So SWIM did the rue extraction..

He first let 50g rue sit in 250ml of glacial acetic acid acidified water for 24 hours (no pH measured, maybe 5 drops) then filtered with an old t-shirt, put in a pot, and boiled another 2x in 250ml each time of acetic acid acidified water, for maybe 15mins each boil. He could have just boiled 3x but decided for the cold soak as the first thing just for the sake of it




Each time he filtered with an old t-shirt in a funnel, and squeezed it to get all the juice out



when filtering with the shirt, some gets stuck in the shirt so SWIM just puts some water in a bowl and puts the shirt cloth in it and mixes a bit to get the pieces out, and then pours this water together with the rest of rue that will be boiled again




Then SWIM boiled it all down to maybe 250ml. At the same time, SWIM pre-mixed 250ml of water with about 100g of pure salt (each 100ml of pure water dissolves about 36g of salt).. SWIM also added a bit of salt, maybe 30g, to the 250ml of rue tea. The reasoning behind this is that SWIM wanted the whole thing to be saturated with salt so that the alkaloids could precipitate out.. But since the rue tea is not pure water, it wouldnt hold as much salt, so he just added a bit.

Then SWIM mixed the salt water with the rue tea, and let it sit in the fridge for some 15 hours.

The next day, SWIM saw there was a definite distinction between the precipitated bottom layer and the top layer. SWIM poured the top layer off (and threw away), and when it got close to the bottom layer, SWIM poured in his self constructed vacuum filter with a filter paper similar to a coffee filter. IT IS A PAIN IN THE ASS TO FILTER THIS RUE SLUDGE! Even with vacuum, its just a pain.. And one cant use a t-shirt at this time because its too porous, so part of the sludge that you want to keep will be soaked inside the shirt

So after long time doing this, SWIM finally filtered, and threw away the filtered water. With the sludge that stayed on top of the filters, SWIM then redissolved it in 500ml hot pure water, filtered with a t-shirt (because this time the alkaloids will be redissolved in the pure (non salt saturated) water, so what will be floating is only impurities). Taking more care in this step will result in a cleaner final product in the end.

Then SWIM went outside, breathed in deep and held his breath, opened the ammonia hydroxide bottle and quickly poured some drops with the help of a little spoon (not measured, maybe 2ml), closed the bottle and ran away (Ammonia has the worst smell in the world, it hurt SWIM's eyes a lot too). SWIM noticed as soon as the drops of ammonia touched the liquid, it turned from dark brown to light cream colour.. SWIM made circular movements in the container to mix it properly and basify the whole thing.

Then SWIM left it stand overnight again. The next day, SWIM poured the top part off (throwing it away), and when it got close to the bottom part, SWIM poured into his vacuum filtration again. Little crystally formations were quite obvious and were also stuck to the sides of the container, but they were brownish, probably plant oils and what not.

So SWIM just filtered the excess water, and then opened up the filter and let it evaporate completely in the sun (also to get rid of any remains of ammonia)

The result was 1,2g shiny brown powder. SWIM spilled some of it unfortunately at some point, but still got enough to try a couple of times.



It can be further cleaned, but SWIM will take it as is.. He will do cleaning next time when he plays with more rue, this was just a test extraction, and SWIM is happy about it.. The only pain is filtering the rue sludge, but im sure SWIM will come up with a solution soon


TIP: With the final step, try to filter as much as possible in one filter.. If you keep changing filters, then there will be less alkaloids per filter, and in the end you will loose a lot of alkaloids just because you cant really scrape too much the filters (or the paper starts being scrapped and coming off together).. So you want it to be a lot of alkaloids on top of each filter so that you wont loose too much like SWIM did

Has anyone tried using an aeropress for filtering?

No, but I would love to get a few of those.

Seems like it can filter really, really quick. The only drawback is that NP solvent's will probably eat up the seals and plastic parts on it. It would be great for all water phases of an extraction.

Personally though, I think that the A/B rue extraction will probably lead to much cleaner alkaloids. When I finally run out of my rue extract I will be doing an A/B on the lb or so of rue I have sitting around.

why dont people precipitate with the salt, wait a few days in the fridge for equilibrium to salt alllll the alks out and even some or most of the salt you added in the first place. take the bottom layer and add the ammonia, filter it and let it dry, then pour denatured alch over it, leaving the salt behind on the fliter paper and all the goodies in the bottom with the alchohol, where you can then watch it all evaporate away leaving you your pure alkaloids. the ammonia should also decrease the viscosity of water making it easier to filter. this is a win win way around all the bs! i think ill try it and let you know how it goes

Try it, then bioassay it! It may work to extract alkaloids in fairly pure form, but there might be issues with the bioactivity of the said extracted alkaloids.

Alcohol can do wonders in removing the salt. But alcohol can turn the harmala alkaloids in some red-coloured inactive form. 69ron has reported on behalf of someone else that this is the case when using isopropanol and SWIM's FOAF has observed the same with ethanol, methanol as well as acetone.

So, bioassay first before clapping hands, and always keep expectations not too high

people dont do it mostly because the alcohol step is still a question. It seems harmala alkaloids when dissolved in alcohol and evapped yield a possibly inactive product, the 'harmala red', which does not crystalize. Actually nobody still knows what it is, it might be harmine/harmaline n-oxide.. It might also be active actually, we dont know until someone like yourself tests and tell us.

btw, before adding salt, I definitely recommend first letting the rue tea decant and throwing the bottom decanted part away.. working with the cleaner liquid will be much easier later on in the process (and the alks will not precipitate and decant in this first step, they should be in the water. You can even add a bit more water after decanting to the bottom part, and decanting again, just to make sure no actives are in the bottom part)

also.. once the salt+harmala alks have precipitated later on when adding salt, dont just decant and add straight away ammonia. First add more warm water to dissolve it, and then add ammonia. This will mean that whatever precipitates after will not have salt, as the salt will be dissolved in the cleaner water you added.

in your extraction you make it sound like the goodies are only insoluble in a salt saturated solution, and that once the alkaloid salt (which is reported to be insoluble in water) is in distilled water that it will go into solution again. so if the salt/sludge mix isnt saturated there will be some alkaloids left behind right? not only this but when you go to separate it from the salt with water you would need it to be in freebase form... which is insoluble im guessing.. you didnt make it too clear there. lots of t-shirt this and this water here and that. could you clear this up for me?

anyone?

Well, Manske precipitation does not precipitate absolutely everything! Some amount of the alkaloids will not precipitate. so, they are indeed insoluble in aqueous solutions but not absolutely insoluble. The insolubility of hydrochloride salt of harmalas is greatly enhanced by addition of sodium chloride, this has most likely to do with dissolution equilibria.

But all these are not a big deal when ot comes to p.harmala extraction. With yields ranging from 2-6%, (also consider the insanely cheap price of p.harmala seeds) loss of some due to non-precipitation is not a big issue.

Freebase harmalas are not strictly insoluble in aqueous basic solutions. Freebase harmine is insoluble and can be precipitated out, whereas freebase harmaline is much more soluble in basic aqueous solution. At least that is what theory predicts, not sure if anyone has made a detailed analyses of the said issues.

Or you could purchase it for $5/gm (free s&h) from this guy:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Pega...12%7C39%3A1%7C240%3A1318

It's $4.79/200mg actually, not $5/gram. Not even the greatest price around.

The price is not bad. What concerns me is the ad's content. It’s in violation of the FDA’s rules concerning herbal extracts (supplements). Because of the wording of that add, the seller could get into serious trouble with the FDA. It’s also possible PayPal might terminate his/her account. None of the on-line credit card services allow you to openly violate FDA rules while using their services.

I have a question.

does the Manske method remove the unfavorable alkaloids in syrian rue (i.e. Vasicine, Vasicinone)?
Will an A/B pull the full alkaloid range?

This might be why Manske did it this way instead of the conventional A/B extraction.

Just a thought.

im pretty sure I remember from two different sources (one of them I think it was shulgin and another burnt´s FOAF) testing manske extracted alkaloids to be only harmine and harmaline, with none of the vasicine/vasicinone

though I dont know about what comes in an A/B

Yes, in the Manske method you get almost exclusively harmine and harmaline, and a little tetrahydroharmine. In an A/B you also get vasicine, vasicinone, and harmalol. You get harmalol only if you don't use carbonates as the base.

^

Ah, I see.

So to get a combination of harmine/harmaline one could do a quick Manske, not bothing to worry about salt contamination and then do a quick A/B on the final product to get almost pure harmala akaloids.

Another thing I don't quite understand is if one uses acetic acid in the Manske extraction does adding salt actually change the salt form of the alkaloids? I've read it does, but it doesn't make any sence how that coulud be happening. I simply thought that the salt form of harmine/harmala was insoluable in salt water.

Also would using HCL in the intital extraction produce better yields? Or better phrased, is the HCL salt less soluable in salt water than the Acetate salt?

It's hard to explain without a good understanding of chemistry, but adding salt actually converts the acetates into hydrochlorides. It works for pretty much any form of the alkaloids, but only for harmine, harmaline, and THH, and not the others.

Maybe someone here, better at explaining this phenomenon can give it a try.

The hydrochlorides are poorly soluble in hydrochloric acid, so don't use hydrochloric acid.

Before further reading, SWIM has a very limited chemical knowledge and no extraction experience, but was thinking of extracting powdered syrian rue using FASA as described with DMT extraction. He read somewhere that someone has done it with success.
He was thinking of using glacial acetic instead of citric acid because that is what usually used with water extractions (as he read it), but could not found any. The most concentrated acetic acid he could find is 16%. Is it possible to make that anhydrous with reasonable effort (boiling? oven?) or could he use citric acid (or any other anhydrous acid easily available)?

1) Why does SWIY want glacial acetic acid??!?! this is supposed to to 100% acetic acid and pretty useless unless it is dissolved in water. Even 0.1% vinegar will do for SWIY's extraction

2) I guess by FASA SWIY means doing an A/B on syrian rue, then pulling with xylene, right? The only problem is that a solvent in which freebased harmala alkaloids are soluble into is yet to be found. SWIM's FOAF has tried both acetone and xylene; they can dissolve the freebased harmalas but quite poorly; not as amazingly as they dissolve spice.

Yeah, didn't last long either. I hit that link like two days after I placed an order & it had disappeared (and mysteriously, so had the seller). Although I did receive my package shortly thereafter & must say that it was well worth $5.