Hi nexus-dwellers. Instead of writing an introductory essay I decided to get more practical, and therefore I'd like to present you with my extraction method I used last time.
Any advice is welcome. Let's do it.

Ingredients I had:

- 100 grams mimosa hostilis rootbark
- 1l distilled water
- 1l 99% d-limonene
- 1l 10% white vinegar
- 100 grams NAOH plus a little more
- 450ml IPA

Extration method I chose was a simple STB. I figured it would be easier than an A/B, not having to cook the bark and filter it on several occasions. This is how I did it:

I. Grounding rootbark to a fine powder

II. Basifying
Mimosa powder was transferred into a glass pickling jar of 2l volume. 1 liter of water was basified slowly adding NAOH to water. Basified water was added to mimosa in the jar. Solution turned black. Solution was shaken for a short while, and let sit for an hour.

III. Pulling alkaloids with solvent
200 ml of d-limonene was poured into the jar of basified mimosa tea. Solution was agitated for 2 minutes, then let sit for half an hour, agitated again and let sit for another half an hour. Limonene was siphoned off and put in separate jar. Above procedure was repeated 5 times altogether, using 1 liter of limonene.

IV. Salting
Limonene was then transferred into a plastic container (1,5 liter mineral water bottle). 2 dl 10% white vinegar was poured into the bottle. Solution was aggitated for 2 minutes. When separation occured, I carefully siphoned the bottom layer of vinegar. Above procedure was repeated 5 times altogether, using 1 l white vinegar.

V. Evaporating vinegar
Vinegar was transferred into a pyrex dish, put in the oven, and evaporated at around 70 C. When the liquid got thick enough, it was taken out of the oven.

VI. Basifying
Resulting gooey stuff was mixed with 100 ml heavily basified water (using NAOH, actually too much). Solution turned black.

VII. IPA pulling
Basified solution mixed with 100 ml IPA. After separation occured, IPA was siphoned off, saved in separate container. Above procedure repeated 3 times.

VIII. Evaporating IPA
IPA was transferred into a pyrex dish, put in the oven, evaporated at 100 C. Unfortunatelly the IPA pulled lots of NAOH as well. At the end of this step I got a dark red goo and a white layer of dried out NAOH on the dish.

IX. Cleaning solution
Goo was dissolved in 150 ml IPA. IPA dissolved all the dmt containing goo, but most of the NAOH remained undissolved in the solution. Solution put in the freezer, so as to make NAOH's solubility in IPA lower. More NAOH appeared on the bottom of the solution. Solution was taken out of freezer and filtered. Excess NAOH was discarded.

X. IPA was poured onto a mix of white sage and mint leaf. Yeah I did not evaporate it to see my yield because I was impatient.

I'm currently waiting for the IPA to evaporate completely. Once it's done, I will test my product and write trip reports too. If you have any useful tips or comment feel free to enlighten me. By no means do I believe my technique is superior, I have lots to learn. I chose limonene because I wanted full spectrum, plus no petrochems. Cheers.

Seems like a pretty cool, clean technique. I'm definitely interested to hear the bioassay. How much herb did you evap onto?

IPA is miscible with water, so what do i misunderstand ?

Okay, I've never tried this myself but I thought there was something wrong with this.

Btw, Anoki I find that re-xing with acetone usually sets my mind at ease about contamination from flourocarbons. Even if your re-x from heptane I think that the crystal results you will be left with will make it hard to justify any worries about dangerous contamination. On the other hand there is just something crunchy about these full spectrum (crude?) and hippie-friendly extraction methods that draws me. Maybe because I am such a pharma fan and pharmahuasca seems so much more legit when done eco-friendly and as full spectrum as possible (without the tummy-ache!)

I don't know, there actually was a clear separation between the basified water layer and the IPA. You can try it at home, alcohol will float on top...even after shaking the solution, separation will occure
...

Let's suppose you are right and even if there was seperation, somehow some water might have formed a homogeneous mix with the IPA. Does this then mean, that the IPA retained some completely dissolved NAOH within its water content, that is now transferred to my leaf?? I actually saved the NAOH filtered off the liquid, and it seems just about as much as I put in the water to basify it.

I estimated a yield around 1,5 grams from the 100 grams mimo used. But actually I threw some limonene in which was from a previous extration performed on another 100 grams, after exhausting with naphtha. So basically it was the full spectrum alkaloid content of 100 grams mhrb, and the jungle-only from another 100 grams, that I evaporated onto my leaf matter. Reading through forums I've seen reports stating that jungle-only yields are around 1% themselves. So out of 100 grams mimo the full spectrum yield should be around 2 grams tops, and out of the other 100 grams mimo the jungle-only should be circa 1 gram. 3 grams altogether. Therefore I used 6 grams of leaf (mint and white sage), to have a blend that is around 30%.

I completely agree with you on this. Full spectrum is what I'm after, which doesn't mean I will never try pure white nn-dmt sometimes, but still. The majority of my extractions will be performed with using d-limonene, hence getting full spectrum.

I might know what happens (not sure !)

As here, you can separate water from IPA using salt (NaCl). Lye might have the same effect => makes water more polar.

I'd suggest that you add salt (NaCl) in your mix water/lye/IPA to help water/IPA separation. This should help to limit NaOH contamination. Of course, any additional steps to clean NaOH leftovers should be kept as you really don't want to ingest NaOH.

And why not using sodium carbonate (Na2CO3) instead of lye in this step ? It reaches the right pH and it's less dangerous.