I usually get acetone at Home De-Pot (50 blocks away ) & it seems to be quite dry (no water mixed in), but recently I got some at ace-h-ware (which is only 2 blocks away!) & noticed right away that there where beads of liquid in the evap dish that where taking forever to dry...long after the acetone was gone.
I had some plans...
So I actually bought a fairly large amount.

Now, of course I want to dry it out so I can actually use it, so I've been researching how to dry it & have come across a number of different ways & reports of how well the various ways actually work.
The one I've seen the most & sounds easiest, is mixing Epsom Salts into the Acetone & let it soak for a day or two.
Then, decant off the Acetone and leave behind the Epsom Salt which should have soaked up the water that was contaminating the solvent.

Does anyone who has experience doing this, know if this method is legit?
If so, what ratio of Acetone-to-salt needs to be used to make sure that the job gets done?


Thanks!

WS

It works very well. The Epsom Salts first need to be dried in an oven to remove all the water. There's a tech for that...I don't recall off hand how to do it, but it's easy.

Once you have dried Epsom Salts, then you add some. If it looks thick and not powdery after adding it, then you need to add more. The newly added Epsom Salts should look dry and like powdered chalk. I wish I had pictures of it to show you. Wet Epsom Salts look different than dry ones. The dry ones look like chalk. If you keep adding more and it remains looking like chalk, then you added enough. But if it immediately gets lumpy and looks sort of soggy and sinks really fast to the bottom, then you need to add more. The dried stuff looks powdery after adding it to the acetone and sort of floats around like dust when you shake it. The wet stuff doesn't float around and barely moves when you shake it.

Dry at 400F until powder. Pour into can, shake vigorously, allow time to settle.

SWIM's going to try developing a way to dry acetone by putting anhydrous magnesium sulfate in THP and pouring it through. He needs an appropriate container to collect the acetone in first, though.

Nice!!

How long does it take to soak up the water?
Does the salt then look "wet" again & sink to the bottom?

Thanks fellas!!

WS

I don't think it takes days, it happens almost at once.
Keep the dry acetone well sealed or it will attract water from the air!

Other compounds can be used like anhydrous calcium chloride (sold as Damp-Rid and stuff like that). Anhydrous white copper sulfate can be used; when it absorbs water it turns blue - just add until it stays white... but copper compounds are not desirable in preparing consumables so Epsom salt is probaly best, standard lab tek like 69ron desribed perfectly well.

SWIM powderizes the anhydrous magnesium sulfate to ensure maximum surface area exposure and to maximize the potential for the particles to collide with water molecules, and if he doesn't allow time to settle (and essentially crystallize, forming a crystal lattice that encorporates H2O), he will pour out contaminated acetone (contaminated with water or particles of magnesium sulfate). Drying would be almost instantaneous with THP, though, but SWIM would do multiple passes before satisfied.

What you guys dont seem to realize is that acetone absorbs water from the air quite rapidly, so take that into account...

Using dried epsom salts to dry acetone for dmt making may be fine, but this is not really an acceptable way to prepare dry acetone for cocaine or mdma purification....but since were not allowed to talk about those 2 things around here, ill leave it at that...

however, some people say it only takes a few mins for the salts to work, some people say it takes 24 hours...

Do know this, if you let the epsom ash cool, it will reabsorb moisture from the air also, so either cool it in a mason jar or use it quickly....

This is important stuff if you are doing other things than dmt, because of the amount of drug you can lose in even 1ml of water is very large...but this may not be the case with dmt...

If youll notice dry acetone is usually packaged with something to keep it from absorbing moisture of air...I cant remember what its called at the moment...

Then why is it that LeJunk, himself, recommends drying acetone in this way, when he's essentially the cocaine wizard on most drug forums? SWIM has found that it works just fine.



The process is purely mechanical. Putting an actual time on how long it takes would be erroneous, as it will depend on the how the process is performed. SWIM finds that it takes a good chunk of time if the magnesium sulfate is well dispersed in the acetone.

Epsom is for kitchen amateurs, mush

every proper chemist using molecular sieves made out of Zeolite
Manufacturer here

Those are not as dusty as others desicant(powdered epsom)



There is no need for bloody thp. Just add dry powdered epsom(or other desicant) shake the hell out of it , let settle, decant and filter off.

Dry acetone need to be stored above molecular sieve in hermetic enviroment because is fairly hygroskopic.

Except SWIM already does it that way and doesn't need to be told how to do it. Can you explain why not to do it with THP? What is the advantage to shaking it in versus pouring it through THP? Nothing SWIM's proposing here is complicated, expensive, or otherwise challenging, but is possibly more effective than the conventional method, unless you can explain otherwise? Shaking, allowing to settle, decanting, and manually filtering are extremely inefficient; pouring it through THP would replace all of those steps.

SWIM happens to be a "kitchen amateur" without the resources to operate as a "proper chemist." What insights do you have to offer one in such a situation, as most on this site undoubtedly find themselves in similar circumstances?

Wouldn't magnesium sulfate work for this?

Epsom salt is magnesium sulfate.

Yeah, that is what most of the people around here are, right?


Well good for them...

Thanks for all the simpleton information fellas, it worked perfectly!!


WS

Seems I was wrong about the CaCl2, and MgSO4 may be not the best either.

Just found this in another thread on the Nexus in the A/B section:

---

"From 'Purification of Laboratory Chemicals':

It can be dried with anhydrous CaSO4, K2CO3 or type 4A Linde molecular sieves, and then distd. Silica gel and alumina, or mildly acidic or basic dessicants cause acetone to undergo the aldol condensation, so that its water content is increased by passage through these reagents. This also occurs to some extent when P2O5 or sodium Amalgam is used. Anhydrous MgSO4 is an inefficient drying agent, and CaCl2 forms an addition compound. Drierite (anhydrous CaSO4) offers he minimum acid and base catalysis of aldol formation and is the recommended drying agent for this solvent."

---

Nice, would plaster of paris work? (CaSO4.H2O) If not, the remaining H2O can be chased off by heat. Cheap and easily available

Supposedly silica and a vacuum flask work well. There was talk of that method some time ago.

Edit:
Or maybe not, according the above information.

Drierite in a column was mentioned around the same time SWIM saw the silica gel discussion. It's fairly expensive, if SWIM is not mistaken, so it would be wasteful to pour it the can. SWIM would defiinitely use THP for this, since he would be able to recycle the drierite by baking it.

Le Junk is an idiot thief who stole his tek from david lee who wrote the cocaine handbook, then passed it off as his own, david lee wrote an actual book, unlike le junks little stupid tek that could cause people to lose alot of product if they weren't well versed on how dry acetone actually works...

thats why...

any other questions?

lol "cocaine wizard on most drug forums"...that might hold weight over at 4chan, but not with me....

4chan? Joke's lost on me.

Maybe I'm not totally in tune with the general forum community, but what I said in regards to LeJunk is the general picture I have gotten. I've never known anyone to have a problem with him and his teks until now. I know SWIM'll probably never get his own copy of the handbook, so SWIM appreciates LeJunk's plagiarism (if that is the case).

So ummm Drierite is preferable over Epsome Salts?

Is plaster of paris the same as drierite?

^Otherwise known as gypsum. It appears as such. SWIM needs to get his hands on some gypsum anyway, so he'll try using that for a while.

sorry if i came off a bit dickish, that wasnt my intention...

but I also saw the tek from junk first and only recently found out about the book...its a good book...you can download it on isohunt search for david lee

Its just been thrown around that Le Junk is this lord of that tek, and he flat out stole it and passed it off as his own with praise from so many...its a bit annoying...David Lee im sure put alot of work into that book to have some jerk off from a drug community rip it off as his own...

Also its seems odd that nobody ever mentions the fact that the dried epsom salts as well as acetone will absorb moisture from the air if left out...im not sure of how rapidly they absorb it at this point, but I know they do...

Dry acetone isnt watched, so I dont see why everyone acts like you cant just order the stuff or ask around for it...