SWIM has 150g of powdered MHRB and is trying to extract as much alkaloid content as possible. SWIM has already done 5 hot vinegar extractions, intends to basify with KOH, and wants to use the most stringent extraction solvent/combination of extraction solvents possible. SWIM has access to every organic solvent besides non-denatured ethanol. Purity is not a concern for SWIM. He simply wishes to maximize yeild. SWIM intends to refine the extract in a lab where he has better access to equipment. As mush as 10-15g of extract would not raise suspicion, but 150 g of root bark definitely would. Any suggestions on solvent choice would be greatly appreciated.

I'm no expert on extractions, because only SWIM does them, but a regular freeze precipitation using Naptha is usually sufficient, or D-limonene if you also want to later extract jungle spice i think.

-However It depends on which extraction technique you are using, there are quite a few, and they all use additional ingredients, so it can work out more expensive, etc. Personally i wouldn't be too concerned with losses of 150g of mimosa, because it's such a small amount anyway. However, i believe that D-Limonene is the most likely candidate for extracting every possible alkaloid, including the famous "jungle spice".

-Are you better off in terms of overall costs to simply stick to buying more mimosa, and just using sodium hydroxide and cheap heavy naptha and doing freeze precipitation....that is the question?!

Yes. MHRB is so cheap that trying to maximize yield beyond 1% at extra cost is bad judgement, unless of course the point is to have a challenge and a hobby.

-I think it's good to do this as a challenge and hobby, especially to find out for yourself and master all the current techniques, so to speak. Especially if you've got a few kilos of mimosa knocking around. But for the sake of a miserly 150g, i doubt that it's worth the expense of lIME and D-LIMONENE. But that's just me talkin' !

A cool experiment i tried recently with 100g mhrb was to do an a/b drytek cross. Basically boiling down your acid pulls (best to use fumaric acid for stability), then when you have a goo/resin, freebase this with your choice of base (naoh/koh/caoh/naco3). After basing, either wait a few days and let it dry completely or use mgso4 to get it bone dry. Powder it for max surface area, then dump powder into np, decant, filter np if necessary, then salt. Only requires a max of 2 pulls and imo is a very efficient and good yielding process.

A a/b drytek requires more work in the beginning, but imho, is worth it because the second half of your ext. will be a breeze and can be done in 1 day vs. letting np soak in base water for days/weeks. I also have suspicions that fb alkaloids are slightly soluble in basic water, esp mescaline fb and to a lesser extent dmt. Anecdotal research also comes up with dmt-n-oxide being more soluble in basic water than reg. dmt. If you want max yeild's, i think dryteks work well bec. of less water.

Just my 2c. I really want someone else to try this so i can compare yields when i do it again and record my yields.

Thanks all. Looks like i'll be using d-limonene followed by DCM (available for free ). Day Tripper, I'm a huge fan of dryteks. If you want to PM me to coordinate a supplier and a methodology, I'd be happy to compare results.

if you want the largest yield without having oxides in the final product I would do a zinc reduction after the limo pulls..I am not sure if DCM pulls oxides, but if you reduce them first then you will pull just freebase DMT.

Will limonene pull any dmt oxide?

Given the polar nature of the N+--O- bond, one would expect low-polarity solvents to be considerably less effective--and actual NP solvents completely ineffective, as something like CCl4 would most likely be--as solvents than water or other H-bonding solvents. More important, considering that it is an N-*oxide*, it is an oxidant/oxygen donor (the latter being the predominant behavior, most likely), and I (and many, many, many others in the literature) have in used one (though quite dissimilar to DMT N-oxide) as a sacrificial donor catalyst for alkene epoxidation, alongside another particular oxidative catalyst. (In that particular case, the reaction is so fast that is has to be monitored using a controlled flow system. It had to be purified over a polar alumina column, which also suggests that limonene may not be the best choice as well.)

That is to say, it may react with the limonene and other olefin terpenes to form epoxides, similar to the behavior of certain peroxycarboxylic acids (which I have also used to that end--mCPBA is actually a typical reagent used to generate certain N-oxides!). However, the reaction in this case may be quite slow without another oxidative catalyst, depending on the pKa of the DMT N-oxide nitrogen, the temperature, the particular reaction kinetics, and several other factors, like whether or not (what appears to be) an unhindered allylic methyl moiety is more susceptible to attack. Be careful.

Tell me you did an edit since I was sure you mentioned DCM here

Actual non polar solvents completely ineffective with ? Acquiring "full range alkaloids" ?

As for OP, maybe methanol extraction ? DEA used it in its paper for quantitative tests. Link

Yes, sorry. DCM is not quite like CCl4. And I meant that I wouldn't expect something like CCl4 alone to do much toward dissolving the N-oxide.

Edit: And come to think of it, methanol might've actually been what I used for pyridine N-oxide. We only had a few solvents in that hood: DCM, methanol, CCl4 and acetonitrile, IIRC.

Take a look at q21q21's tek, there are some tips and a good tek

A-ha! I was just reading that after seeing a comment from you in another post, and they mention the suspected N-oxide/Red Jungle Stuff is soluble in vinegar (~5% v/v H3CCOOH), and acetic acid is an H-bonding solvent. (That's a very, very nice looking tek, too, though one wonders why he listed all of the typical lab gear/consumable stuff and then went with the regular m/th lab-style gear anyway. )