Hello all SWIM has carefully reviewed all other teks and is somewhat stuck on the sodium carbonate wash replacing the ammonia wash.

He understood the logic of the ammonia wash being the last step to wash his crystals but wants to make sure he understands the placement of the sodium carbonate wash. Please read the following rough tek and let me know if he is doing the right thing:

First prepare the MHRB by running it through a blender/coffee
Mix MHRB in mixing jar with water. Add lye slowly, stirring constantly. Once lye is added cap jar and mix vigourously over the course of an hour. Let stand another hour, shaking/stirring periodically.
Pour jar of MHRB & Lye through Buchner funnel into separatory funnel. Add naphtha. Roll separatory funnel to gently mix, avoiding emulsion. Let stand for 30 minutes to allow layers to separate. Drain off the lye/MHRB mix leaving just the alkaloid containing naphtha.
WASH
Mix some sodium carbonate (a few pinches) with water and add to sep. funnel shake vigorously, allow layers to separate, then drain water/sodium carbonate layer. Repeat wash 2 more times with just distilled water. Then when you have just the washed alkaloid containing naphtha, drain that into your final collection jars and freeze precipitate. Pour the ice cold naphtha through coffee filters to catch the crystals.
Then allow the remaining naphtha to evaporate a little, increasing the concentration, and freeze precipitate again, trying to catch every last bit of spice.

Q1: the original ammonia wash occured after you have crystals separated. Is any further wash necessary after you have your crystals in the coffee filter? Distilled water? anything: or is as soon as the crystals dry are they ready to go?

Thank you very much this is my first post and I'd like to thank everyone for their time in reviewing this!

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Joined: 7/26/2011
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Hello all SWIM has carefully reviewed all other teks and is somewhat stuck on the sodium carbonate wash replacing the ammonia wash.

He understood the logic of the ammonia wash being the last step to wash his crystals but wants to make sure he understands the placement of the sodium carbonate wash. Please read the following rough tek and let me know if he is doing the right thing:

First prepare the MHRB by running it through a blender/coffee
Mix MHRB in mixing jar with water. Add lye slowly, stirring constantly. Once lye is added cap jar and mix vigourously over the course of an hour. Let stand another hour, shaking/stirring periodically.
Pour jar of MHRB & Lye through Buchner funnel into separatory funnel. Add naphtha. Roll separatory funnel to gently mix, avoiding emulsion. Let stand for 30 minutes to allow layers to separate. Drain off the lye/MHRB mix leaving just the alkaloid containing naphtha.
WASH
Mix some sodium carbonate (a few pinches) with water and add to sep. funnel shake vigorously, allow layers to separate, then drain water/sodium carbonate layer. Repeat wash 2 more times with just distilled water. Then when you have just the washed alkaloid containing naphtha, drain that into your final collection jars and freeze precipitate. Pour the ice cold naphtha through coffee filters to catch the crystals.
Then allow the remaining naphtha to evaporate a little, increasing the concentration, and freeze precipitate again, trying to catch every last bit of spice.

Q1: the original ammonia wash occured after you have crystals separated. Is any further wash necessary after you have your crystals in the coffee filter? Distilled water? anything: or is as soon as the crystals dry are they ready to go?

Thank you very much this is my first post and I'd like to thank everyone for their time in reviewing this!

If you are still looking for a review, I can offer you a very unqualifired one. I am also in the middle of my first extraction and I too done the sodium carbonate wash. However, the tek I followed told me 'just a pinch' of sodium carbonate per 50ml of deionised/distilled water. Following this rule, my sodium carbonate washed went very well, getting rid of practically all the gunk and a lot of the yellow colour in the naphtha. I now have a couple of jars in the freezer with little white crystals all over them (which I hope is DMT and not merely ice from water that I never got out properly).

Ammonia and sodium carbonate have a different intention. The first one was mostly to increase purity, stripping not-DMT things away (and sometimes also DMT so therefore the usage is no longer recommended), while Na2CO3 wash's primary intention is to remove any NaOH that might be present.

Hi socalfluffhead, so yelping for help straight away...utfse (joking)

FIRST OF ALL DO NOT SHAKE A JAR OF NaOH SOLUTION!!!!!! If it breaks well thats not a fun clean up job, and im pretty sure you probally dont have anything in place in case that was to happen

Use a glass rod or somthing plastic and stir by hand with jar on surface.

Your tek seems fine, and you have done some reading (well of an STB tek)

No need to re wash your goodies once obtained after f.precip. Just let dry.

You could probally of worked this all out yourself, and not have had to waste your time coming to ask this.

hih

Thanks for your help L_Starr, SWIM just completed first extraction. Freeze Precipitation didn't immediately yield any crystals after overnight freezing so he put naphtha in a glass baking pan and it is currently evaporating to concentrate and attempt freeze precipitation again. You're right, he could have probably figured it out himself, and once running through the process he said it became obvious what to do but still, thanks for your help.

Thanks Bob & Shaolin. Here's an update: SWIM just completed first extraction. Freeze Precipitation didn't immediately yield any crystals after overnight freezing so he put naphtha in a glass baking pan and it is currently evaporating to concentrate and attempt freeze precipitation again. He could have probably figured it out himself, and once running through the process he said it became obvious what to do but still, thanks for your help.

could sodium bicarbonate may be used instead of sodium carbonate?

No, sodium bicarbonate cannot replace sodium carbonate. However, you can turn sodium bicarbonate into carbonate by baking the bicarb in the oven for a couple hours. This will convert it into sodium carbonate for your wash.

awesome, thanks a lot for that good advice.

[quote=socalfluffhead
Mix MHRB in mixing jar with water. Add lye slowly, stirring constantly. Once lye is added cap jar and mix vigourously over the course of an hour.[/quote]

Surprised nobody has mentioned you should mix the water and lye first and let the lye finish reacting with the water, sometimes it collects on the bottom of the jar and you need to make sure you break it off to dissolve or it may cause a problems later .i.e naphtha no separating properly. Then add bark.

Oh and if you don't see good yields, you might want to go to a warm bath straight from go. Especially since you are washing you product anyway.

Tomtom, SWIM's yields were poor to nonexistent. He followed the above conceptual designs with 2 jars w approximately 50g MHRB, 500ml h20, and 30-34g lye. I don't know why he didn't use more lye, I believe he has a batch going now with a slightly greater than 1:1 of lye:MHRB. Apparently nothing precipitated when left overnight in freezer, and when evaporated there were no crystals left.
SWIM believes he did a few things wrong: not using more lye, perhaps using too much sodium carbonate (will this effect yield or just purity/lack of lye) and not really knowing how much naphtha to use, so he used about 2-3oz per pull with 3 pulls.
Any advice on how much naphtha to use per G OF mhrB? Any other tips or suggestions?

check your in-box, hope it helps.