Question 1:
Quote:Why a cycle of warming/cooling is superior to constant hot temp and why 1 hour, why not more or less?
Answer: it appears this
was added in light of experience. Intermittent heating allows the heat to penetrate a pasty material more evenly without overheating the outside. Also, reminding people to turn the heat on and off intermittently reduces the chances of them allowing the heat bath to boil dry.
Question 2:
Quote:Instead of heatbath or shower why not use hairdrier or heat gun to warm EVENLY bottle/flask for better separation? (Lets consider we know what we are doing and there is no fire
hazard) would that be better/easier than water bath or shower?
Answer: heat transfers far more effectively and evenly from a liquid bath than an air bath. (Consider how steam is a more effective sterilant than hot air.)
Using a water bath of sufficient size carries another important advantage - should your jar break due to thermal shock, the bath will save you from a terrible, corrosive mess and you will be able to continue with your extraction.
A hot water bath is also quieter than using a hot air gun.
Question 3:
Quote:Does someone know if/whats the dmt(acetate) decomposition temperature is while in solution under low pH? (I ask because i want to know at how high temp i can do the acidic boils).
Answer: It's not strictly a decomposition. DMT acetate solution exists as protonated DMT cations, and acetate anions, both solvated by water. At any given time, small amounts of the acetate ions will pick up protons from the water to re-form acetic acid molecules. In principle, small amounts of this acetic acid will distil off during boiling. If you've used a small excess of acetic acid this won't be a problem.
You could do a bunch of calculations based on the pKa/pKb values of the species involved (and several other factors) to estimate the rate at which acetic acid (and DMT) will boil off from a neutral DMT acetate solution. Doing so, accompanied by experimental data to verify the calculations, would be worthy of publication.
Question 4:
Quote:What you think about doing a NaCL/water wash after the first Sodium Carb/water wash
(on the non polar pulls)
Answer: what would you hope to achieve by doing so? Using a saturated salt solution would possibly reduce the amount of residual water in the naphtha. I personally wouldn't bother with the sodcarb wash here anyhow. Perhaps it's supposed to remove small particles of basic aqueous solution from the naphtha but this is something that can generally be avoided in the first place by using the correct techniques.
Question 5:
Quote:After collecting the pulls is it a good idea to filter the nonpolar/dmt solvent through
lab filter paper or diatomaceous earth or even activated carbon?
Answer: Again, what would you hope to achieve by doing so? All of these methods would potentially reduce your yield. It would only make sense to use them if there was a visible or known reason for doing so. With MHRB extractions, thi is not typically the case.
Question 6:
Quote:Why dilute the already diluted acetic acid (vinegar) in water/vinegar solution to acidfy bark/water mix, cant i use a pipette to add drop by drop vinegar or even 100% acetic acid to acidify?
Answer: all you need is a sufficient acidity to provide enough soluble counter-ions for the DMT present. Vinegar is simply a readily available acid for doing so. Using glacial acetic acid is fine if you have it, although arguably there are better uses for it. The main thing is to ensure you dilute your acid in roughly the correct amount of water for the overall concentration of acid to be sufficient, and for the overall volume of acidic bark mixture to be in the right ball-park.
Initially, the bark is soaked then frozen with plain water in order to first re-hydrate the cells and then burst them when the water freezes. This is to improve the yield of DMT by releasing it from inside the plant cells. Using pure water here maximises the hydration rate because the difference in osmotic pressure between the inside outside of the cells is greatest when the water added has no dissolved salts.
Before freezing, the bark is mixed with only sufficient water for this process. This will allow the freezing and thawing to take place more quickly, and the mixture takes up the minimum necessary volume in the freezer. Thus, for the acidification step, an additional volume of diluted vinegar is added.
Question 7:
Quote:After freeze percip in freezer and removing solvent from dish is it good idea to put the dish with the percipitated crystals in a vacuum chamber to quickly "suck" and evap the remaining solvent? (Instead of turning dish upside down and letting evap on its own) Just like the last step of making BHO (the purge).
If you have a vacuum chamber of a suitable size you could certainly give it a try. Bear in mind that DMT crystals can dissolve into naphtha remnants as everything returns to room temperature. Many people put their drained crystals back in the freezer with the dish tilted or upside-down so that more of the naphtha remnants can drain off.
βThere is a way of manipulating matter and energy so as to produce what modern scientists call 'a field of force'. The field acts on the observer and puts him in a privileged position vis-à-vis the universe. From this position he has access to the realities which are ordinarily hidden from us by time and space, matter and energy. This is what we call the Great Work."
β Jacques Bergier, quoting Fulcanelli