Question about solvents for spice extraction

[ADruggie]

I am getting frustrated with DMT Nexus. I can't figure out how to make a post and I can't contact anybody...

I'm looking for a good solvent. Zippo Lighter Fluid and Ronsonol Lighter fluid have been ruled out. According to Wikipedia and the Coleman website (MSDS), Coleman Camp Fuel is pure Naphtha. However, they must have just changed the formulation or something. The can says that there is a rust inhibitor added (big metal jug as pictured on Wikipedia). There was a smaller plastic bottle of "Coleman Premium Blend Fuel" which didn't say anything about rust inhibitors on the container. I'll get an evaporation test going. Any information would be much appreciated. I have had a life long phobia of chemicals (maybe this project will help me get over that) and I want a really clean product. As a side note, I am looking for good scooping, funneling, and stirring gear without the waiting and expense of ordering more glassware online. Stainless steel can be problematic with lye? What type of store might sell a glass rod ~18" long? Have they invented a search engine yet where you can type in the name of any product and your location and get the name of the closest store that stocks it? If not, I hope that there is somebody developing this.

 

[ADruggie]

Oh yeah, does anybody know what a typical kitchen spoon would be made out of? I am planning on using a giant glass bottle which previously held apple juice, but I guess that I don't want to start shaking with that cap. I would assume that the cap is made of Aluminum coated with BPA? Would wearing down of materials happen instantly or would it only be a real concern with prolonged contact?

 

[Penthos]

I can't say whether or not Coleman Camp Fuel is safe to use, definitively. But I did use it, as it's the only easily obtainable solvent where I am. I read somewhere that it was green and made green, sludgy DMT but I bought some, looked at it...looked clear to me! So I evap'ed some, and I didn't notice anything on the bottom of the dish afterwards so I went ahead with my 1st extraction.

I'll say this: If I ONLY pulled freeze-recrystallized spice, it's always pure white. First pull, through 4th, all of them were white as snow. But if I straight evap, it's a nasty greenish colour. The DMT flakes are all white, then when you scrape it off the pan it pulls a bunch of nasty green shit onto your blade. I wouldn't give it to my worst enemy. I tossed it immediately.

I was too excited to try DMT to NOT try the pure white stuff so I went ahead with it anyways. Tasted pretty pure to me. Nice and clean, potency was bang on, but fuck knows if I was just slowly poisoning myself. I won't be extracting again until I find a clean solvent. Just not worth the possible risks in the long run

 

[ADruggie]

Here is a a specific MSDS for the "premium blend": http://www.coleman.com/uploadedFiles/Content/Customer_Support/Safety/5103-232.pdf. The difference between the regular and premium is that the premium has been "hydrotreated". I haven't opened the bottle yet, because the oily residue from the Zippo Lighter Fluid didn't come off after putting my Pyrex measuring cup through the dishwasher. So, I haven't yet checked to see if there is any colour to the fuel. The MSDS says that it is both clear and red. Green crystals = bad, coloring or rust inhibitors added, yellow DMT plus blue color makes green. A fair number of people seem to be using the Coleman Premium Blend Fuel to make Meth, but that only makes me more suspicious of it.

 

[ADruggie]

This stuff is too sketchy. I'm not going to cheap out and going to go with "lab grade" chems.

 

[J_has_L]

U can buy pure naptha by the gallon where i live. It just looks like some sort of generic brand.... lol says naptha on it if i remember right, but it was always my buddy who got the stuff.

 

[Black Rabbit of Inle]

Just find this:

It's pure naphtha with no additives.

 

[Penthos]

That's very hard to come by in Canada, unfortunately

 

[reflux21]

Why use hardware store chemicals in the first place? Pretty gross using technical grade chemicals to extract something you are ingesting. Usually people fractionally distill them before use if they do use them.

 

[ADruggie]

I had read that the brand pictured was good, but then I read elsewhere that it is not. In any case, I have not seen it in stores I have been to. I am awaiting the arrival of some lab grade petroleum ether "Residue on evaporation <0.0001%". This sounds pretty legit to me. $25 per pull, but I think that it will be worth it. Distilling is somewhat advanced/potentially dangerous from what I understand? This is my first extraction attempt, so I am trying to keep things simple, but freeze precipitation or limonene(sp?) seem like good options for a cleaner product? Forgive me if these are newby questions (only with extracting, not traveling, mind you).

 

[ADruggie]

Hexane = DCM?? I heard that Xylene and Toluene are likely to be more pure, but put off nastier fumes before evaporating? Is it similar with Hexane?

 

[Solipsis]

What about terpentine?

I think the hydrotreated means that the hydrocarbons were reacted with hydrogen and a catalyst to saturate all the hydrocarbons, turning all alkenes and alkynes into alkanes... aka hydrogenation. Nothing problematic, the alkanes are just what we want.

The color probably comes from traces of indicator compounds in very low concentrations. But still I understand that this is not acceptable. I highly doubt they are volatile.

Distilling is an option if you have a heating plate or mantle that heats electrically without a flame, otherwise it is way dangerous and obviously a fire / explosion hazard.

Methinks that you are probably not looking closely enough if you can't find any naphtha / 'white spirit' products anywhere. In my small country I'm pretty sure lower hydrocarbon solvents (hexane / heptane) are available under several names with only minor differences. Just check DIY stores and ask around for a description made from this wiki article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_spirit

No DCM is dichloromethane, a solvent closely related to chloroform. Way too polar for these applications are relatively expensive. Also unrelated to these other relevant solvents we are talking about here.

(By the way using lab grade solvents for extraction seems a little extreme and paranoid, but that is your call)

- Hexane and heptane are hydrocarbons that are simple aliphatic alkanes. The molecules are just short straight chains. 6 carbons in the case of hexane. It is quite non-polar.
- Xylene and toluene are solvents that closely resemble benzene. They are carcinogenic, although I think xylene and benzene are worse than toluene. They are aromatic meaning a ring instead of a straight chain. 6 carbons in a ring, with an extra 1 or 2 sticking out as methyls. Again non-polar.


Please use the edit button if you want to modify your post.

Why use hardware store chemicals in the first place? Pretty gross using technical grade chemicals to extract something you are ingesting. Usually people fractionally distill them before use if they do use them. Just order some hexane or better yet use DCM as DMT is far more soluble in it. Just use the hexane to recrystallize it.

Because you evaporate the solvents before you ever ingest the DMT, only negligible traces of solvent would be left (which is true for whatever grade residue-free solvent!) that may not even disperse at the same rate as the DMT. Overall as long as you take the time to dry your product (which you should do anyway) and if you check that there are not serious impurities and evap residues in your solvent, it should be fine.
The difference in purity then between such hardware store solvents and lab grade solvents is that for the lab grade solvent the makeup is more accurately known which is important if you are doing chemistry reactions. But the hydrocarbons themselves are mostly the same. So don't oversimplify that you need high purity solvents and that they aren't much of a health threat while the hardware store solvents are.

Distilled solvents may be preferred because they can be better for crystallisation and you can use the distillation to make usable solvents from solvents that leave a residue.

 

[sekio]

Bestine brand heptane is availiable at craft stores. It's expensive though, but not chronically toxic like hexane is. It's something like 99% pure heptane, excellent for extractions and recrystallisations.

Don't use xylene and toluene. They are aromatic hydrocarbons with a strong smell (model glue) that can make you dizzy and light headed if you breathe too much of it. They also take a long time to evaporate. Not a good choice for this reason.
Don't use turpentine (pinene, limonene, etc), it leaves a gummy residue on evaporation and has a very strong taste and odor. It's also hard to freeze precipitate stuff from turpentine solutions.
Don't use "mineral spirits", paint thinners, or Varsol. These are mixtures of aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbons, closer to gasoline.
Don't use DCM/dichloromethane, because it will react with DMT over time, and it's not very good to consume.

 

[Deinonychus]

You want naphtha so that you can freeze precipitate out the goods once the extraction is done. I think heptane is a good choice as well, but may not be quite as user friendly.

 

[sekio]

Heptane is one of the major alkanes in naptha, it will work better than naptha because it's a pure compound and naptha is a mixture.

 

[Deinonychus]

Hah whoops, good call!

I always hated the mixture-ish nature of naphtha with its unspecified boiling points and unknown proportions of unknown compounds. I never did to to the trouble to look up the ingredients since I'd still have no way to figure out what their percentages are, so this is what I get for the laziness then I guess!

 

[Solipsis]

Bestine brand heptane is availiable at craft stores. It's expensive though, but not chronically toxic like hexane is. It's something like 99% pure heptane, excellent for extractions and recrystallisations.

Don't use xylene and toluene. They are aromatic hydrocarbons with a strong smell (model glue) that can make you dizzy and light headed if you breathe too much of it. They also take a long time to evaporate. Not a good choice for this reason.
Don't use turpentine (pinene, limonene, etc), it leaves a gummy residue on evaporation and has a very strong taste and odor. It's also hard to freeze precipitate stuff from turpentine solutions.
Don't use "mineral spirits", paint thinners, or Varsol. These are mixtures of aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbons, closer to gasoline.
Don't use DCM/dichloromethane, because it will react with DMT over time, and it's not very good to consume.

That confused me for a moment, making me think that I mentioned something incorrect about turpentine. You see, in Dutch the solvent "terpetine" is actually virtually synonymous with naphtha and white spirit while "terpetijn" is the mixture of terpenes you mention. I agree: avoid those terpenes.

I'm not even sure if DCM is an appropriate solvent for DMT, also how do they react?

I didn't know hexane was chronically toxic... anyway it does evaporate well doesn't it?

 

[sekio]

Hexane's toxicity is mostly a concern if you're working with large amounts of it, daily. It's not acutely toxic. The concern is that exposure to hexane results in the mmetabolic production of hexane 2,5-dione, which likes to bind onto lysine residues and fuck 'em up. Heptane, pentane, & the isomers of hexane do not have this issue.

DCM actually reacts with the amine nitrogen of DMT to form N-chloromethyl-DMT chloride, a quaternary ammonium compound. [ref] This is something that should be avoided.

 

[Solipsis]

Only the 6-carbon huh? Is that considered to be a result of specific enzymatic activity preferring hexane or similar to why some uneven fluorinated alkane molecules are considered to be potentially toxic or do other alkanes just get different oxidation metabolites that don't have this nice and symmetric pattern resulting in a sort of chelation bracket thingy?

Anyway I figured as much about chronic toxicity, I was told not to worry about traces of methanol being trapped when you crystallize tryptamines - now I am inclined to say the same about traces of hexane from naphtha in DMT product...

The DCM reaction reminds me of N-oxidation but I can see how it is a bit different. I wonder if the N-oxide can be a subsequent degradation product. Also I never really understood how it is possible to have O2 form an N-oxide that has only one oxygen unless one N-oxidation reaction comprises 2 DMT molecules oxidated by one O2 molecule.

Sorry if off-topic stuff derails discussion, I can moderate it later and put it hidden under a spoiler tag if anyone minds..

 

[ADruggie]

Well, I tried some extracting with my "lab grade" stuff, but I think that it was contaminated. The solvent was purchased online and was claimed to be very pure (MSDS added at bottom of post), but maybe it was false advertising. I was really excited to get extracting but also nervous and wanting to get through the process, I wanted to take advantage of good weather and current living arrangements to have less hassle in my "lab", I didn't want to waste any expensive and hard to obtain solvent which I had a limited supply of, and I thought that my solvent was the best, so I didn't do an evaporation test (thought I might do one later). I did STB with A. Confusa, using only half of my plant material (250g). I decanted into a large Pyrex dish with a turkey baster. My jar was too wide and my layer of Naptha too thin to pull much out. I seemed to be dropping the Naptha into the pan only slightly faster than it was evaporating. My roommate was watching television and when he asked me what I was doing I said "chemistry!" ethusiastically and turned my back on him before he could ask any more questions. I left the tray on the corner of my deck overnight. I thought that my solvent may have been too dispersed over a large surface area and the potential yields that I was working with may have been too tiny to get any crystals to form. In the morning there was a translucent (whitish in a few spots) film which looked like it might have been sticky or gummy if I touched it. Edges of puddles and clearer or more opaque areas were visible, apparently showing evidence of the rate and position of drops placed in the pan. This seemed very odd as this residue must have been over half of the original volume of the solvent. There were all kinds of things in the pan: a tiny spider, hair, dust, pieces of vegetation. The pan smelled quite strongly and pleasantly of DMT. I knew already that I was probably getting into wishful thinking and overnight should have been plenty of time for near complete evaporation, but I thought that the issue may have been that I just needed to wait a bit longer (I have heard of this happening). Within 12-24hrs I thought that I started to notice tiny needle like brownish/reddish/yellowish crystals, but it is possible that this was just lint, dust, or something like that picked up from the environment. There was one triangular more whitish thing in there. I would really need a magnifying glass to explore the little universe in the tray. What appeared to be the needle like crystals had rings of clean glass around them. Today at about 48 hours I see something intriguing in one corner of the tray: flat translucent circular structures that are unmistakably crystaline. Now I notice that the edge of the film looks crystaline as well. I start to think "maybe this is all crystal, just spread really thin". Wishful thinking has turned to desparation as I obsess over this tray trying to convince myself that it has changed since a few hours after I put the Naptha in there and that that goo is safe. Maybe the Naptha wasn't fully evaporated and I was being affected by the fumes. I could now try a test evaporation with the solvent and a clean tray to see how it acts on its own or scrape my tray to guage the consistency of the residue and to see if I can concentrate what may be DMT crystals, but this would be just a matter of curiosity at this point as I would assume that it would not be wise to consume any of the contents of the tray. Those flat things have to be crystals and I don't think that they could be anything that was present in the solvent when I bought it. Anyway, going with evaporation was foolish to begin with. I thought "freeze precipitation, that sounds complicated...I don't want to add another step". Then I looked it up. Less chance of contamination through concentration of the solvent and you can re use your solvent. Win Win. Faster too. I decided to try this on the second night. I managed to transfer the soup into a taller and narrower jug with no spills and decant more Naptha into a jar. I noticed that the Naptha was yellow and I thought that I must have contaminated it somehow. A quick web search revealed that this discoloration was normal. I put the jar in the freezer overnight. In the morning I quickly dumped the solvent into a coffee strainer. There was some white material stuck to the bottom of the jar. "Aha! This is it!" I thought. Before I left for work I realized that the now room temperature jar only seemed to be filled with a few drops of yellow Naptha. When I got home, this jar had a residue in it though similar to the tray, but yellowish all over. The residue seemed to have a texture to it and there seemed to be some bumps of yellowish material. Examining the jar from the side it looked like many tiny points of yellow, but it was not recongnizeable as crystaline to the naked eye. I think that this jar smelled a bit like DMT, but I wasn't too sure. OK, so does anybody have an idea where I went wrong? Evaporation and crystalization should be very fast after the solvent is no longer a distinct liquid, correct? Do I have to start over with another solvent? Can you get away with a less pure solvent with freeze precipitation? Can I clean up this product if I manage to scrape any crystals? If I am left with Naptha soluable contaminants and DMT, can I not just recrystalize with a cleaner solvent to dilute any impurities or would the soluablitlity of the impurities in the new solvent be uncertain? Maybe I had too much water or too little lye. Maybe the lower temperature outside (where I did most of my work) made the Naptha a less efficient solvent. MSDS of my supposedly "lab grade" stuff below. I thought that it was "ACS Grade", but maybe only "reagent" grade. Reagent grade should be still purer than industrial chemicals, right? It said "do not use in food drugs and cosmetics" on the bottle, but I assumed that they were either trying to cover their asses legally or that any type of Naptha was not considered to be suitable for these applications by regulators. Caveat emptor!

Petroleum ether, 35-60°C, ACS Reagent, 500ml

Petroleum Ether
Lot P-401303
35-60°C (Bp), ACS Reagent, 500ml
[CAS 8032-32-4]
Globally Harmonized System (GHS Pictograms)

FOR RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT USE ONLY
Not for direct use in food, cosmetics, finished pharmaceuticals or drug products

Related Categories
ACS Grade Solvent, Purification and Analysis, Solvent

Certificate of Analysis
Acidity passes Boiling point (initial) 35°C Boiling point (final) 60°C Colorless liquid Color (APHA) <5 FTIR spectra conforms to structure Refractive index 1.363 Residue on evaporation <0.0001% Suitability non-polar solvent Water 0.01%

Synonyms
Benzine; Ligroine; Naphtha petroleum; Naphtha solvent

USA DOT (UPS Ground)

IATA (DHL International Air)

DOT (US): Petroleum distillates, n.o.s., 3, UN1268, II
IATA: Petroleum distillates, n.o.s., 3, UN1268, II
Harmonized Tariff Code: 2901104000
DHL Hazmat Fee - $36.50
DHL-Packaging Fee - Special Shipping 4G Container $10.00



Rosnsol lighter fluid and Coleman Premium Blend Fuel have been used by others. I guess that I will try an evaporation test with these and check out some paint and art stores to see if they have solvents.