and if you dont mind continuing a good discussion, here I go again.
Hope not to annoy you but there's several things I need to comment on what you said
joedirt wrote:
yes it's easier, but the problem is that you then compound the amount of fuel additive. After the initial extraction you are left with a little bit fuel additive..that is locked inside your crystals. each subsequent recrystilzation will continue to have more fuel additive locked in it. yes the crystals get prettier and yes they are more pure than before, but the amount of fuel additive being preciped out is also increasing. What I did was simply redisolve all the spice back into acid water..basify, and then pull back our with much less Naptha.
I dont find much sense with what you are saying. What do you mean with "fuel additives" ? Does your naphtha have additives appart from volatile aliphatic hydrocarbons? If so, there is your problem and you should change the solvent.. If not, then I dont understand.. Unless you are calling naphtha itself as a 'fuel additive', which is pretty peculiar and still I dont follow the reasoning. Each subsequent recrystalization does not leave more solvent in your crystals, that doesnt make sense, because each time you recrystalize, you are dissolving the crystals (therefore breaking crystal latices and therefore 'untrapping' anything that might have been inside of them), and you are only using a minimum amount of solvent anyways (30ml per g of solvent, I bet you use way more when pulling from that mix you re-acidified and re-based), and later you recrystalize them again by freezing. So I dont see a sense in your reasoning but maybe im missing something...
Also, if you're worried about solvent trapped inside crystal formation, I dont see how doing what youre doing is gonna make any difference. The way to 'cure' that is to dry your retrieved crystals as much as possible, then redissolve them in a non-toxic solvent (such as non-denatured ethanol or USP grade acetone or something). This way when its redissolved in that non-toxic solvent, any small amounts of trapped naphtha (or whatever volatile solvent you are using and worried about) will spread out and be given time to evaporate fully as the non-toxic one evaporates. Easy easy
joedirt wrote:
..but I do still have some D-limonene around and about 0.5 lb's of bark...so in a few months when I need more maybe I will check out the BLAB method...BTW I don't want to vaporize D-limonen either. It may be food grade, but it's not something I want in my lungs...
You dont need to vaporize D-limonene, there wont be any of it in your final product. Just look at the BLAB method and you'll see. The limonene is removed when salting out the alkaloids, and later on when you freebase them, you recrystalize them out of water so the only traces that would be there is of water and maybe of tiny amounts of sodium carbonate, which is non-toxic and doesnt vaporize at lighter temperatures but even if you wanted to get rid of it a simple dilute sodium carb solution or plain cold water wash will get rid of them
joedirt wrote:
I don't fully agree with you here. Pure DMT is white. Anything outside that color is impurity. However...you can certainly, and most likely do, have other impurities that are also white. The fuel additive is freezing..into a goo...I'll check out your other thread on it and add further comments about this if necessary...but for now I stand by my this statement. For a given extraction tech color can be a useful measure of purity...
Pure DMT is transparent. But even if we say that it is white, anything outside of that is not necessarily an impurity. For example, yellow can be dmt n-oxide, which is perfectly active and there's no reason to be affraid of it. Also, even if you have plant oils, there's no indication that they are any harmful. Unless of course you have a bad method of vaporization and you're actually smoking your product, but smoking anything is bad, which is why its so much more recommended to get something like the VaporGenie, so you'll only be vaporizing the wanted actives. But of course, if you dont like yellow for some personal reason, its your decision, but know that it is a subjective idea and not an objective measure of something being more harmful or bad in any way (in fact, you may be losing perfectly fine actives such as dmt n-oxide, as mentioned).
joedirt wrote:The biggest problem most in this community have is the freeze precip step. If this was done much slower it would actually have time to build an effective concentration gradient you would only get the most abundant species out....has to be done slow though. Fridge works well if the amount of Naptha is reduced significantly. With the freeze preceip anything that freezes is falling out.
This part I really cant make sense of.. "concentration gradient to get most abundant species" ? heh? Species? Most abundant? Let me make a wild guess here... Are you talking about how
the more saturated the solvent is, the more of your alkaloids will precipitate? Yes but thats pretty obvious, though it is more related to amounts and not to spice purity. As for doing a slow precipitation, the difference it will make is in the size of your crystals, you may have read this term in the forum several times, 'crystal growing'...
and lastly...
joedirt wrote:
he fuel additive is freezing..into a goo.
What?! What are you talking about... Fuel additive? I first thought you were talking about pure naphtha (= aliphatic hydrocarbons), but naphtha definitely doesnt freeze at freezer temperatures. So if you have something becoming a goo in your freezer, you are using some impure solvent which you should definitely avoid. Specially you who seem to care so much about your health, this seems like a contradiction to use a solvent with additives like this.