A friend of a friend is interested in doing this extraction and asked some questions that I will relay here for advice.

Has syrian rue wants alkaloids. Has heard that ethanol extractions leads to problems mainly an inactive red component.

What other methods are people using? SWIM saw the acid water extract followed by salt out does this tek require boiling off of water or do the alkaloids simply precipitate? Any other methods around? The friend of a friend has access to any chemicals so thats not a problem. Advice on a tek or link?

boiling off is not required to salt out.. The only boiling SWIM used is to make the first acid water from rue, but even so, just a long cold wash would most likely be enough

SWIM described his proceedures in the other main harmala thread. The only issue about the tek is the filtering, specially of the first sludge after the salting out, is quite troublesome.. But if SWIY has access to lab equip, Im sure he can do this, as even SWIM with all his improvised materials was able to

With easy further cleaning after SWIM's final product, Im sure SWIM could have a quite pure final product

Few more questions about the tek SWIY linked too.

What is the purpose of adding ammonia? When one adds the NaCl and precipitates the harmine why turn the solution back to basic as won't this liberate the freebase? Is the purpose of this tek to get harmine HCl or harmine freebase? Is SWIM missing something? Is it to liberate freebase extract with non polar solvent and then remake the salt to clean the product?

Let me see if SWIM has this straight:

So basically extract with acidic water. Filter out plant material. Add salt until saturated. Freeze. Alkaloids precipitate. Filter this again (the hard to filter part no?). Then dissolve the solid material which is a mixture of the alkaloids and other impurities dissolve it in water. Then basify? Does SWIY use base as is or does SWIY convert it back into salt form? Why use ammonia because it can be evaporated? Evaporate ammonia is horrid smell and damaging to certain kinds of equipment (roto vap seals).

SWIM thinks it might be better to skip the ammonia part and just recrystallize the initial precipitant that was filtered in methanol or something no? Also why not just do some kind of A/B technique?

Thanks for any tips.


Anyway SWIM was filtering a difficult plant extract in his real life and realized hey this might also work for other SWIMs syrian rue extracts. Buchner funnel + filter paper + pure sea sand (cleaned with HCl previously). The sand helps absorb solid particles making the filtering easier. Just a tip SWIMs friend of a friend will let SWIM know if this works. Well its only applicable for filtering out the plant material part.

Hey all SWIM had a dream:

That there was 600mL of p. harmala extract laying around after filtering (wow that does suck!). SWIM added 60 grams of NaCl to it and heated then cooled. Is this enough salt?

People have said that 10% salt is enough. 10% to SWIM in chemical terms means 10 grams / 100mL water.

Yes, that's exactly the amount that's recommended.

Make sure you filter it very well before adding the salt. Otherwise it can take an extra long time for crystals to form.

It will work faster if the water is concentrated down to a very dark brown liquid before adding the salt. If it’s not dark brown, it's too dilute and it will take a long time for the alkaloids to salt out. The first salting is the slowest and most impure.

As a general rule, 100 grams of seed water extract should be boiled down to about 250 ml and then 25 grams of salt added to it while boiling. It should be boiled at least a minute after adding the salt. The liquid should be very dark brown, sometimes greensish brown, sometimes reddish brown before adding the salt. It should be so dark you can’t see through it, but still very watery.

It can take a whole day in the refrigerator before any crystals form. Sometimes crystals form almost immediately after adding the salt. It all depends on the seeds used.

Let it sit overnight in the refrigerator just to be sure. Then you need to filter out the crystals while the liquid is very cold. It should be done fast or you’ll lose yield as the liquid starts to warm up and re-dissolve some of the crystals (same as when freeze precipitating DMT). This is the tough part of the extraction. Filtering is REALLY HARD, and it will often break filter papers if using a vacuum.

After you filter, you want to dissolve your crystals in as little hot water as possible. Then add 10% salt, and bring to a very mild boil for about 1 minute or until everything dissolves. Then carefully put it aside to cool down. Try to avoid touching it as the crystals form larger and more pure if not disturbed. Once it cools down, put it in the refrigerator overnight for best results. This will produce the best possible crystals and best yield using the salt method. This batch, when complete, will be much easier to filter.

SWIMs dream:

Cool thanks for advice. SWIM dreamed of doing everything except boiling it down. Will check results tomorrow but if no xtals form might have to concentrate however that will also concentrate the salt. But salt can be cleaned up later if it becomes a problem.

if one settled with the manske precipitation, the purpouse would be to get harmine/maline hcl.. But its too crude, not purified enough. The adding of ammonia is to basify and achieve harmine/maline freebase, which precipitates out of the solution on the last step



there is no non-polar solvent used, just water, salt and ammonia.. The salt is not remade, one can just keep the freebase.. You could after achieving the freebase, remaking the salt, letting precip again, remaking freebase, and filtering whenever possible, and each time obviously it would be a purer product. But a propper filtering just after dissolving the precipitated harmine hcl in pure water would already guarantee a much purer product, as mostly only the alkaloids (and the salt) would be very dissolved in the water, and the oils/organic material would be floating in water and could be filtered.



not freezing, just fridge.. you dont want ice, you want water alkaloids (and some impurities obviously) falling down to the bottom



yes thats maybe the hardest part to filter



Use base as is.. Why ammonia? Thats good question, I guess any base would do.. I guess the good thing about it is that it evaps and that there is no risk of over basifying and destroying the harmalas, like with NaOH.. But I cant see why any other base wouldnt work




the use of methanol or other alcohols was basically criticised against, because of the probability of creating an inactive product (harmala red.. which might also be an n-oxide which could be active. We just need people to bioassay and tell us)..

The A/B technique could very well work, yes.. I think one of the advantages was that this could be done with easy to get equipment without the need of petrochemicals and so on.. but indeed I cannot imagine why it would work

The only thing different from, say, mimosa extraction, is that when basifying the mimosa, the alkaloids dont seem to precipitate as freebase, do they? why, then, in this harmalas extraction they precipitate as freebase? But I guess even with them precipitating, as soon as one would mix a non-polar solvent, they would be dissolved in it and then one could evap and achieve a pure product.

btw this sea sand technique sounds very interesting! gotta be tried!

From what SWIM remembers of the dream.

Yea the sand only helped with filtering out the material the first time. So filtering the acidic water extracts. It did help but not as good as SWIM hoped. SWIM tried a few things sand, cotton wool, filter papers etc. Glass fiber papers would probably work better then the filter papers SWIM used but alas didn't think of using em. Its just some tough gunk to filter. The best thing was to filter out the bulk material first with cotton wool. Then filter out the finer material with filter paper covered with the sand under vacuum. Worked but took long time.



oops yea thanks for correcting that.

Thanks for clarifying the purpose of the base steps with ammonia.

Anyway SWIM had another dream this morning and saw crystals hanging out on the bottom of the glass container. SWIM will decant off the liquid scrape up the xtals let them dry, clean them up etc. Then concentrate the liquid a bit more and make it cold again see if more are hiding away in there.

But yes SWIM certainly sees the advantage of this tek as anyone anywhere can do it without the need for petrochemicals and thats a very nice advantage (both environmentally and cost wise).

SWIM stopped trying to extract harmala alkaloids because the filtering is so tough. Is there a way to filter it that takes only a few minutes?

Here is what SWIM remembers from SWIMs dream. The initial extract (crushed seeds + acidified water) was filtered with cotton wool in a buchner funnel + flask with vacuum. That took a few seconds and got rid of the bulk seed material. In the next step to filter the finer particles SWIM used the same set up except added filter paper to the buchner funnel and sea sand (that has previously been cleaned with HCl solution, sea sand from the beach is dirty and needs to be cleaned, even sea sand you buy for this purpose). Sea sand essentially serves a similar function as diachotomous earth would. Although this worked it still took a while (few hours) and SWIM had to switch filters a number of times.


As far as filtering the final extract after precipitating the alkaloids, SWIM can't think of a quicker way to do this because one wants to alkaloids to be left behind on the filter. The best way to make sure this goes as quick as possible is too make sure the initial extract is as clean as possible and concentrated.

However there are alternatives, new extractions could be envisioned but they would most likely start requiring solvents bases etc. It would be more complicated and involve more chemicals but could certainly be done but as with everything its a give and take situation.

what technique do the people use who are selling it in large quantities over the internet? there must be some quick and easy way to do this. but i also think that the key lies in good filtering.

^^Good question. If they want to cut their costs the methods reported are probably super cheap but a bit time consuming. if they want to do it quick they probabaly get into solvents and A/B or STB type extractions. SWIM will post a summary of SWIMs dreams soon.

A question on filtering - whats the best filter to use for the layman with no vacuums etc?

Would the filters used for biodiesel work? can get them from 1 micron upwards made from PP. Maybe layering a few of differing sizes would work nicely


Might even be usefull for FASA as PP is not meant to dissolve in acetone.

Harmala alkaloids are too messy to filter, whether they are in their salt or freebase form. Decanting has been the best (and apparently fastest) way for SWIM's FOAF. Honestly, he looks back with dread while he was trying to use filters. Even a 50micron filter will clog within 0.00000000000000000000000001 seconds, hahahahaha.

Yeah, it's a nightmare to filter.

There must be some other way beside decanting. What if you froze it after the precipitates settled down? Could you then take it out of the freezer and would the precipitates fall off the frozen liquid at the top? Or would it all be one solid chunk of ice?

Anyone ever try that?

No mate it wouldn`t. Prec. still locked in the chunk of ice. Not a brightest idea. Keep thinking.

...unless one physically cuts out lower chunk of ice containing the frozen precipitates. Even though it sounds messy, it may work pretty well.

Whats the best method of extracting from Rue? A simple A/B or A/B with salt? Does the anticaking agent (sodium hexacyanoferrate ) in table salt make any difference?

An a/b would probably worked, SWIM never tried it

the salt thing is not done exactly like an A/B, but in a different process, the 'manske' extraction (which you can basify in the end or not, depending on what you want). For this, boil 3x in acidified water, separate and throw away the solids.. Then you let the rue tea decant for a day, keeping the water on top, and filtering the bottom gunk (maybe a double-folded t-shirt or some cloth) which you throw away.

Then you saturate this liquid with salt (somewhere around 35g of pure salt per 100ml of liquid). Dont use salt with anticaking agent or whatever other impurity. Im sure you can get pure salt somewhere. Then basically again let it settle for a whole day or so in the fridge, and this time pour off the top water and throw away, and the stuff that settled to the bottom you filter again, but now using a coffee filter instead of some cloth, and now you keep what stays on top of the filter (which will be precipitated harmine/harmaline hcl), and throw away the liquid that passed. This filtering part is a bit of a pain but if you made the first decanting with the tea before adding the salt, and if you have patience and change filters a few times, its for sure possible and doable

Now what you have is impure harmala salts, mixed with some impurities, including quite a lot of salt. To get it much purer, re-dissolve it all in hot pure water (if using tap water with too high pH or if you just want to make sure, you can add a tiny bit of lemon juice or white vinegar to guarantee the alkaloids will dissolve). Now the salts (harmalas and normal salt) will be dissolved in water. So now you basify to pH 10,11 or so using non-sudsy ammonia (what SWIM used), but also sodium carbonate/bicarbonate must work. Dont use sodium hydroxide, or if you do be very careful you dont over-basify as it may destroy the harmalas. As soon as the base touches the water, it changes to a lighter colour, which means the harmalas are precipitating. Now just let it settle for a couple of days again, and then again pour off the water on top, throwing it away, and filter the last part with coffee filter, keeping what stays on top. Now you have purer freebase harmala alkaloids with no salt impurity. 100-200mg are enough MAOIs for oral DMT activation

the advantage of this process instead of an A/B is that you need no petrochemicals or chemicals that are dangerous, you need salt, a weak base and time (and a fridge helps). Anybody can do it and its legal basically everywhere. The only issue is filtering which is a bit of a pain but its very possible.

Can I use Phosphoric acid instead of acetic in the Manske type extraction? Mainly due to the smell of vinegar