SWIM has read all about changa and how it's made, so he's wondering if anyone has used acetone as a solvent for recrystallization? He hasn't found any information on it (yet) since most seem to write about the other solvents in their recrystallization process (heptane, naphtha, limonene, etc).

However, it makes sense to use acetone since it's a much quicker evaporating solvent. Would you not get purer/bigger crystals by recrystallizing extracted dmt in acetone?

Has anyone done this? Can one vouch for the safety? Acetone evaporates cleanly, and if you're using it to make changa, then it makes sense that it would be just as useful for recrystallization, and with bigger crystals (since you're evapping solvent, you generally result in nice monster crystals) would make it a whole lot easier to work with, and involve less scraping and less stuck to the container!

If you heated it, then super-saturated it with DMT, you should be able to get quartz like crystals.

Thoughts appreciated, has anyone done this before? SWIM may be missing something crucial here, so please do point it out if he is! If noone has tried this, then he is willing to do some experiments and post up the results.

SWIM just tried to recrystallize with acetone and it wasn't so successful (for getting crystals). He got jimjam at the bottom of the dish. However, it makes sense why it's used for changa. Whatever is left on the bottom of the dish would be goo and one could just coat the leaves in it.

Of course SWIY was not successful in getting big crystals. DMT is very soluble in acetone, thus very unsuitable for big crystal formation. Same goes for methanol, ethanol and IPA.

Suggest SWIY to read on how crystallisation works. Basically formation of big crystals needs slow decreases in the solubility of a given substance in a solvent. Hexane and heptane are good for that because they dissolve the dmt poorly at room temperature. They are ideal for big crystal formation because they can dissolve dmt when they are hot, then with slow cooling of the solvent the solubility of dmt decreases and crystals form. As the solvent also evaporates after the solvent has reached room temperature thus further decreasing dmt solubility in it, even bigger crystals form.

SWIM has done a lot of crystal making as a young kid for chemistry projects, so he's quite familiar with the process. It's just that he had a hard time finding the information on the relationships between the solvents and DMT itself. Perhaps a sticky somewhere on growing crystals would be helpful for others (unless SWIM missed this post entirely when browsing through the various sections).

SWIY's reply has been helpful, since SWIM did not realize that hexane and heptane were the ideal solvents for this. He figured, even though dmt is very soluble in acetone, the quick evaporation of it would result in crystal formation regardless.

Thanks for the helpful reply!!

You missed the post entirely. Its right here

-gir