So my recent extraction has left the top separated layer of naptha looking nasty and particle ridden. After freezing it last time I decided to just put it all back into the sludge to sit more because the results were so dirty. Is there a way I can get a cleaner product with a sodium carbonate wash. Can I do this wash right after pulling the top layer of naphtha out before putting it in the freezer? What about the ratio of sodium carbonate to naphtha? I also have some heptane so I could re crystalize it as well. What has worked for you guys?
My first pull was fantastic though, however only around .6g and I started with 250g of powered inner root bark. (I got around 1 gram from 100g before using the same tek)

http://i.imgur.com/Cbv6Q.jpg

One way I found helped to remove impurities, so much so that the sodium carb wash didnt remove much was:..
Heating up the naphtha in a mason jar in a sink with hot water. Then decant the clean dmt enriched naphtha off of the nasty particle ridden layer into another clean mason jar. You should be able to get very clean naphtha this way and after that it will barely need a sodium carb wash if at all.

C_S

Funny you mention that, that's how I did my first pull! I guess ill be doing it again, how long should it take to settle out, if I did get emulsion is that something that can settle out or is it permanent?

Should only take a minute or two if the naphtha is warm enough from the hot water bath in the sink. I would do all your pulls and put them into the same big jar together. Then after all of the pulls you will have a jar with mostly dmt saturated naphtha. There will be a bit of nasty emulsion at the bottom of the jar, decant(pour) of the warm naphtha into a clean jar untill there's only a little tiny bit of naphtha left on top of the emulsion. If the hot water bath is warm enough you should have no problem doing this without getting any emulsion in the clean jar. If you get any emulsion in the new clean jar pour it all back into the first jar and try again after cleaning your clean jar again. If your doing a decent enough sized extraction you should not have to worry about a few tablespoons of naphtha getting discarded with that nasty emulsion. Once you have the clean jar filled with absolutely no emulsion in it all, do a sodium carb wash. At this point your naphtha should be so clean from the warm decanting process that the sodium carb will do almost nothing. After the sodium carb wash, do a cold fresh water wash. After those washes do an Epsom salt wash to remove any moisture from the mix. The Epsom wash helps to ensure that when you pull your spice from the freezer it doesn't just melt and turn to goo once warmed upto room temp. After all that when you've got your dmt saturated naphtha in a clean jar, place the jar in 3 or 4 zip up freezer bags and place in the freezer for a minimum of 12 hours upto 72 hours depending on your patience level. The zip up bags are for incase that nice jar decides to break in the freezer. You do not want to spill ANY naphtha in the freezer, you will never get that smell out of there.

You should have got closer to 2 or 3(1.5 on the low side) grams of spice from 250 grams of bark. Most people are getting on average around 1% yeild or so.

Hope that helps
C_S

https://wiki.dmt-nexus.m...hould_I_wash_my_spice.3F
https://wiki.dmt-nexus.m...2FDark.2C_what_to_do_.3F
https://wiki.dmt-nexus.m...oes_one_recrystallize.3F

https://www.dmt-nexus.me...aspx?g=posts&t=11715

Some links that might be of your interest

Thanks for the advice and links. I was just reading your post endlessness that sorta describes some of my questions https://www.dmt-nexus.me....aspx?g=posts&t=1151 . I actually let it sit in the hot water bath for ~2 hours but I had previously shook the hell out of it and I'm pretty sure I caused permanent emulsion. I ended up only doing a sodium carbonate wash on the ~300ml of naptha in the end. However on my failed pull after freezing originally for around 20 hours I got this mess http://i.imgur.com/yLsYc.jpg I tried to filter some crystals out but it was a nasty mess of fats and oils. I filtered it before freezing but that didn't do much. This was it being filtered before I decided to just throw it all back in the sludge and try again. http://i.imgur.com/iO5ZI.jpg . I ended up waiting for it to separate again in the hot water bath, pulling that, doing a sodium carbonate wash on that and put it back int he freezer like this http://i.imgur.com/y2pfn.jpg . Beyond causing emulsion where else could I have messed up? I have done this about 4 separate times and had good pulls but plenty of bad ones. I followed this tek partly http://www.shroomery.org...flat.php/Number/10089233 so I ended up with about ~1800 ml of distilled water for 250g of powered bark (needs ~%20 more water) and used 250g of lye as well. Are there better measurements or an optimal measurement for the STB tek. I also know since it's a higher PH around 14 that it is probably plenty broken down without the intense shaking. I apologize for the long post, I'm just trying to get this down to a science, and as a broke college student i've been wasting a lot of bark I feel. I feel like DMT found me and helped me so I want to share it with others but I'm getting such small yields.

Dont throw anything away and you dont lose anything.

Im not sure what causing the problems. Does your solvent evaporate cleanly? Are you sure its pure naphtha?

I think in your case I would do either one of two things.. One, to make all the pulls, salt them out with a bit of warm vinegar twice or three times, filter the vinegar, base it again and extract again from it.. Then freeze or evap your stuff.. Maybe for some reason your naphtha is trapping way too many impurities (maybe its a naphtha that has some xylene in it or something else making it pull a lot of oils/impurities), and doing this re-a/b would help further cleaning it up before the last freeze/evap

Another option is to simply evaporate all your naphtha instead of freezing, and then recrystallizing your stuff (instructions of re-x in the FAQ, linked in post above). You could even do half of your batch in one way, and half in another, and see what works better, and let us know. Just remember not to throw anything away before youre completely done and happy.

PS: Funny old link you've digged out there from 4 years ago when I wrote that stb tek

Yea my solvent should be fine, it's just http://www.amazon.com/Ro...htha-Quart/dp/B001G9TGQI . I do have bestine for recrystallization if I wanted. What do you mean by salting pulls out with warm vinegar? I'm not sure how to do that, or how to filter vinegar. I also don't have a proper separatory funnel yet, but that's coming.

Salting pulls is basically to get your separated naphtha pulls, mix them with vinegar (just as you mixed your naphtha with the basic mimosa tea), then you separate the two layers.. Because vinegar is acidic, your alkaloids that were in freebase form in the naphtha will have become a salt (thats why the name "salting", and they will migrate to the vinegar instead of staying in the naphtha.. so you will have your vinegar full of alkaloids, and your naphtha will not have any (store it anyways just in case in case something goes wrong or if you want to reuse it in the future). So then you add base to your vinegar and extract again. As for how you filter that vinegar, simple, just a funnel and some cotton plug.. And after its all filtered, run a bit of warm water through it to pick up any bit of alkaloids that stayed together with moisture that is "trapped" in the cotton plug.

Does that make sense?