helle, i wanted to ask which solvent could be used to successfully substitude naphata ir lazymans or nomans tek? i have access to some dcm, but im not sure if's ok for the freezing process in the nomans tek?

P.S. im a total begginer in the field of extracting, i ha a kilo of good quality mhrb and have access to most solvents excluding naphtha. Which technique would you suugest me to use?

DCM will not work in an STB. DCM sinks on the bottom instead of floating on the top, so separating it from the sludge is going to be a pain. Bark pieces will also be sinking in the bottom and that would make life unbearably difficult.

Which others solvents you have access to instead of naphtha? Hexane, heptane, octane, nonane, decane all will work for STB and freeze precipitation. Xylene, toluene, and diethyl ether will also but you won't be able to freeze-precipitate them and you'll have to evaporate them. (xylene + toluene take ages to evaporate and ether is very dangerous to evaporate without precautions)

n-butanol and isobutanol will also work but your pulls will have traces of water and lye and you won't be able to precipitate them either.

So as i understand the best thing for me to do is to do nomans tek using one of theese - Hexane, heptane, octane, nonane, decane ? Which is the best one? and what about recrystalization, washing? Thank you very much!

Besides the problems noted by Infundibulum, DCM also would extract far too much junk. It’s never good for an STB.

If you ever use DCM to extract, you absolutely need to perform several defats with DCM beforehand.

NOTE: the term “defat” that is being thrown around all over the place is a very inaccurate term. In some cases there is no “fat” present to “defat”, but people still call it a “defat” step. In alkaloid extraction, a “defat” step is actually an extraction step used to extract all of non-desired non-polar compounds prior to freebasing the desired alkaloid, it’s not really a “defat”, it’s a non-polar pre-extraction cleanup step commonly called a non-polar wash. All extractions with non-polar solvents like naphtha and DCM extract fats and oils, so there is really no such thing as a “defat” step. If you freebased your DMT and then extracted with DCM, it will pull fats and oils along with the DMT if they are present to extract at any time during the extraction. But if these fats and oils were extracted BEFORE freebasing the DMT, then they won’t get extracted again when extracting the DMT. With mimosa bark, there’s very little fat present, but there are other compounds present in the bark that are non-polar which are not fats or oils that do get extracted during a “defat” step. So with mimosa it’s more accurately called a non-polar wash because it washes away the non-polar compounds and only a tiny bit of fats and oils.

With chacruna, there’s a ton of chlorophyll present. Chlorophyll is not a fat or oil, but it’s non-polar, and so several thorough non-polar washes are essential for getting good results from chacruna. The same is true for chaliponga.

With cebil seeds, there’s a TON of fat, and so calling the cleanup step a “defat” makes a lot of sense. But with the others, it’s really an inaccurate term.

Hexane, heptane octane and nonane will be more than fine. Go for hexane if you can find it, since it is more volatile.

Basically most of the naphthas around are a mixture of short aliphatic hydrocarbons, i.e hexane to decane, sometimes entecane and dodecane may be present. In this sense, it does sound strange that you cannot find naphtha (a mixture solvent) but you can find all these alkanes. You're on the lucky side!

I wish I had access to pure alkanes. I would use decane for defat and nonane or octane for pulling the DMT, then if needed perform a recrystallization with hexane or pentane.

I'd use some heat if doing a Noman using heptane - just a hot water bath around the basified solution will help a lot.
Definitely do a broad spectrum extraction after that using toluene or something similar, heptane is really selective whether heated or not, and one will be leaving a lot of goodies behind if he doesn't.

so even if i use hexane ( which as i understand is the best option) i will have to defat/was it with amonia even if it's MHRB? yeah, and how many pulls are neccesary if using hexane (noman's tek)? can i use the same solvent many times? are chem filter papers good? Can tolulene be used in lazymans tek?

Ammonia does not defat. Ammonia is used to remove potential lye contaminations or other impurities. Actually many people report great yield losses with ammonia and if you don't know what you do you may screw things up. Ammonia wash is a good idea but not foolproof.

Some people usually do a sodium carbonate or sodium bicarbonate wash of their non polar solvent pulls prior to freeze precipitation. It is not necessary (SWIM has not noticed any differences), yet some people report cleaner product.

As far as reusing the solvent, aye, it can be used many times, SWIM uses a solvent pull 5-8 times before he evaporates it. It works neatly for saving on solvent, i.e. pull, freeze precipitate, separate solvent from precipitate, pull with same solvent, freeze precipitate and so on.

What are chem filter papers? You mean standard Whatman filter papers?

Finally, toluene will work with lazymans (just as with any other tek) but one cannot freeze precipitate. Good luck waiting for a month or so for toluene to evaporate as well

so what i basically have to do is pull, put into freezer, pour through a filter? yeah and how tha carbonate is used?

Exactly. Or if the dmt crystals reside sedimented on the bottom of the freeze-precip container one can just aspirate the solvent and leave the crystals on the bottom. Whatever suits.

For the carbonate wash just take your non-polar pull and mix it hard with some water made basic with sodium carbonate in it. No hard rules here, usually people freehand it. Dissolving, say 10g of sodium carbonate in 1 litre of water and use that water for, say 100ml solvent would do the trick.

Omg thank you very much. Eemmm, and what is the optimal temp for freeze precip, as cold as possible? what is the minimum?

yeah, and how long do i have to soak for each pull (1,2,3...)? I have powdered mhrb.

if one is using hexane or naptha the solvent and water should mix with one another for about a couple hours with mild heating 50 degrees C or so. 100-200 mL should be fine for each pull.

A -10C to -20C freezer will do it. Depending on the amount of spice in a pull (e.g. too concentrated) even a fridge will precipitate some of it out.

What you may not want is to use like -80C because the solvent itself may also freeze. Or, even in temperatures just above the freezing temperature o fthe solvent other crap like lipids and fats will also precipitate out. -20 is definitely good for precipitating the spice overnight but let all the other crap dissolved. Noman's advice "the freezer should freeze the ice-cream hard" is a good rule-of-thumb.

SWIM does not have a standard for this. He just "feels" it. First couple of pulls can be taken out almost as the solvent has clearly separated, the rest can wait for a day making sure the solution is mixed every so often.

Thanks! I'll post the results.

sorry for double post, but how much hexane should is use per gram of mhrb? isn't dtm more soluble in hexane than in ordinary naphtha?

Use 50-100ml hexane per 100g of bark. SWIM doesn't not know whether dmt is more soluble in hexane or naphtha but with either it'll take you 4-5 pulls to exhaust the bark!

Hope that helps,

DCM will pull a lot more stuff than just dmt (plant oils, fats, jungle spice and dmt n-oxide, etc).. It also wont freeze precipitate, and if you evaporate because of all the other stuff you pull together, it will probably be an oily result, not crystals. Not to mention DCM seems to be carcinogenic, be careful.. (and remember DCM sinks and forms the bottom layer, it doesnt float like naphtha)

Hexane and naphtha should be more or less similar. As infundibulum said, you need to make several pulls to exhaust the bark. Its better to make smaller warm pulls (like 50ml per 100g bark) and make more pulls, like 5 or something, then bigger pulls (because then you would have to evaporate a lot after). If nothing comes out when you freeze precipitate, evaporate half and put in the freezer again.

Be sure to check out the FAQ, theres some good info for begginers there also.. And no problem if you need to ask more questions, feel free