Hello its been a while since I've done a cactus extraction. In the past I had free reign to any chemicals and lab equipment I wanted. But nowadays I'm interested in learning more about 'kitchen safe' cactus extraction techniques.

What are some of the threads I should read on this topic? Does anyone have any recommendations?

Thanks for any help pointing me in the right direction.

There is an 69ron's D-limonene extraction tek which uses only food safe orange oil as NPS and edible lime as base.

Some say to avoid emulsions with water extraction is to use pressure cooker (breaks cactus snot).

I use Soxhlet extraction with 190-proof alcohol containing small amount of ammonia solution. From there, you can acidify the concentrated alcoholic extract with acidic water, distill off the ethanol and proceed with your favourite A/B extraction.

I am not sure if just alcohol (without ammonia) will work as mescaline salts as supposedly less soluble in alcohol than free base. But maybe that will work too.

69ron's Non toxic food safe extraction of mescaline using d-limonene (orange oil)

https://www.dmt-nexus.me....aspx?g=posts&t=4002

Thank you both for the information. That was exactly what I was looking for.

pc tea -> reduce to syrup -> bassify (makes less viscous) -> nps pulls w hot bath

Looking for tips on best way to dry cactus. Any good teks on this? The material intending to be dried in from san pedro. The usual green flesh layer.

Wondering temperature? Timing? Etc.

Mix your powdered cactus with excess calcium hydroxide and a bit of water to make paste, make several limonene pulls, add FASI or FASA to your non-polar to precipitate mescaline fumarate. Very simple

If FASI/FASA not an option, simplest most kitchen friendly is salt with some clean vinegar, but it very possibly wont be as pure and crystallize nicely, and maybe dosage will have to be adjusted a bit (evapping vinegar smells too). Def works though.

How much FASA do you add? Would this eliminate the need for a MEK wash?

Easy answer: Dont mind quantities, just make couple hundred ml of FASA and add FASA dropwise slowly over some hours till it stops cloudying. Visual cue is very easy to follow, and adding excess FASA wont hurt your product so you dont have to worry..


The more complete answer.. It should be somewhat a function of fumaric acid solubility in acetone, the total amount of mescaline in the non-polar, and the composition of mescaline fumarate which I dont know (1 fumaric acid ion to 1 mescaline molecule or 1 fumaric acid to 2 mescaline , as is the case with DMT fumarate? )

So just playing around with some numbers... Let's say you are extracting 10kg san pedro/peruvianus/bridgesii, which can vary from practically nothing to 6g mescaline (source). Lets say you are lucky and have the higher yielding cact and will have 6g mescaline total

Now for mescaline structure, Im unsure if its a 1:1 mesc:fumaric or 2:1 (like DMT), maybe a chemist can help, so lets try both possibilities. Here are the molecular weights:

116.07 g/mol fumaric acid
211.257 g/mol mescaline

so for every 211mg of mesc you need 116mg of fumaric acid at most, or 58mg fumaric acid if its 2:1 structure (unknown at this point).

So we can do an easy rule-of-3 calculation to see how much fumaric acid we need to salt 6g mescaline:

If salting 211mg mesc you need 116mg fumaric acid,
for salting 6000mg mesc you need X fumaric acid.

X = 116 * 6000 / 211 = 3299mg, or 3.3g fumaric acid
but very possibly mescaline fumarate has 2:1 mesc:fumaric acid ratio, so
x = 58 * 6000 / 211 = 1649mg or 1.6g fumaric acid



Now for solubility of fumaric acid in acetone. According to this ,at room temp (20 celcius) 1.29g fumaric acid dissolves in 100g ( =127ml) of acetone. So to dissolve 1.6g, or 3.3g fumaric acid, you need to make
x = 127 * 1.6/ 1.29 = 157ml (if mesc fumarate = 1:1 ratio of fumaric acid to mesc) or
x = 127 * 3.3/ 1.29 = 325ml acetone (if mesc fumarate = 2:1 ratio)

If using Isopropanol instead of acetone, it dissolves fumaric acid almost 4x better according to this publication so you'll need 1/4 of that volume.


TL : DR, if extracting 10kg high yielding cact you'll need at most 325ml 157ml FASA to salt out all your mescaline

Most importantly, add that FASA very slowly to make purer crystals.

Endlessness, I respectfully have to correct you. Fumaric acid has two protons available. This means, just like sulfuric acid, one module of fumaric acid will neutralise two molecules of mecaline. This halves your estimates (which I have not double checked ).

But I am not sure if that is so important. Usually you need these calculations after a proper synthesis when weighted you freebase to neutralize for proper salting. For extractions like this, you eyeball this anyways and add until the formation off salt is no longer visible.

Dr Seltsam, perfect contribution, thanks! Thats what I suspected and commented earlier, as you can see I made the calculation for both cases, 1:1 ratio and 2:1 ratio and said a chemist would need to confirm which was the case...

So its 157ml FASA for 6g mescaline salting

And I totally agree, as mentioned in the beginning of the post, no need to make such calculations really, color changes during FASA will already tell you when its done, but since he asked for it, I decided might as well play with the numbers and see

Okay so I've probably just wasted couple hundred dollars for a Soxhlet apparatus for elaborate alcohol extraction followed by A/B when all that was needed was a bit of FASI and orange oil

Thanks for the info endless. I will put it to good use soon.

Here's a quick, top-of-the-head thought about the stoichiometry of the mescaline fumarate as it is formed: when the FASA is first added, the mescaline will be present at its highest concentration. This will favour the formation of 2:1 mescaline fumarate. When the concentration of mescaline has dropped to a point whereit's no longer sufficient to exceed the pKa2 of fumaric acid increasing amounts of 1:1 mescaline hydrogen fumarate might possibly form.

Overall, this mainly highlights why it's best to add your FASA/FASI as slowly as possible.

Do you have any experimental or theoretical evidence that this would happen to a significant degree?

No, this was entirely a thought experiment based on several decades of chemistry experience. It would be good to gather some empirical data on this one!