Hi everyone! This site has been invaluable for me over the years, and I finally signed on during a window of opportunity, and with a pressing issue even. I hope this welcome zone is a good place to dive in to ask a technical question. I am a productive member of my communities, and will be happy to guide people toward accuracy once I am able here.

Please tell me what change about my process to yield the alks. Following is what I have done, what I thought was a full and correct extraction, and received at best 1/50th a gram of fine crystals, but was expecting about 4g. I will use shorthand for brevity. I hope I am clear.

Powdered acrb 250g in a large steel pot with 2 gallon distilled water.
Brought pH to ~3.9 with Tartaric Acid. heated on stove at low to catalyze. filtered through cotton ball, reduced on low heat to about 1.75 liters volume. In glass jars, defatted with turpentine for two repetitions, and then naptha for another repetition. One jar was given a fourth defat with Naptha, and the Naptha was completely clear at that poing. Basified with direct lye (one jar with lye water solution (no difference in yield)) to pH 8.68, DMT's ostensible (Merck Index) PkA (raised to 12+ in one jar to no difference in yield). During this step, clear pink precipitation occured. 70ml Naptha added, and jars rolled. At this point, the 8.68 pH jars maintained pink precipitate, retained in strong emulsion, with a part of the liquid translucent aqueous. For some reason, part of the precipitate is below that translucent mass, and another part is above. One jar I added another 150ml Naptha, and the emulsion persisted, and a thin layer of naptha is on top. The other 8.68pH jars retain complete emulsion, even days later while being left to sit. The 12+ jar is dark near-black with perfect separation of polar layer and naptha on top. One of the 8.68pH jars was given about 5g table salt the polarize the aqueous later to reduce emulsion, unsuccessfully. In fact, the salt seems to not have dissolved at all, even after 50ml distilled water was added. Four crystallization jars in the freezer of temperature 12F from jars holding differently-manipulated variables described above all show virtually no precipitation. only one of the four have an amount about 1/50g, but that might have been from leftovers of a previous extraction.

An attempt months ago was very successful, and I thought I did the exact same process. The only thing I feel might be an issue is the density of the reduced acidified solution. It may be saturated, but an attempt to dilute by 300% one of the jars (the 12+pH one) yielded nothing as well. I am at the point of almost buying new bark from a different source, but I WANT TO BELIEVE, and I know this community can be my Peter Pan. Thank you so much for your time.

Truly,
AffectionateStudent

I assume you chose the pH of 8.68 because it's the pKa of the tertiary amine on DMT. That is the pH at which 50% of the DMT exists as a free base, and 50% exists as water-soluble protonated species. you want to exceed the pKa when basifying, so you get a higher %age of freebase, which will migrate to the nonpolar solvent.

a pH of 13 will convert >97% of DMT to free base. no need to dilute, that defeats the purpose.

Thank you Master Chemist. Is it important to create a lye solution in water, or can I just add lye to the mixture already? I read that direct lye can "cause ph spikes" that can destroy the alks.

benzyme, you've been faster than me.

I have a question for you : my reference is Infundibulum work and it says at pH=11, 99,5% of DMT is in freebase form so i'm wondering about pH=13 needed or not (if i'm working with water extract, not plant material of course).
I feel like i'm a bit anal about that, but you know, for my knowledge sake.

I don't know about destroying the alks, it would take a great deal of [ionization] energy to dissociate the dimethylethylamine moiety from the indole. I suppose you could add lye pellets to the acidic phase, and of course, this would be exothermic. It would probably be a safer practice to slowly add lye solution.

i'm quoting the calculated % species based on chem axon http://chemicalize.org


click manage calculations->protonation->pKa. according to the chart, 11.0 gives 96.59% freebase (mind you, the pKa is calculated to be 9.55). I'd basify no lower than 12.

I just check it and yeah, minimum 12, your right. So i prolly lost a (tiny) bit of DMT but i can survive. I feel less cool about peddle a wrong information to others as i did .


Anyway, thanks benzyme !

pH is now 13, the emulsion instantly turned to perfectly separated layers, as expected, but yield is nearly non-existent. Time in freezer was about 12 hours, during which the naptha turned slightly opaque white, as expected. The dmt that did show up was not a tiny crystaline shape, but had a smooth surface. Does this suggest fat is still present? do fellow alchemists find a 4th or 5th defat is sometimes necessary? back in the aqueous solution-filled jar, the naptha layer maintains a peach-colored, cloudy appearance after settling 5 minutes from another shake. At this point, I'm throwing any details that might be a clue to someone

There is 100 ml naptha above 320 ml aqueous, a ratio which has yielded well in the past. Any other ideas what might need be done? I noticed that the two steps I used, tartaric acid to bring pH down, and turpentine (I read was stronger than naptha, and to be used for the first two of three defattings) I read elsewhere, probably erowid, and though they worked before, may clash with the rest of the process that I performed based on Nexus pages. I read yesterday on the Nexus that some solvents that have aromatic properties that are used to pull the spice do not allow freeze precipitation. Is it possible that minute amounts of the non-polar layer is still turpentine from before a naptha-defat and is causing freeze precip from occurring? I may smell turpentine in the non-polar layer; it's hard to tell. I know a way to find out is to evaporate, but I'm leaving that for a last resort. Maybe there is an overlapping assumption I made about blending recipes from Nexus and Erowid, that I don't see from my point of view.

My next course of action will be to assume that three defats are standard with more diluted aqueous mixes than I am using, so I will collect the non-polar layer, pour 3x the amount of vinegar in the container, shake vigorously, discard the assumed fatty naptha, re-base the vinegar, pour new naptha in, shake well, and return that naptha to my original extraction glass, and try again there. Maybe the fat was keeping dmt from getting in, so freeze precipitating at that point might be less effective than returning to the extraction glass first? Does this contradict the conclusion of the recently added FAQ about reusing solvents?

I can't help but to notice it seems like you're using a lot of liquids. That is a lot more room for your dmt molecules to float around in. How thoroughly are you mixing your solvent with your solution?

The ratio is about 1800 ml aqueous solution : 500g starting root bark. Although according to the Nexus, this is a satisfactory ratio (vovin's tek shows a 10ml : 1g water to root bark after reduction), I woefully neglected to mention this was the second of three pulls of the acid mix before the defattings. This means the original bark quantity could be conceived as closer to 170g. Due to imprecise measurement techniques, I will hypothesize this is indeed the crux of my problem. My hesitation to reduce three pulls of acid water from the bark into 1800ml is that a film starts to form on the top of the reducing pot, a signal one tek I read explained requires a dilution. I will reduce past the point of film-creation and follow your hint. Thank you for the lead!