Okay - This extraction is simple and worked fine for swim so far - its a work in progress and il keep it updated as swim goes along.
Swim chose this tek as he has no access to pure alcahols so whiterasta's tek was out.
Further steps are going to be taken to purify it and change it into the most usable form - freebase.

Firstly 50g of Syrian rue seeds were used.



The Seeds were ground up well - then put in a pot with a small amount of water and simmered for about 30 mins - a tad of citric acid was added - swim should have used vinegar but was out at the time.
The seeds were then squeesed out and the liquid put aside - fresh water was added and this was repeated about 6 or 7 times - all the liquid was added together and reduced slightly - not enough. A pinch of citric acid was added to a perhaps 2 or 3 of those pulls.



A pot of water was brought to the boil and non-iodated rock salt was added until no more would dissolve. 1/3 the total quantity of pull water - of hot salt water was added to the still warm pull water and stirred. this solution was allowed to cool to room temp then it was placed in the fridge overnight.

Swim woke up in the morning and noticed that almost nothing had precippitated overnight - so he decided to heat up the liquid again and then add as much salt as would disolve in the solution - a bunch of vinegar was added too as swim had only added a little citric acid earlier.

This now fully salt saturation solution was then placed in the fridge and very quickly xtals started to precipitate.



Swim decanted off most of the water above the salt by using a piece of tubing and suction, the final bit was filtered and swim learned that rue is about the worst thing in the world to filter. The sparkling gunk was scraped off the filter -





and then dried





weighed



and bottled





Yeild - 2.4% - not bad for a first attempt.

Swim learned a lot of things in this proceedure and has some ideas to improve on how he did it -

on soaking the seeds - lots of vinegar should be added and the amount of liquid being used should be minimal on each pull. perhaps even leaving the ground seeds to soak in vinegar for a few days would be a good idea.

For straining in the early stages - using a steel sieve then a polyfill plug then fabric is a good idea - filtering rue is a bitch

After all the fractions have been combined - let the solution sit in the fridge for a day or 2 for any solids to drop out - as with cactus - then carefully decant and filter.

Rather than boiling up salt and water than adding 1/3rd the volume of ur base liquid - add salt directly too the boiling liquid - then strain it and place it in the fridge.

Now to purify it - is it best in freebase form - can swim freebase it by adding it to water changed to pH 12 with sodium carbonate - will it just precip out ?
How would it be best for swim to purify his product without the use of ammonium or alcohol?

also how can swim separate the harmaline and harmine ?

Ehm... I'd redisolve it in an acidic solution and let it sit in the fridge for a couple of days, filter any solids out then salt the liquid again. maybe again on top of that. Then disolve and add sodium carbonate until the colour stops changing. Then leave for 3 days, you should have some pretty clean stuff after that.

can vinegar be used for the acidic solution ?
also how clean were swiy's xtals ? got any pix ?

very nice report with the pictures

I love the harmala extraction, as it is food safe and legal

Do exactly as soulfood said! That is the way to get very pure stuff

Vinegar can be used for acidic solution, but truth is, I am not sure about the chemistry, if the acetic acid ions can take place of the hcl that is attached to the dmt when it precipitates in the salt solution. Pure water would theoretically be enough to dissolve dmt hcl but it wont hurt to put some vinegar, and it guarantees for example that any tap water used wont have a high pH, so yes use vinegar.

I got nice light tan colour crystals, with only one re-run, but got no pictures... Next time I will for sure do two. But, I did lose like nearly half of the amount I had in the first run, I guess all were impurities, but who knows maybe some actives got lost.

Its definitely worth it, though, rue is so damn cheap.

I just finished up a 1lb extraction of rue.

I've found that after an Manske extraction, simply redissolving it in slightly acidified water (vinegar is just fine) doing a couple rounds of filtering with a good filter system and then adding a good splash of ammonia will precipitate out the alkaloids and they will be a very light tan color.

Redissolving that AGAIN in slightly acidic water (must be acidic to dissolve the freebase) and filtering yet again, and precipitating out with ammonia purifies it even more. After that I think a carbon wash might get the rest of the color out.



I keep the acidic water after the manske extraction and precipitate out whatever remaining alkaloids are left. I doubt there is much harmine/harmaline, but there are all those alkaloids that begine with vas that fall out. I have yet to try those, but I figured why not.

okay an update -

the final product from before was disolved in vinegar shaken and strained - then repeated until the vinegar came off almost clean
this was straind a good few times until it was clear



then sodium carbonate was added slowly until the ph tested neutral - something didnt quite look correct tho



looked like the solution was saturated almost but somehow the ph was not going more basic

swim decided to saturate some water with sodium carbonate and then he added it to the solution - immediately clouds formed - more basic solution was added until the color stabalised



More freebases are precipping atm - il keep this thread updated

lots being learned from this tek - thanks

you have to add the base until it stops changing colour, not just until ph gets neutral.. A little bit extra sodium carbonate just to make sure wont hurt

btw, acolon, what do you consider "a good filtering system" for this extraction ?

The solution I found was to only decant as much as possible and leave the filtering only when its really necessary, because even with the improvised vacuum setup it was still a pain

can freebase harmala alkys be washed with anything - and can harmalas in acetate form be washed ?

I wouldnt wash freebase harmala alkaloids.. I remember infundibulum, if im not mistaken, mentioning how one of the harmalas, due to the xlogp, is quite soluble in water even as a freebase (I think 20% of it will be soluble in water or something of the sort), which means there will be some loss doing some kind of freebase wash.. this is also why one should repeat the salt-saturation step more often, and leave the final base precipitating step for last, because then this loss would only happen once.

though one could acidify the water with this 'loss product' that didnt precipitate, acidify again and salt saturate again to make this crash out..

but im going off topic. What I meant to say is washing freebase like the sodium carbonate dmt wash or something is not a good idea.. but its very possible that one could wash the harmala salts with something that does not dissolve them but does dissolve the impurites, though i have no idea what... For extra purity I would simply repeat the acid/salt step a few times.

okay so swim now has the freebase harmala alkys - they are brownish tan - how would swim repaeat the salt process - just disolve in vinegar then add salt as before ?

yes redissolve in water with little bit of vinegar, then decant... keep the water, if anything precipitated throw it away. Only after this, resaturate with salt (dont bother pre-mixing a salt solution... mix salt straight with the harmala water till its saturated. You can repeat this twice, there is very little or no loss here if you really saturate with salt (and no problem if there's excess salt, it will be removed later before adding the base)

how much heavier are harmala alkalods when in acetate form ?

Okay all of the imaginary harmala alkaloids are back in salt form - how is it best to clean them - ? disolve them in acidic water ? then salt em out a few times or rather by changing between freebase and salt ?

Okay so the freebases above were collected when they had all fallen out of suspension



the solution is odd - it still looks luminous



the precipitates were collected and dried



and weighed



then added to some vinegar acidified water and filtered a few times



sodium carbonate was used to basify some water which was added while the solution - on adding this - suddenly precipitates formed



which were collected to yeild this as yet to be dried freebase



meanwhile in the background the cleanup process yeilded



that looks like it is going to add considerably to swims yeild - it is at least the same amount as swims first collection - over a gram easily

one last thing - swim found the best way to filter the precips is to decant off any clear stuff and run that thru the filter fast then the muck at the bottom gets filtered - swim used a syringe with a cut out piece of coffee filter at the end - the muck is added with a dropper and filtration happens faster then 1 might imagine

here is swims filter



swim intends to combine the 2 freebase batches and run thru the salting process with them a time or 2 in order to clean them.

swim combined the freebases - then salted them and recovered them perhaps 3 times to clean them - each time it was cleaner when xtals were visible swim decided to stop





these were collected then converted back to freebase recovered - dried and ground up



and weighed



and bottled



swim noted that the powder is very very soft - like talcum powder almost - when those xtals had grown just bumping the jar gently was enough to obliterate them.

swim has decided this is pure enough for now - there are more alkaloids to collect in the final clean up process - but swim has learned a lot, enjoyed the process and is certain better results will be achieved next time.

the final step for this batch may be rextalization - just gotta find something thats gonna work.

any ideas on what is best to achieve this with ?

Swim just finished 50 g harmala extraction and got ~700mg freebase as well.
btw, swim saved the salt saturated solution (after taking out the harmala hcl xtals)
Yesterday he aded some sodium carb to it and a lot of precipitates were formed (with the color changing and so on).
what could that be?

what kinda difference would it make if other acids are used instead of acetic - like dilute hcl ?
also when making it basic - does the base make a diff ?
how can swim easily convert his harmaline to harmine ?

a better way of cleaning your freebase is to just add it to water let it settle to the bottom, decant, add more water, so on until the water is clear. your freebase will be rediculously clean

just add water - is freebase harmaline and harmine 100% insoluble in ph 7 room temp water ??? - i thought not - u sure ?
what form are they most usefull in - salt or freebase ?