N&PD Moderators: Skorpio
Supercritical Fluid Extraction of DMT?
the better green
Bluelighter
Im wondering what would happen if you carried out some sort of Supercritical Fluid Extraction involving Mimosa Hostilis, or other plants with DMT in them. Ive used this method to make hash from cannabis and it worked great, but not sure what the out come would be like with plants containing Tryptamines or phenethylamines. Maybe create some sort of precursor , making extraction that much easier?
phase_dancer
Bluelight Crew
What supercritical fluid and equipment were you using for the cannabis?
the better green
Bluelighter
butane, and PVC pipe. nothing professional, quite dangerous as well. Creating a bomb for a good 20 minutes while the butane boils off. Pack the pvc full of cannabis, cap , and fill with butane, let butane leak out. Im wondering if you substituted that substance with something containing DMT.
mad_scientist
Bluelighter
As far as i was aware, the reason butane works so well for making cannabis oil is because THC is an oily substance which dissolves best in non-polar solvent.
DMT is presumably in its polar ionised form in the plant rather than freebase, so im not sure that butane wash would be effective, surely an acid wash followed by base/non-polar solvent would work better?
fastandbulbous
Bluelight Crew
Best solvent for DMT is probably tetrahydrofuran, but it's not easily available like butane
mad_scientist
Bluelighter
^^
THF is varnish thinner...
kidamnesiac
Bluelighter
THC is also mostly a glandular phenomenon where I'd wager most DMT is found in the cells. You'd have to do an incredible job of pulverizing some mimosa to make this worthwhile (if it is feasible, which I doubt)
On the other hand, you could take your mimosa bark, pulverize reasonably well and then cook it in a slightly basic solution (with a lid on as the DMT would evaporate off over time!). If you did it for sufficiently long enough, you could make a "paste" of bark and whatnot, dry off the paste and extract that. You'd still get a lot of fatty acids and such though...
CO2 is the best and safest for supercritical if you can muster it up but again, I wouldn't bother with this. acid/base is not rocket science mentally or differential calculus work difficult
Trogdor
Bluelighter
Can you back up this claim? Not that I don't believe you, I was just under the impression that some plants contained the DMT in salt form while others contained the freebase form.
mad_scientist said:
kidamnesiac
Bluelighter
It wouldn't be soluble in the cytoplasm otherwise.
The pKa of a tertiary amine is ~9-12, meaning at physiological pH it is certainly in it's protonated form.
As far as where is it sequestered in a cell....
the better green
Bluelighter
interesting ...
Trogdor
Bluelighter
kidamnesiac said:
I have no clue what you just said (please either explain or link to a tutorial) but I do know that mescaline in cactus is in freebase form, therefore, are you saying that mescaline exists in cactus cells in suspension rather than solution? Or are you saying that once again I have no clue what I'm talking about? (I'm fairly certain of either both, or neither.)
kidamnesiac
Bluelighter
Do you have any sort of proof that the mescaline is in the base form?
pKa is a measure of how easy or difficult it is for a Nitrogen (or other electron acceptor/donor), such as the one in DMT, to be neutral or charged. At a pH of below the pKa, the atom has a proton (H+) and above it does not. In this case, the pKa of the nitrogen is around 11, so that means at physiological pH, 7, the nitrogen will have an extra hydrogen bound to it's lone pair of electrons, it will be charged because of this and it will be soluble in H2O. As the cytoplasm of most cells is 80% H2O, it would serve that this is where the DMT would be found anyway, unless the plant had some reason to sequester it in some special vesicles or on the cell membrane.
This is why THC is produced on the outside of the plant leaves and other parts. THC is such a damned non-polar bugger that it is very difficult to get it into water and the concentration the plant could maintain inside the cells would be miniscule. So it puts it outside. and thats why hash is hash.
I've cut open a few san pedros and i know the mescaline is not contained in that fatty/waxy/non-polar layer on the surface. This is the only place mescaline would be soluble in it's free-base form. Unless it is held somewhere in the lipid bilayer of the cell membrane, which i seriously doubt it would be in such high concentrations, it must be contained in the cytoplasm and therefore must be charged and therefore be in it's protonated state.
that concludes enthobotanicalchemistry 101 for today, next week we will cover why moon cheese is a rich source of salvinorin analogues.
Trogdor
Bluelighter
Touche, thank you for that information by the way. I'm off to go insert my foot into my mouth, where it belongs.
I'll be back when I actually know what I'm talking about.
IGNVS
Bluelighter
its just a little biology, i get what your sayin. but dood the mimosa hostillis dmt is soluble in watter ...its called jurema
do a cold watter infusion....the dmt is in its salt form in the mimosa. theres also another watter soluble chemical that will act instead of an maoi..its called yuremamine or something like that..not exactly sure what it is.
fastandbulbous
Bluelight Crew
kidamnesiac said:
Who's to say it's not present in the cytoplasm as the bicarbonate salt? Although in salt form in solution, once dried that would decompose into free amine CO2 & water; that would make the freebase alkaloid an artifact of drying. God knows there's enough bicarbonate present in tissues to make it happen that way
kong
Bluelighter
fastandbulbous said:
Interesting, any information of tetrahydrofuran being used? Or are you drawing on your knowedge of chemistry to make this prediction?
Any information to suggest tetrahydrofuran would result in a cleaner product than the current solvent of choice?
I'm sure there are individuals out there who could give it a whirl, (in theory).
kidamnesiac
Bluelighter
fastandbulbous said:
That still wouldn't effect a supercritical extraction though. And, I could be mistaken here but, generally, carbonate salts are stable at normal temperatures. SWIK took a CO2 tank and blasted some of the contents across 2,5, DMPEA to see if what shulgin says about it is true. It worked and, while not held forever, the salts seemed reasonably stable (albeit in a closed container where the CO2 evolved would equilibrate back with the H20).
Actually, now thinking about this, perhaps CO2 would not be a good solvent for free amines 
.
Just curious, have you seen this happen anywhere in an extraction, etc?
Trogdor
Bluelighter
Sorry about noobing up this forum, but how does one determine which solvent would be most appropriate for their application?
fastandbulbous
Bluelight Crew
Either look in org chem books or it's trial & error. The only reason I mentioned THF is because it's the solvent used in producing synthetic DMT (HCl gas introduced to a soln of DMT in THF to precipitate out the hydrochloride salt)
That's far from the condition encountered when drying plant materials, heat and equilibrium in an open system really pushes towards the free amine
kong
Bluelighter
^Thanks for your answer. There are those who are interested in the hcl salt, that might make use of this info.
One determines the best solvent by using different solvents and analysing the product. An extensive grasp of chemistry helps to predict what will work well in the first place however.
I have a friend who claims to have had synthetic dmt. He believes that a plant, when processed a specific, (or usual) way has the potential to yield a product that is just as good as the synthetic. To me this sounds to good to be true. I haven't had the pleasure of the synthetic, so what do I know......
The machine elves are alive and well with the plant extracted.!!!