I had some trouble doing a defat on more than one occasion. I filtered using a t-shirt but there was still some tiny tiny particles left.

The naptha would only turn yellow with plant oils untill after it was basified with lye.

Anyone have a solution here?

After you basified its not defatting, its extracting.

Also, just because you dont see anything doesnt mean nothing is happening.

In any case, I would say forget defatting, thats an outdated method imo. Very wasteful, makes no sense. If you want to do defatting, you can salt out your solvent with an acidic solution, and then re-extract from that. Or just do a normal extraction until the end, and if you're not happy with your final product, recrystallize or do FASA on it.

Try this, heat or microwave a bowl of water, so that it is hot, and warm your extract to 55-60C. Defat at this temperature making sure to mix the naptha thoroughly. Do not use alot of naptha, rather 3 small washes should suffice.

Allow your extract to cool down to room temperature (25C) and extract again.

endlessness hit the nail on the head.

de-fats are superfluous at best, and frankly a waste of solvent compared to backsalting.

Yeah I know its extracting, im not noob.

I just didn't want to try acidic salting again because last time I had troubles last time where some spice would stay in the naphtha. Not only that, the oils make naphtha less soluble for dmt so it takes more pulls... it actualy took the same amount of naphtha doing 2 defats or doing 2 extra pulls with oils etc.

The reason for the thread was that I was actually more curious to see why the plant oils only crossed over when it was basified... do you know?

I dont have any experience with wet-teks/i have very limited experience with defatting.

Anyway, recently I tried defatting on q21's tek with xylene x2 pulls and then naptha x1. I found this by reading elfspice's ACRB tek. Anyway, the tek basically said that xylene is more powerful a solvent than naptha, so it is used for the oils. Then naptha is used to remove any residual xylene (i think, that's sorta what I got from reading it).

Have you tried defatting with any solvents besides naptha? If youre gonna decide to try doing a defat again, i'd maybe start there. Also, how many pulls are you doing for defat?

Also, to try and answer your question, I think the plant oils don't get pulled until after basification with just naptha is because it's a weaker solvent and, like you said, will need more. I'm not sure why, to be honest. Really my best guess is that one of the steps (or all of them) weakens the oils' bond to the plant material, maybe naptha just isn't able to cut it that early on?

hope i helped a little bit I'm still learning so how I explain things might be wrong or could be right and make no sense. I dont know.

Except you literally titled the thread "Naptha won't defat untill after I have basified..." and then stated


Which, as endlessness pointed out isn't defatting, it's extracting.

But, moving beyond that...how did you come up with this conclusion:



See Infundibulum's post here for relevant discussion on this assertion.


This is a confusing statement as comparing naptha used for actual defats with naphtha used for extracting doesn't make much sense, they are different steps with different goals. Can you clarify what you mean?

i have noticed (though this was with limo, idk if it translates to naphtha) that after i acidified the solvent, i could keep doing what are essentially "pulls" on the solvent with water (Assuming your water is <7ph) to get more and more dmt out of it. i rinsed what i thought was spent solvent six times (i did it a lot, because as i thought it was spent, i figured one rinse would be negligible) and ended up getting almost a gram more out of it...

i wouldn't consider that a problem with backsalting necessarily, but i think understanding that it can take more than a bit of water only aids in recovering alks from the solvent.

but again, this could just be something that is a factor with veg oil/limonene and doesn't really apply to naphtha.

Guys, I think I know what he is asking.

OP wants to know why his naphtha will only turn yellow if pulls are done after basification of the solution and not during defats during the acidic stage. I too have wondered this.

He should have titled the thread "Why won't naphtha dissolve fats until after basification."

OP, the term "defat" is used only for intentional removal of plant fats from the solution before basification. Your use of the term is incorrect

When I tried de fatting I got an incredibly thick emulsion in the naptha layer, which wouldn't subside even after three pulls. Either I'm pulling a lot of fat out, or an emulsion is inevitable with the acidic soup.
So thats why I don't bother with a de fat. Clean up your saturated naptha with a mini A/B, you'll be winning.

A (deep)freeze-thaw breaks emulsions very effectively.

Anyone know the answer to his question though? I'm also curious why solvent only turns yellow (supposedly with fats) after basification and not during an actual defat.

My guess : basification help to lyse cells, freeing more alkaloids but also fats, pigments and whatnot. Hence more things and color in NPS.

Try cleaning with a pinch of carbon, swirl it a couple times and let the solution clear up and filter the carbon out.

Considering you mean a proper defat like in an acid state:
Yes, and it's here, section "Extraction":

The DMT Handbook.

Excerpt:

Once the alkaloids are freebased and transfer into the NP solvent, NP goes yellow indicating success. This yellow is NOT an ultimate fat-indicator, hoax alert woop woop.
That's why the man said:

BringsUsTogether, you mean you did not read that book ?

Technically, the defat step is called washing. When you defat, you wash impurities out.

I did, I just didn't realize that the yellow was not necessarily fats but also could have been other alkaloids. That answers the question I guess.

Also, yellow NPS is not really an indicator of success. Plenty of people have had clear naphtha pulls that still yielded product.

Never noticed that, but then that's perhaps what I've seen was always done at around 50 deg C (122F). The yellow, yes might not be pure spice but rather yellow wax that comes along, a most interesting must have and sometimes undervalued by white-porn purists
MHRB: The red (that does not fall to bottom and) that stays within the NP is what I stray from and washed out very effectively by carbonate, even when a backsalting follows, it takes all the red out, leaving the now becoming visible heavenly yellow undisturbed in the NP.