I was thinking, could you use butane to "open-blast" extract salvinorin-a from salvia divinorum leaf?

(This is what I mean by open blast: Take a glass tube, one end has a filter, the other has a "nub" which accepts the aerosol butane can, the tube is filled with powdered plant material, an aerosol butane can is then placed in position at the "nub", as the butane "blasts" over the plant matter through the tube, it becomes a liquid, which drains out of the the bottom of the tube through the filter, and into.a collection dish, this collected liquid butane is then evaporated leaving your compound. ) (This is popular for cannabis extraction, it produces "shatter" cannabis extract )

I have performed this process with cannabis many times, and was thinking that it may work when applied to extracting a diterpenoid hydrocarbon like salvinorin-a.

Another idea involved packing the tube with powdered cannabis and salvia divinorum leaf, yielding a salvinorin/THC combination extract...

All of this is just quick ideas off the top of my head, so I may have missed some obvious reasons why this would fail, but off the top of my head it seemed plausible...

-eg

Having never attempted what you're suggesting, I'm not entirely sure it would work (or not work for that matter)

I found this old thread from the entheogen forum that might interest you:
http://entheogen-network.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=5206&sid=fa272d8efb80786320d0f5d09519cca6

if ya gonna try blasting something, im not sure how you would do this, but acetone is really is the best by far...


Salvinorin Solubilities (@ 27°C)
Acetone 23 mg/mL (43.5 mL/g)
Methyl Alcohol (Methanol) 3.15 mg/mL (317 mL/g)
Ethyl Alcohol (Ethanol) 1.28 mg/mL (780 mL/g)
Isopropyl Alcohol (Isopropanol) 0.74 mg/mL (1350 mL/g)

That declining solubility as one goes up the homologue series of the alcohols doesn't bode well for any solubility in something as non-polar as butane.

@e-g: A butane/acetone mix might do the job quite nicely but considering you'd be looking at washing off capitate trichomes (or so I've been led to believe) you might as well go for the brief wash in ice-cold acetone, as gibran2 suggested here. Butane might mess things up by pulling too many fats. Naphtha is used to wash the crystals resulting from the acetone soak/evap.

And for the record, e-g, salvinorin has polar, oxygenated functionalities and is no mere hydrocarbon. "Terpenoid" typically denotes oxygenated variants of the (C5H8)n±xH2 formula, "terpenes" are the hydrocarbons in the formal parlance.

I'd suggest making any 'blasting' apparatus out of a piece of copper pipe with a compression fitting at each end.

Salvinorin-a is a trans-neoclerodane Diterpene.

as it is only composed of hydrogen and carbon (and oxygen) atoms, it is a hydrocarbon as well, or a trans-Neoclerodane Diterpene hydrocarbon.



The only reason I was interested in butane was due to the very specific procedure described (open blasting), I'm aware of the proper methods for salvia extraction and common solvents for these procedures, as I said before, I used to do this with cannabis all the time, until state law made open blasting illegal, and was simply thinking, wouldn't that be nice if it would work with salvinorin compounds...which it doesn't, but it was a nice thought.

It's always a Pyrex or glass tube, sometimes you will see aluminum or stainless steel, but I've never seen anyone use copper. There's reasons behind this...Commercial butane still has some sulfur left in it, which is converted to H2S04, which attacks copper.

The Chemical Compatability database gives butane/copper a "C" - "fair" rating, so on your list of potential materials copper should be near the bottom.

I put this link in the bottom so everybody can get a good idea of the procedure I was speaking of.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GtFddGXZEk

Consensus is that open blasting fails with salvia, it would have been a convenient and quick extract method had the solibility been proper...

-eg