I was having thoughts of exhausting some chaliponga in a soxhlet with ethanol. Before I do it I was wondering about a couple things.
Would there be a problem defatting the plant material with something like hexane or naptha in the soxhlet or is it not necessary?
This second question isn't in regards to the first, but just a general question/thought. If Someone performed a "drytech" basing plant material with calcium hydroxide and loaded that into a soxhlet and extracted with nonpolar, Any reason not to do it?

Why are you using a soxhlet? I could see the reasoning behind using a soxhlet for the extraction of polyphenols/phenolic compounds, but there's no advantage to using one for the extraction of alkaloids. lyse, acid-base chemistry. Chaliponga leaves will have more oils than say bark, that would be reason enough for at least one defat.

okay...

A soxhlet is only good if you try to wash out something that doesnt have a high soluability in your solvent.
Something like caffeine and alcohol for example.

Its not really worth for a dmt extraction as you just need a few pulls to get results.
Soxhlet is made to run for a few hours to multiple days on autopilot.

Can't give much advise on the matter, but am curious about your end results. Please keep us updated

The nice thing about it is that

1) Since you can find a solvent DMT has a high solubility in, you can run it for not very long to get a good yield
2) Since it runs on autopilot, you can leave it alone for a while - it automates part of the extraction.
3) You own a &$*$ soxhlet and so you can use it for other things as well and it's a brillant piece of chemistry engineering.

Number three is what really sold me

Blessings
~ND

Soxhlet does burn the extracted compounds. If you let it reflux for hours your yield will decrease.
I dont know about DMT but I dont think it can withstand continued solvent boiling.
Also dmt is extracted quickly while other impurities are not. Those will get flushed out of your source materiel by the soxhlet.

There may be some burning, but that's not really a concern if you actually know what you're doing. If it's a quickly extracted compound, don't let it boil that long. Maybe there's some loss, but not something I'd be too worried about unless you were absolutely determined to get to that 100% yield.

As for the impurities, the rest of the extraction should clean it up to an acceptable degree.

Would I buy a Soxhlet exclusively for DMT extraction? Probably not, but the nice thing is, it opens up the possibility of a lot of different kinds of extraction, since not every compound or plant matter is amenable to kitchen-style A/B extraction.

Blessings
~ND

You all had some good points. I thought of running the chali in it because the consistency of the leaf likes to float in acid boils so it just seems eaiser to pack it in a soxhlet and get the crude extract with some kind of alcohol. I've read of people doing a defat in a soxhlet with hexane prior to extracting with an alcohol. I guess I could try the defat and vacuum off the hexane to.make sure it didn't pull anything I want.

It seems like soxhlet is a good way to obtain a crude extract from most plant material.

Just make sure you put the matter in a bag of filter paper or you will clog the soxhlet.

Doing the defat in the soxhlet seems like a good idea.


That's if you don't have soxhlet thimbles, typically made from cellulose.

defat using soxhlet IS a good idea. Chaliponga would be pleasant to extract A/B if it wasn't so waxy and fatty. People seem to forget that not all extractions work nice like MHRB or ACRB, defat is almost always necessary, and a proper defat can take a lot of solvent. If you perform a lot of extractions a soxhlet is a must have.

DCM is a great solvent for defat, but if you run it too long you may lose some yield. It can still dissolve DMT salts, probably more apt to dissolve whatever compound is naturally in the chaliponga.

So hexane may be the better choice in this case. DCM could work if you ran only for a few hours, and hexane you could run overnight without fear of losing yield.

another huge benefit to using soxhlet for a/b, after you defat, you can extract the full spectrum with alcohol, also in regard to your second question, you CAN do a dry-tek for this part too. Sometimes I do remove the plant material mix it up with CaOH and water leave it out to dry before running the soxhlet with alcohol. But usually I am too lazy to do this and it works just as well without it. But it some cases it is a must since yields go way down and its dirtier (bufotenine).

you can then dissolve it up in water perform the A/B on that extract. This can be MUCH easier and better yielding than doing acid boils to get the alks in solution.

also

you can reverse these steps, do the defat after doing the full spectrum extract. In this case you can't use the soxhlet for the defat, though. But since no plant material defat works faster. Up to you.

I don't think doing a defat in the soxhlet would be a good idea. One benefit (mentioned above) about the apparatus is that you can use it to extract compounds into a solvent they're not usually soluble in by essentially brute-forcing it.

So if you tried to defat your DMT salt in a soxhlet, you would run the risk of loosing yields.

AFAIK, defats are usually done at room temperature and reasonably quickly so that the lipids and other easily soluble fats move but there isn't time for the desired actives to cross over.

Blessings
~ND

You're right. Defats can be done quick and easy in most cases like this. In this case I would recommend the last option, doing a full spectrum extract in the soxhlet to get a resin, and then defatting that.

But just try doing this with cebil seeds and you won't be impressed with the insoluble gunk you produce.

IME for a good product and mess free extraction some things need a thorough defat at the expense of some yield.

However if you defat the plant material in the soxhlet with a less efficient solvent (hexanes or pentanes) you avoid the problem of losing yield with DCM, and still get to use the 'brute forcing' of the soxhlet to extract the lesser soluble stuff, without touching the desirable. Just don't run it for 72hours or something

I guess it just comes down to doing it and see what happens. I think I will end up doing two separate runs. One defat with hexane in soxhlet and then extract. The other just alcohol then defat the crude extract. I was thinking maybe if I defat the plant material with hexane and then mix plant material with CaOH, dry, reload and just run with dcm and hopefully come out some what clean. Im gonna have to wait for my smaller soxhlet to come in to do this, the one I have now is just to big to try and do smaller runs with. I've never worked with chali and knew you guys would point me in the right direction

This is what it is ALL about.

one more question. Have any of you used 151 proof alcohol? I just used up the rest of my 190 proof. They don't sell 190 in the state and the place I use to order from stop selling it. I can order it but the shipping is outrageous. If I have to distil something I might just go with methanol, unless there's any reason not to. I don't mind using methanol for something I will be refining. But for future tinctures, has anyone used 151?

Seems to me the 25% water content of 151 proof might be a problem...it might take so long to evaporate that your DMT starts oxidizing? Methanol would probably be better since it's 100% and thus fast to evaporate

That's what I was thinking, I have to distil the methanol to use it cleanly, which is why if I have to distil something I would rather spend my time distilling the methanol. What about for tinctures? For example if I were to soxhlet more kratom, would 151 be alright?

But distilling the 151 would also be much fun! 151 is a great starting point for making your own 190. You would want to use some sort of fractionating column for that, though. It's worth it to have your own supply of 95% ethanol.