SWIM is doing her 4th extraction of syrian rue. Here are the ingredients:

- 50 g of powdered rue
- 500 ml of 9% vinegar
- 500 ml of water
- 200 g of NaCl.

The process is as follows:

SWIM did 3 acid washes 3-4 hours each stirring vigorously with a magnetic stirrer. Temp was around 70-80C. First wash was with vinegar alone. On the 2nd and 3rd she added some water.

All washes were combined, reduced to 500 ml. 200 g of salt were added to the hot acid solution until its color changed and the salt stopped dissolving.

The jar with solution was put in a fridge. In a few hours SWIM noticed something strange. The precipitate that has been clearly visible in the solution was settling EXTREMELY slow. The liquid divided into 2 layers. A layer of very clear darker tea-like liquid is on top. Murky tan color thick liquid is on the bottom. The tan colored mud (the goodies?) that is in the lower part is soo fine that it would not separate by filtering.

Over two days SWIM managed to decant about 250 ml of clear liquid. She just waits until the solution settles a bit and sucks off the clear liquid with a syringe. There are probably 200 ml more of liquid trapped in the mud. She thought of evapping remaining water but then decided that it would probably defeat the idea of separating harmalas from other alks. At the very bottom of the jar there are some chrystals that look suspiciously like salt.

Does this happen because the rue was powdered too fine? Or is it because of too much stirring? Or, maybe, because of too concentrated vinegar?

Any ideas how to speed things up?

Maybe the low temperature is causing the small crystals? The alks should crash out at room temperature anyway – maybe save the fridge until the crashing out at room temperature has stopped.

I would redissolve everything in vinegar solution then crash out with salt again.

You've got the right idea, letting it settle and removing whatever liquid you can. Following that, I would:

Redissolve the remaining harmalas in 500mL or so hot water, filter (should be able to go through coffee filters - removes rue sediment), bring to a boil, and add salt while stirring until it will no longer dissolve any more. Pour the liquid off the undissolved salt.

Add a little more hot water (so that hopefully salt will not precipitate) and stick in freezer (too salty to freeze), wait for alkaloids to settle. Filter through coffee filters to collect more pure harmala alkaloids. Dry in oven or equivalent.

It's possible that either your solution wasn't saturated enough for the harmalas to crash out and settle quickly or your temperature wasn't low enough. I just know from my experience that when using completely saturated salt solution, they crashed out quickly in the freezer (less than 15 minutes for first Manske, a few hours for second). I doubt it's a function of the vinegar or powdered rue, but I'm not experienced enough to comment.

P.S. You can use much less vinegar, especially if you do heated extracts of the rue seeds.

Thanks Biohazard.



ATM there is still 200 ml of goo. Isn't that too much?



So you suggest another Manske? SWIM thought of dissolving the goo and basing it with sodium carbonate.

SWIM've just found a simple solution - patience!

Slowly, but surely clear liquid is trickling through a very fine filter. Hopefully in a day it will be finished.

I would just like to add, that Syrian Rue seeds do not HAVE to be powdered/ground to perform extraction of harmalas.

I have successfully performed the extraction with whole seeds, twice, and the yields were somewhere around 3-4%....it's been a while and I don't remember the exact figures, but it worked fine.

There's a paper that states that the harmala alkaloids are 'wholly in the husks'.....the husks which swell and soften in the long acidic boils, and apparently, as evidenced from my experience, release the desired alkaloids.

Not sure what the problem was with the extraction here....

.....but just give it a try with whole seeds next go round and see how it goes.

That is the way SWIM's got them .



Nope. Because this is a stage when the alks are in solid form.

oh really... .

hmmm, never gotten them pre-powdered for me.

SWIM based the harmalas tea with sodium carbonate but after 7 hours in the fridge there are no crystals. There is a layer of light tan powder. The powder is so thin that even a slightest jar movement disturbs it. Now SWIM tries to filter the liquid through a very fine filter but there is nothing left on the filter.

SWIM based the acidic solution of alks until its color stopped changing. Currently the solution Ph is around 11. Should she continue adding sodium carbonate?

A pH of 11 is as far as you need to go.

How much liquid are you working with?

Oops. SWIM already added more sodium carbonate. Now Ph is 11.3. There is no visible precipitation. The moment she got your message she was contemplating adding lye to make the solution even more basic.



450 ml.

There was a lot of precipitation after the last Manske. Now SWIM cannot get alks to crash out. Well, she's got around 300 mg or less although she was very careful with the tek. SWIM still have liquids from all stages just in case.

Maybe she should try reducing the liquid?

In theory all the alks should have crashed out. There will be a reduction in yield moving from the salt to freebase to take into account. I would decant excess liquid and put the end through a filter paper.

You may want to try working with considerably less liquid in future. Working with 100g rue in my last extraction I did the initial acid cooks with 500mL tap water (split in 3), acidified to pH 3 with 25mL 5% vinegar and reduced to ~300mL. Subsequent acid/salt/basification steps were done in 200mL and could probably be done with less.

I think working with less solution is a lot easier, less acid and base to play around with and less places to lose stuff!

That is why SWIM got scared.



That is what she did and yielded 1150 mg of pretty clean harmalas (>2%).



You sure?

SWIM always thought that percentagewise mechanical losses are higher with smaller amounts - relatively more liquid is trapped in filters, more solids stuck to glassware, etc.

There is a new development in this extraction. SWIM's kept the liquid from the last extraction in the fridge. In 3 days she noticed a layer of precipitate at the bottom. Carefully she syphoned most of the liquid and evapped the liquid remaining in the precipitate.

SWIM collected 5.850 g of dry precipitate! See attached picture. This is after she already got 1.150 g of harmalas from the same liquid. Yield of 14% (7.0 g) seems to be waaay to much. The process was as follows:

- 3 acid washes in vinegar;
- 2 Manske salt precipitations;
- basing with sodium carbonate.

There is no salt or soda taste in the precipitate. She has some harmalas left from the original precipitation so you may see that the last precipitate is a bit darker.

SWIM wonders what is in there.

well you can bioassay and see... I would guess a big part is still inactive impurities, thats why such a high yield.. i would redissolve in acidified water and do at least one more manske and one or two more base precip. Some people dont care for purity in this case but I personally like cleaning it up nicely, it not only looks nicer but also its more accurate dosing and its a nice experience to see how it gets cleaner and cleaner with each run.

Thanks endlessness,

SWIM's doing that.



SWIM prefers to know what and how much she is putting in her body.

The process itself is fun too.

Could it not be leftover rue particles that missed the filtration, that fell out of the suspension over the 3 days?

Could be considering it was powdered seeds.

SWIM ran what looked like crude brown harmalas extract through one Manske precip and one sodium carbonate basing step. Before and after each step the liquids were carefully filtered. There were one day periods of time between the two steps and before the final filtering. Sodium carbonate was first dissolved in warm water stirred, filtered and then added to the harmalas(?) solution. Final solution Ph was around 12 (too much?).

After the Manske precip there were nice colorless thin needles on top of some excess salt.

After basing she's got 0.9g of light beige, almost white flakes (where it was peeled from the filter paper) and powder. See the picture.

The powder does not have any discernable taste, when put in OJ it dissolves with noticeable foaming. The resulting OJ solution is less sour than original.

No reality perception changes or physical symptoms were noticed after igestion of 160 mg of powder.

SWIM has sent me the precipitate photo and asked if any forum members can help her to identify the substance. Is there a definitive reaction that can confirm that it is/is not the sought after substance?

It looks very white (or is that the flash?) so there could be a good quantity of sodium carbonate in there. If there is no reaction from 200mg maybe it would be worth purifying further.