First of all, this is my first post here. A friend of mine has been following you guys with great interest for quite a while now, and today he has done his first STB extraction of powdered MHRB. Anyway, he used a 1l glass bottle with a small rubber seal. During a total of eight extractions, the seal has taken damage from the nonpolar solvent he has used (med. grade benzine (not benzene)).
He would like to know if it is necessary to throw everything away now, or if there is something he could do. Is the rubber even toxic enough when evaprated to present a serious risk?

thanks in advance for the help guys

Never take any risks regarding your health.

You can answer this one with one simple question: Would you normally like to smoke rubber or things like rubber softeners?

So do not smoke this as is. You need to clean it up or throw it away. I guess that salting the DMT will get rid of the rubber byproduct but to be sure we should wait for the chemical experts to chime in on this.

Again, be careful with your body, you only have one of it.


Kind regards,

The Traveler

Thank you for your advice. I'm certainly not going to smoke it as-is.

I have a suspicion:
We know that naphta dissolves DMT and Rubber - but not equally well, I suppose.
If rubber has a higher solubility than DMT, the DMT will precipitate out of the solution before the rubber will. Maybe even, the solubility of Rubber in naphta is so good that it stays in the naphta and freeze-precipitation isn't a way of getting it out, which would be awesome.

Is there a chemist who can comment on that?

yep.

add dilute acid to the nonpolar, then add base to the acidic portion , and extract again with nonpolar.


you don't know if rubber will/will not precipitate out, it's best to just redo as an A/B extraction, since rubber doesn't have any amines than can be protonated/deprotonated.

I'm new to the process of extraction, so I'm not sure what you mean. Am I supposed to do the following:

Add acid to nonpolar solvent

put my DMT-freebase (which might be contaminated with rubber) into that acidified solution

Extract the DMT-salt (with what kind of solvent?)

put the DMT into water+lye-solution.

extract with nonpoloar solvent

How is this going to get rid of the rubber? Is DMT-salt even soluble in naphta?

dissolve the mess in warm naphtha, add dilute acid to the naphtha.
separate off the acidic (bottom) portion, add base to it to ~ pH 13.
add fresh naphtha, freeze precipitate.

Ok, thank you.
Would vinegar be acceptable? Do I need to add water to it or can I just use the pure balsamic vinegar?

edit: That's what my spice looks like. Unfortunately I don't have a precise enough scale to weigh it. Can someone with experience estimate how much DMT that is?

http://bayimg.com/fakJgAaeA