I have a metal canister with almost 400 ml of used up naphtha so I decided to recycle it by distillation and recover any leftover DMT from it.

Firt, I distilled as much naphtha as possible without making the solution too concentrated:





Still, I see precipitate as the naphtha started to cool down:



I added about 100 ml distilled water and few drops of nitrazine indicator:



Then added 0.5% hydrochloric acid by milliliter steps, this temporarily turned the water acidic:



After shaking however, remaining free base alkaloids still make the water basic:



Finally, when the water stays acidic, I transfered the water layer into a beaker using separatory funnel. Then added about 25 ml of 50% NaOH solution:



The water is now strongly basic, ready for extraction:



I did four 15-25 ml heptane pulls using 250 ml sep. funnel. Slight emulsion appeared:



I shook the funnel like crazy on the last pull to get everything from the water layer:



Combined heptane pulls. After some heating and stirring, the emulsion was reduced considerably:



Evaporation in the dish, showing milky heptane:



First crystals appear. I did some more evaporation:



Next day, after taking the dish from a freezer, I found the crystals have not grown much. Instead, there is a sticky/oily layer at the bottom:





I left this to dry completely and hipefully the sticky layer will harden over time so it can be scraped.

It seems the naphtha contained lots of plant oils and this contaminated the product. Maybe it would be wiser to perform de-fatting on the water pull before basing and extraction.

I will try next time but so far it looks very little DMT has been salvaged. Still couple of doses though.

I have had the same thought,(is there a concentration of DMT in this?) great work and thanks for the post. Could a colder freezer gotten these crystals out during your original pulls? Or longer time in the freezer?

Again, another quality post/(thread) from blue.magic. I find it pretty exciting to watch your well documented experiments, thank you!

tseuq

Thanks I am about to make more in the future, but now being busy with other experiments and acquiring new glassware/equipment (super excited).

I left the dish to air dry and think, almost planar crystals slowly protrude through the sticky layer. I think there might be some trapped solvent so maybe I will scrape it and leave to dry like that.

Nice work.

A footnote to this would be:

distilling heavy naphtha leads to (some) co-distillation of DMT. I wonder if anything ended up coming over with your lighter naphtha.

I always thought Zippo Ligther Fluid is a light naphtha until I saw 120 °C reading on the still head thermometer...

Maybe I will use hexane instead.