I'd like to hear tips from anyone that's had success using sunflower as the non-polar solvent.

Swim has tried it using the q21 tek on a small sample.
1.acidification with vinegar
2.basification with lime, getting consistency to be thick and pasty
(both 1&2 done in hot water bath)
3.pulling with hot sunflower oil
4.salting with vinegar
5.reduction

Swim hasn't assayed the result but seems to have worked.
EDIT: 2 pulls on about 30g of MHRB yielded about 4ml of concentrated acetate solution. Not sure how many drops are in 4ml, but 6 drops yielded clear effects. Swim is happy

Only observations he would like some help with are:

1. when mixed the vinegar and oil take quite a while to separate completely. using more vinegar so that its equal amounts of vinegar to oil (rather than just a shot glass, as specified in the tek) seems to help. Is there another way ?
2. how to prevent emulsions? a cloudy layer between the oil and vinegar occurs during salting. seems they do not separate cleanly.
3. how to prevent impurities coming through into the vinegar during salting. the end result after reduction seems to have quite a bit of sediment (perhaps formed by the heating up of fats that made it through, the vinegar was cloudy and white before reduction. reduction produced the typical orange tryptamine smelling liquid though.
4. how to prevent oil ending up in the final reduction

Any other tips would be great!

Its a messy solvent to use thats difficult to remove the last slick so you should separate a few ml under the emulsion.
Acetic acid is a soapy acid used in cleaning so combined with a glucous oil will form a soapy substance hence the emulsion.
1. try heating to thin out the oil it does take a while to separate cleanly and even when it does some vinegar seems to stay in suspension in the oil.
2. see first paragraph.
3. filter the vinegar after separation through water saturated coffee filters or decant away from the sediment.
4.see first paragraph, maybe separate emulsion and add x3 the vol hot vinegar and put it in a narrow vessel then wait a few days to see if it separates so you can isolate the vinegar.

Hopefuly Jamie will see this thread and give you some tips he has used sunf oil multiple times successfuly.

Put it in the freezer.

The alkaloid-saturated vinegar should freeze, but the oil will not. May add to time, but should ensure a more complete separation and also go to point 4, regarding minimizing oil residue in your vinegar. I think there are some threads/posts on this procedure, but I have not personally utilized it as such.

Take a look around the forums, I'm sure you can find the specifics

Great! Thanks for the tips.

I have some limited access to d-limo, so was wondering if combining a small amount of limo with the sunflower oil would improve its qualities for the process (and make the supply of limo last much longer)

Also i was wondering.... what are the benefits of multiple saltings vs. just using a large amount of vinegar to start with ?

I've looked around the forums quite a bit, but the info seems scattered and uncertain in most places, so was trying to get it altogether in one place.

Yes! Good call. I've done this with mescaline extractions with great success. The limonene will help cut the viscosity of the oil and make it somewhat easier to work with. I would also consider doing a couple of additional pulls (at least one), to make sure you get everything.



That's from the wiki.


Totally. Consider google searches with the keywords you are after and site:www.dmt-nexus.me to search within the Nexus.

Freezing the solution sounds an excellent way to separate. Its not a common solvent so information is sparse I think the hippy salad oil tek uses sunflower oil.
Multiple saltings are better as it pulls more Im not too sure of the scientific explanation behind it..

Can't find the hippie salad tek on the nexus any more, only related threads. The q21 tek works, so I am gonna stick with this and just work on refining for use with oil.

Has anyone experimented with different types or grades (degree of refinement) of oil? Their ease of use and pulling strength? I've seen posts about canola oil. What about coconut, palm, soybean or rice bran ? Or are the differences so negligible that it doesn't make much difference? I assume an oil with a higher viscosity would be easier to work with. Any thoughts ?

Remember spiceman's Poor Mans Tek?
His post included a few different types of oils he used and what their end product was like.
Unfortunately it looks like he deleted his posts...

trying the same method on some confusa and having problems. the bark seems to absorb a lot of the oil. swelled up to almost double its size. also when salting there is a lot of emulsion. anyone have any tips on how to use confusa with an oil extraction?

the end product from subflower oil is of the same quality as I can get with xylene and limonene if you do a cleanup properly at the end.

I have used sunflower oil for over a year now for all extractions. I have successfully extracted acacia phyllodes, mimosa rootbark, chaliponga and 2 species of phalaris with the stuff.

do 6-9 pulls, salt each pull 3 times, evaporate the liquid, base with sodium carb and water make a paste..dry it and pull with iso, acetone or ethanol. You end up with the same very potent tryptamine goo as with other solvents.

You cannot freeze precipitate vegetable oils. So if thats what you want to do, forget about it.

Yields have not suffered at all from using sunflower oil in place of limonene. Olive oil also worked.

heating the oil in a bot water bath increases efficacy, but pulls more oils. Cleaning the final product up at the end with alcohol deals with that.

If people are having problems, I really dont know what else to tell you. Once you have done enough teks you can just sort of figure out what is going on and work around it IME..reguardless of the solvents used.

Limo does the same thing IME. I dont like that dry tek or w/e q21 etc anymore. The bark just soaks up the solvent. I either start with a more traditional a/b..or I brew the plant material in acidic water, and then evaporate it down to a resin and mix in base..and then use that to pull from.

watch out for emulsions..veg oil is real thick..salt helps to break them..but emulsions are still avoidable.

Thanks Jamie! The extractions are working so no doubt there, just getting a bit messy. What sort of quantities / proportions are you using for the bark/resin to oil to vinegar. I haven't been measuring anything very accurately. Just adding an equal amount of oil to the plant matter and then equal amount of vinegar to oil. Was first working with straight vinegar, but now am diluting with water. Would a more diluted vinegar help to reduce emulsions do you think?

I'm working with one extraction now where I used a standard acid boil on MHRB and reduced down to about 50ml. When mixed with the lime it forms a nice crust on top which makes pouring off the oil easy. The oil combines nicely with it when stirring which probably makes it very efficient for pulling. So overall I am happy using oil. I will try an acid boil on the confusa and see if it does the same.

Do you use cold vinegar for salting ? Lately I have been heating it up in the hope that it would increase efficiency.

Do you keep reusing the same oil for all pulls ? I started using new oil after 1 or 2 pulls because i was worried there was still vinegar trapped in the oil which would interfere with the ph of the plant matter. Would using new oil after a few pulls be more efficient or does the oil pull more efficiently when it is saturated, i've read that on here before but don't really see why that would be the case.

Something interesting is happening with this veg oil extraction on some confusa. Was trying to follow the q21 tek originally, but my mix was way too watery and it doubled in size. I tried using a mix of sodium carbonate and lime (because my lime is running low and i don't have easy access to more). Didn't anticipate the carb increasing the wateriness of the mix. So i eventually separated the mix into 2 portions. To one i added more water to make it very watery and the other i added more lime to use for the dry tek.

I added hot sunflower oil to the watery one, mixed around, let stand and then dropped in the freezer for a while. Eventually poured off the oil and salted. I didn't get all the oil off though, put it back in the freezer and left everything to freeze. Now the top is covered with little white clusters, the clusters dissolve in a few minutes if i take it out of the freezer.

either that's spice on the surface or possibly the sodium carb ? Would the carb end up in the oil? Didn't think freeze precipitation was possible with veg oil. Perhaps using an oil that freezes at a lower/higher temperature would make this somehow useful ?

Not sure if this is of any use since I cant separate the white from the oil without salting. Just thought it looked cool .... I suppose it serves just as a confirmation that there is still spice in the mix.

Am wondering if anyone has tried mixing acetone with cooking oil for use as an nps. I've read bits on the internet about how the mixture creates a more penetrating oil. Only a small amount of acetone needs to be added to improve the quality of the oil. People use this mix as a replacement of WD-40 lubricating oil.

My interest is because the cooking oil as it is, can be pretty messy to work with (sticking to the inside of the jar, baster, creating dirty layer when salting).

If anyone with some chem background can anticipate any problems with using this as a solvent for extraction, please let me know.

my guess is it wont salt properly with the acetone in it.

Has anyone had success using sodium carbonate and sunflower in either a wet or dry tek ? I've got two experiments going now.

A wet tek, sort of cyb ATB salt tek on ACRB, and
A dry tek, sort of q21 lime tek on MHRB,

but using sodium carb and oil.

Seems i am having problems with both. I soaked both in vinegar for a week or so before basing, hoping that the vinegar would slowly convert everything to acetate, since i don't think the s.carb is strong enough to lyse the plant matter (?).

Adding the carb produced a lot of heat so i thought it was successful, but my first pull on the ACRB yielded very little. I had to put the mix in the fridge to get the layers to separate.

Today i based and added the oil to the MHRB, all done while hot, mixed it up thoroughly but now it looks really combined and am doubtful it will separate.

Didn't have this happen when i was using lime, so am wondering whats going on.

Any thoughts advice would be great. Else i will probably have to go back to acid boils and reduction before basing, since that seems to be the most success i've had.