Hi all,

Heading to work with FASA (source is mhrb), for a change and fun.
So now it becomes possible to pull in ambient temperature with toluene, sounds cool.
* Since it grabs deems very well, does this mean that a lesser number of pulls is necessary?
* does it behave differently concerning potential for emulsion?

Thanks,
J.

Hi Jees!!

I've only worked with xylene, never toluene. From what I understand they work in a comparable way.

Using xylene, I was able to pull most of the alkaloids from a 100 gram mimosa extraction with the first 100 ml room temperature pull.

I experienced no emulsions, but neither do I usually with naphtha, I use an A/B extraction with sufficient basing with NaOH, if I like I can shake the two layers together and the solvent quickly begins to migrate to the top, a black sparkly mixture, like diamonds in charcoal, it is very pretty.

Best of luck, happy labors!!

Hello T6S,

yes Xylene and toluene should behave similar in that regard.
It sounds promising, thanks for chiming in

The relatively high boiling point (to other NPS alternatives) of toluene is mainly what keeps it from being an optimal choice of solvents. Hexane is used in soybean and sunflower oil extraction.

Not that either is good for guzzling outright but I try to lean more toward alternatives that at least have some acceptance in the food industry.

Hi ZiPhi

for inhalation, you're absolutely right:
LC50 - rat - 4 hours: toluene 27 mg per liter vapor, hexane 172 mg/l (data Sigma Aldrich msds)
So we must be more careful with vapors.
After drying the fasa I suppose we can forget about solvent traces?

If not fasa then backwashing the deems-enriched toluene with an acid water, then followed by re-pulling with an aliphatic hydrocarbon we can choose hexane if wished. Yet longer chains can hold more deems per volume solvent at same temperature, aka better pulling.

If I was in for food-grade concerns, I would choose an even food-gradier tek than hexane all together, like D-limonene.

Happy end year days

Ethyl acetate is another low toxic solvent.

Good to know on the longer chains having more deem holding potential Jees; did not know that.

I had to read your post a few times to take it all in and I still need to do a little homework to get the full benefit of it.

Greetings,
I'm absolutely no lab rat either but the post I made contained ins-and-outs that deems-people get to know after a time simmering in for example this forum, knowledge that one build up over time. It's good to affiliate slowly with all those methods of extracting, solvents, ...

LC50 means toxicity when inhaling, in contrast to LD50 is toxicity by intake.
(50% of rats die at these concentration)
The mentioned numbers say that indicative, toluene inhaling toxic concentration is aprox 6x the one of Hexane.

Aliphatic hydrocarbons are straight chain molecules, these allow to precipitate (crystallize) under freezing. This in contrast to circular molecules (aromatics) like xylene and toluene that don't freeze crystallize but are ok for FASA techniques.

and so on..

Hexane is fairly nasty for an simple alkane due to a quirk of metabolism which turns it into something quite neurotoxic. Not as nasty as the infamous MPTP, but exposure should still be avoided.

If anyone ever gets the chance to try out butyl acetate - another solvent of relatively low toxicity - I would love to hear how it goes.

toluene is my solvent of choice.. the only thing is it can take a while for extracts to solidify.. a good few days I've found. If you scrape your extract straight away it may be very oily and difficult to store. If your wedded to the idea of pure dmt then its not the best but its great for pulling a wider range of alkaloids.. so if your testing plants its a good one