Practical Acid Base Technique

After much experimentation and research, I have come to a pratical application of the A/B Tech which would remove the alkaloidial medicine from any source.

For any newbie alchemist you must have these pieces of equipment at your disposal. A blender, coffee grinder, vegetable juicer, glass jars, empty plastic ammonia jugs (rinsed), chemical syphon hose (CSH), seperatory funnel, digital ph reader. Without at least these basic items all you can hope to do is make some less then perfect product. Solutions is distilled water only. Solvant which are always prewashed with fresh distilled water and seperated, are naptha (Coleman camping fuel or Roson lighter fluid) and xylene. Your bases are sodium (NaOH) or potassium (KOH) hydroxide which are mixed strongly in distilled water. Acids used are muratic acid (pool acid or HCl), vinegar (Acetic acid), citric acid (vitamin c or citrate), sulphuric acid. There of course are many other solutions, solvants, bases and acids but these are the absolute basics here.

Using the technique below you will be able to produce beautiful, clean crystals of Mescaline, DMT, Harmaline, LSA, Psilocybin, Epherine from pills or plants, Morphine from Opium, and Cocaine, Nicotine, Caffeine, etc.

First and foremost the substance being extracted must be dried and finely powdered using the electric coffee grinder or a blender for large amounts of material to be powdered. Phalaris grasses can be juiced fresh very slowly using a vegetable juicer and the juice evaporated and powdered for extration. A solution of distilled water and acid of choice is made to a ph3 using your digital ph reader. The solution is mixed with the powdered material and stirred to make a soupy solution. Allow the solution to sit at least 30min to acidify the alkaloids and cake (the absorbtion of moisture by the powder). If the solution begins to cake add more ph3 solution and stir. Once the solution remains soupy its on to the next step.

The next step involves washing the soup with solvant to remove solvant soluble material from the soup. The acidic solution will keep the alkaloids in the soup while anything present in the soup that will transfer to the solvant layer transfers during mixing and seperation. Prewashed coleman fuel (naptha) is used for most extractions, while xylene is reserved for Mimosa Hostillis and San Pedro Cactus. Supposedly xylene removes what is known as the mythical "Jungle Spice" from mimosa hostillis along with the "elf spice" (DMT). Whereas naptha only gets the DMT. This is all web gossip and personal testing is the only way to prove or bust some of these myths.

Most cactus extractions on the web use xylene as the prefered solvant. This part of the technique takes time. What you want to do is to mix the soup and solvant in a large glass jar/jug or a clean plastic ammonia bootle. Using a 1:2 ratio of solvant to soup which is 1 part solvant, 2 parts soup add to your container, close and gently roll on the floor at least 100x to m ix it up. The best thing you can do is to mix and allow to seperate many times so as to remove as much solvant soluble material as possible. If your going for ultimate purity you are going to want to remove the solvant with your chemical syphon hose (CSH)(turkey baster pumps always melt) and replace with fresh solvant and repeat. If the solvant remains clear the second time your ready for basification. If it is lighter then the last solvant then your almost done with the wash and need to repeat. That is why I suggest having patience and roll, seperate, roll and repeat many times during the day to ensure you get as much out with the solvant you have instead of having to keep replacing solvant over and over. Then the next day replacing solvant repeating until after each new day the solvant remains clear.

Once clean, remove solvant with your CSH and make a solution of very stong base using your hydroxide sodium or potassium in a glass jar. Allow solution to cool and begin to slowly add and stir into your soup. Periodically test soup to bring it to ph10. Any higher and it will retard your alkaloids. Once solution is at ph10 then you must do another solvant wash. This time the wash is going to remove basified alkaloids which are soluble in solvant instead of water. Using the same technique as in the wash you are going to want to roll and allow to seperate many times to ensure maximum alkaloidial removal. Allow to seperate many times over the course of one day. At the begining of the next day remove the solvant into a smaller clean glass jar. You are going to want to use a 1:10 ph3 H2O solution using anyone of your preferred acids. Close lid and shake vigorously for 5-10min to ensure maximum alkaloidial salting and transfering to your ph3 H2O. Seperate using a seperatory funnel and store. You can measure the amount of alkaloids pulled from each soup pull by evaporating each ph3 H2O seperately. Return the seperated solvant to the soup and repeat 2x, washing each solvant pull in fresh ph3 H2O. If you are testing the pull sequence, if you still are pulling alkaloids on the 3rd pull keep pulling and testing until solvant pulls remain 0 alkaloidial return and post to let us know that 3x is not enough. In my experience 3x has been plenty but my situation has kept me from truly testing it any further.

After 3x, gather your 3x ph3 washes together to evaporate on a glass dish. Place dish in a 150F oven to evaporate most of the moisture so as not to burn your product. The remaing moisture is evaprated using a hair dryer or letting it dry at room temperature. If making light and heat sensitive alkaloids such as LSA or DMT, I recommend using a dark room with a fan on low blowing across the top of the evap dish to ensure your product is not ruined. Once again patience is needed. Always scrape your final product with a brand new fresh razor blade.

If you are concerned about absolute purity, then another step is required. After the 3x ph3 H2O washes are gathered use a solvant ratio at a 1:1 and shake vigorously throughout the day to wash the Ph3 alkaloidial H2O of any possible solvant soluble contaminents, then seperate. The ph3 alkaloidial H2O is then rebasified to ph10 using you hydroxide H2O basification solution, which is slowly added and stirred until basification reaches ph10. Fresh solvant is used at 1:1 and vigorously shaken throughout the day then solvant seperated. This will ensure maximum transfer to the solvant in one mixture. Then solvant is then treated with fresh ph3 H2O using the acid of choice at a 1:1 and shaken vigourously throughout the day, then solution seperated and evaporated as described above.

As far as I know this is everything anyone ever needs to know about Acid/Basing to get the goodies from plants and pills. Be careful and make sure to share. Any additons to the tech are recommended and I will edit as WE go!

 

I didn't read all of it, but I did find a problem already. Coleman fuel and lighter fluid are both very dirty sources of naptha. You really need VM&P naptha. Also, you need way more than xylene and naptha. DCM, acetone, IPA, ethanol, MEK, ether and methanol are all very nice to have around. Some solvents have higher affinities for certain alkaloids than others. You also may have to do a dual-solvent recrystallization at some point.

I'll read through the rest later and see if I can find anything else.

 

You may be right on that one sir. That is why I recommend that the solvants be prewashed in distilled water and seperated to remove water soluble impurities before use. Acetone is used to clean crystals and extract salvinorin as far as I know at this point. Im not sure if it seperates from water like naptha or xylene. If it does then prewashing your acetone solvants would also be recommended. IPA, ethanol, and methanol are mostly used to strip the alkaloids from the plants and could actually be used to presoak the plant powders for weeks, shaking periodically throughout, filtering, the evaporating. Probably chromtography would work best, to remove the plant pulp. Common filters or even muslin bags would be fine depend on the corrosiveness of the solvant used. But this would yield higher concentrations of the organic material used to convert into a purified chemical extraction. The starting material gained from such an endeavor would be superior to the raw foilage extract a/b extraction that I proprose above and would probably only need to be done once. But I would agree VM&P naptha from the hardware would be choice. But prewashing for purity would still be recommended. Reading the Ronsonol lighter fluid (yellow bottle, red tip at your local smoke shop) reads pure naptha on the ingriedient list. I may be mistaken and will check to make absolute sure for us.

 

I can say for sure that Ronsonol lighter fluid has something in it. Probably a rust protectant. If you try to extract DMT with it, your spice will end up as a green goo that will take many recrystallizations to clean. It would also definitely not be water soluble, so a water wash won't work. You could distill it off, and that's about it.

The EtOH and MeOH are mostly for recrystallizations, not plant extractions prior to the A/B.

I'm pretty sure that acetone would dissolve in water, but as you said, it's mostly for cleaning crystals.

And what type of chromatography are you proposing to use on plant material?

 

yea, and ronsonol lighter fluid is FAR more expensive [per oz] than a jug of naptha from the hardware store.

and acetone works great for cleaning a lot of things [meth, mdma ect..] but i'm fairly certain that a lot of things will just dissolve in it.

 

For now all basic principals are explained. I will admit to you all that I would go with VM&P Naptha from your local hardware. Still all non water soluble solvants washed 1:1 with distilled water and seperated via seperatory funnel before use in extractions.

My personal experiments were with San Pedro cactus and the making of mescaline which I practiced many times. Each and every time was a new learning experience. The First was very dirty via plant oils but was the best. The last was the cleanest but very retarded from over basification.

That is why in my outline I stress the need for patience and for the proper measurement of ph to avoid retarding the alkaloidial medicines to far from their original states.

The Ph of DMT is 8.98.

 

Another aspect of of extracting crystal extracts is that of crystal formation. I was thinking from somewhere I saw awhile back on crystal forming. Since most acid salts are not soluble in solvants and I believe acetone. The final crystals can be further purified using acetone in a vial. The crystals are shaken and allowed to settle to the bottom. The acetone is suctioned out with a dropper if the crystals are being washed and new acetone is returned until the acetone either remains clean or stops taking on anymore color. Now my proposition is this the clean crystals are kept in a vial filled with solvant. The vial is heated to the crystals melting point using a steam bath which is a pot of hot water. The vial is then transfered to a ice bath which is a bowl of crushed ice and water that is then put in the freezer. The vial is allowed to freeze for 30min. This should produce large solid crystals in theory.

 

It'd produce some crystals, but a slow evaporation works better to grow large, ultra-pure crystals.