, if the yellow is from oils, they will be very soluble in naphtha and they are less likely to precipitate out (while dmt will).

If SWIY's re-x warm naphtha turns really piss yellow when mixed with the yellowish dmt, then the yellow is very likely to be plant oils. That is because N-oxide is insoluble (or very badly soluble) even in warm naphtha and one actually sees it falling on the bottom of the re-x container as a yellow oil, while the dissolved dmt (and suspected plant old) dissolve.

Hope that helps!

thank you

tannins are part of the defense system of a plant.. They protect the plants against a number of threats. Maybe there is something about the area in mexico where it grows that makes the plant increase the ammount of tannins to protect itself. I guess the tannins are mostly against biological threats (whether its animals that can chew on the plant or insects or a number of infections), but otherwise one possible difference between Dreamland's northeast where mimosa comes from, and mexico, is the temperature. In the northeast Dreamland the temperatures never get low, its always hot. Maybe in mexico it gets colder, and this could influence..

Or maybe its just the supplier you are getting from..

swim wanted to try the mexican bark and got it from two different vendors but i think it all came from the same source.

I think...like you said endlessness...it might have something to do w/ the region because swim has never had anything but pure white freebase,when working w/ brazilian bark...this is the second extraction using mexican and got a yellowish crystal's both times.

My fear was that it was gonna melt but swim scraped up those goodies last night and it wasnt as bad as he initially thought.

He's just gonna do a couple of re-x's.

From now on though....he will omly be using brazilian pink/purple.

the ultimate test will be when he tastes the product

This 'fatty yellow' problems seems to be caused by poor cleaning of the roots, as the outer root bark must be removed from de inner. Pure inner root bark gives nice purple powder. Many ppl tried ours and no complains...