Elfspice's Dual Solvent DMT Extraction Tek

Nan's Nook : Archives : Botanicals : DMT

Version 0.1 alpha

This technique was developed after reading about a new technique pioneered by the bees at the Hive on the stimulants forum. This technique eliminates the need for the use of separation as it uses precipitation instead. At this point this tek is not tested, hence the alpha version, so if it doesn't work, please email me on [email protected] and tell me about it.

Materials Required

 
  1. A quantity of plant material
  2. Odourless turpentine
  3. Denatured ethanol or methanol
  4. Acetone
  5. Citric or tartaric acid (available from the supermarket in the cakes and sweets section)
  6. Funnel
  7. Coffee filters
  8. Candy thermometer
  9. Tissue paper or toilet paper to make fine filtration plugs for use in the funnel
  10. Baked epsom salts (magnesium sulphate) for dehydrating solvents
  11. Heat source which does not create sparks (metal covered elements are the best, coils present a small
  12. Naptha, acetone, methanol or isopropyl alcohol (for recrystallising)

Preparation of Plant Material

  First, dry the plant material until it is bone dry. Next, pulverise it. Mulchers are the best for this. If only a small quantity is being worked with, a coffee grinder and secateurs can work fine. The finer the better, but the texture of the material from a mulcher should be adequate.

Dual Solvent Extraction/Defatting

  This step utilisies the miscibility of alcohol in most nonpolar solvents and the insolubility of alkaloid salts in nonpolar solvents. The technique basically extracts and defats in one step
  1. Mix up a 50/50 mixture of odourless turpentine and denatured ethanol sufficient to cover the volume of plant material  
  2. For each litre of the mixture, add 1 teaspoon of citric or tartaric acid  
  3. Add baked epsom salts to the mixture slowly until it clearly does not absorb any water (it changes its appearance when it gets wet) In this step we eliminate water from the solvents because a lot of undesirable gak in the plant material needs water to be extracted, if water isn't present, it won't contribute anything to the extraction
  4. Put the plant material and solvent mixture into a saucepan with a lid and gently heat for 1 hour. Avoid bringing the mixture to boil - the alcohol will boil at around 70 degrees, use the candy thermometer to monitor the temperature periodically In this step the alkaloids will be extracted into the alcohol as salts, and the undesirable nonpolar soluble elements will be extracted into the nonpolar solvent.
  5. Filter out the plant material while the solvent is still hot, and put aside. A second or even third extraction run can be done but is usually not neccessary. Use a triple coffee filter to filter, and follow with a tissue paper plugged filter if there is still particulates Further extractions may yield more, do the next step on each extraction pass to work out how much came across and if it seems less than the potential of the plant material, definitely repeat

Precipitation of Crude Extract

  In this step, we will boil off the alcohol in the extract, which will cause the materials extracted into the alcohol to precipitate and drive the nonpolar soluble materials into the nonpolar solvent
  1. Put the filtered extract solution into a saucepan and bring the temperature up to about 70 degrees (the boiling point of alcohol). To ensure you don't get bumping (large bubbles which can make the whole solution splash everywhere) add some small river pebbles. Do not use broken glass unless it is pyrex, the glass will break being so close to the heat If one strictly monitors the temperature, and keeps it around 60 degrees, the alcohol is not likely to bump. This saves doing a wash in the next step as the boiling stones will not collect any of the precipitate
  2. Monitor the temperature and when it starts to climb above 70 degrees most of the alcohol will be gone, turn down the heat and watch the bottom of the pan for the precipitation of solids. Once this starts, turn off the heat and let it stand overnight One of the signs that the alcohol is gone is that it will stop smelling like alcohol
  3. Reheat the mixture until it gets to about 60 degrees or so, and filter the solution while hot through a single coffee filter, then follow with a filter through a tissue plugged funnel  
  4. Scrape the precipitate out of the filter paper, and place into the container being used for the next step, then using alcohol wash the material through the filter plug and coffee filter into the collection container. The alcohol used does not need to be dry as the next step involves the use of water  

Precipitation of the Freebase Alkaloids and Washing

  In this step we will utilise the low boiling temperature of acetone and the solubility of DMT freebase in acetone to effect a slow precipitation of the base while washing the base with alkaline water
  1. Mix acetone and water 50/50 of a sufficient volume to work with the material (about 10 times as much liquid as the volume of material), and basify the solution to a pH of 12.8, and pour into the base precipitation container  
  2. Put the precipitation container on a heat source and aim to heat the container to about 50-60 degrees. This will boil off the acetone without causing the water to reduce too much  
  3. Monitor the mixture's progress, the acetone will boil off, and gradually as the volume of acetone reduces, the freebase will slowly start to crystalise. Once it starts, and before it gets too far, remove from the heat, and let it stand overnight. If you don't do this, it won't crystallise very big, and you risk cooking the alkaloids out

By letting the last bits of acetone evaporate overnight the alkaloids will tend to crystallise, which is what you want

  4. Filter the precipitated freebase alkaloids using the same combination described in the previous section, scrape up what you can, and wash the rest with water and then wash the freebase throug the filters with alcohol and evaporate  

Final Cleanup/Recrystallisation

  At this point, you should have some fairly clean DMT freebase, but you might want to clean it further, or grow it into pretty rocks. My preference for recrystallising solvents is naptha, as the dmt grows into nice little cubes when it is used, but if methanol or isopropyl alcohol is used it will form quartz like hexagonal patterns. I believe acetone could be used too. It is worth experimenting with varying the recrystallisation solvent (and perhaps even putting two together), as different plant materials will have different impurities, and at this point there is no consensus about plant sources and optimum recrystallisation solvents (not for long hopefully :)
  1. Heat up recrystallisation solvent until boiling point (use a 200ml dropper bottle). Water from a jug is hot enough for this task  
  2. Add the hot solvent dropwise to the alkaloids in a small container you can easily scrape the results out of later, swirl it around while adding the solvent and stop adding solvent when it is completely dissolved  
  3. Cover the recrystallisation container with plastic wrap to prevent evaporation and let stand until it reaches room temperature, then put the container into the refrigerator for an hour, then into the freezer for an hour  
  4. After this, decant off the supernatant liquid (the solvent liquid) into a drying dish to ensure no loss of product, and let it dry and scrape out the crystals  
  5. At this point, it will be very pure, but if somehow it isn't, repeat the recrystallisation two more times. If the contaminant seems to precipitate out of the solvent before the crystals form (you can work this out by reheating the container and watching to see at what point the crystals dissolve), it can be removed by slowly reheating the solvent and decanting the liquid taking care to avoid pouring out the still mostly solid precipitate, then evaporate the solvent. There will be a little of the alkaloids in the other precipitate, you might want to repeat the recrystallisation with this part of the material  
  6. Enjoy the fruits of your labour!  

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