Hello guys,

About a year ago SWIM decided to extract DMT from 250g of mimosa hostilis root bark using the Max Ion process. SWIM unfortunately couldn’t finish the process and ended up storing 3L of highly basic solution and shredded root bark for a year. SWIM noticed that white crystals appeared on the root bark (see attached pictures), with the characteristic smell of DMT so he concluded that the bark was not yet exhausted.

Now he’d like to process the product in order to finish the extraction yet the 3L basic solution is to viscous to work with and root bark still have some product in. So, in order to extract DMT he was wondering if he could use a method like extracting cocaine from coca leaves i.e pouring NPS such as naphtha on the basified bark and using a pump run it through acidified water in to dissolve DMT salt in it (see the attached images). This idea came from properties of DMT molecule that are like the cocaine ones i.e that the salt is soluble in water in acidic condition, and that the freebase form is soluble in organic solvent in basic condition.

This process’ main advantage would be the low setup needed to process the somewhat high quantity of bark. What are your thoughts on this idea? Do you have any advice to manage the 3L quantity of fluids?

Nb: This is my first written topic and even though I've read thoroughly the rules, if I’m doing something wrong just explain it to me so I can correct my post

Thanks for reading me,

I usually split the amount in two 1 500 mL portions and extract each separately using a 2L separatory funnel.

Another option is to use some kind of canister to mix naphtha and aqueous in, then siphon off the naphtha. If it has bottom tap, then you can pour off the aqueous layer for better separation.

Thanks for answering me,

You’re right splitting the aqueous soup in portions will make things easier to handle thus making me able to process the batch. Sometimes the easiest methods are the best.

Going back to this “ghetto” extractor presented in the documents above, I started to think that maybe circulating the filtered basic soup into DCM would be a convenient way to speed up the extraction and achieve greater yields. I’m mentioning DCM since it is a solvent both insoluble in water and heavier than water so it could replace the H2SO4 (heavier than kerosene) solution in the schematics. Only issue is that DCM dissolves vinyl tubing. Even though it should stay in the Erlenmeyer flask do you think the risk of dissolving the tubing is worth taking?

As I had time to think about what other ways there could be to extract DMT, I found some conflicting data on DMT. I initially thought of the idea of reducing the amount of liquid by gently bring the basic soup to a boil. Some says that DMT freebase boiling point is around 80°C. Is there a risk for DMT to vaporize during the process? On the same page I’ve heard that one can use a Soxhlet extractor to extract alkaloids from the bark but haven’t found any tek using it. Since I have the apparatus handy, I wonder would that work? And why isn’t this method more developed since Soxhlet can theoretically achieve better yield in the extraction.

Thanks for your time,

There's tons of stuff about Soxhlet extraction here on the forum. Just click on the 'Search' button at the top of the page, when on the page enter "soxhlet" into the 'subject' field and click on the 'search' button underneath.

Happy reading!

Soxhlets are not used very much because they are expensive and too much hassle to handle them for most people. The amount of bark you can place in common Soxhlets is also limited (100-200 grams max) although you can hot swap the material.

The very slight yield improvement provided by the extractor is usually not worth all the hassle with heating, cooling, assembling the apparatus etc. But this is an opinion based on my practice with a Soxhlet (I used it for many extractions, it seems particularly useful for cactus alcoholic extraction, but not so much for MHRB).