Firstly, let me preface this post by saying hello to the DMT-Nexus community. I have frequented the Shroomery, but had not found my way to this corner of the net until just recently. And I am glad I did!

I have extracted spice in the past using noman's tek, with a fair amount of success, and so when asked by a close friend if I could point them towards an easy procedure for them to begin exploring hyperspace, I pointed them in that direction. Unfortunately, my friend used Ace Paint Thinner (100% Mineral Spirits), which I think may be completely out of the range of hydrocarbons that are recommended for use.

So I guess my question would be, can the odd gram and a half of crystals that were retrieved from freeze precipitation be salvaged? Or is it better to start over?

Thanks in advance!

Hello, NeXuS_DeSiGn, welcome!

According to the reference you give for the solvent, nonane-decane-undecane are alkanes, the usual type of compound in naphtha, but trimethylbenzene is an aromatic compound, like toluene.

I've seen that undecane has a pretty high melting point of 27-25ºC, which would make it precipitate itself in a very cold freezer. But then the crystals would have redissolved at ambient temperature. Other than that, my guess would be those crystals are simply wide spectrum alkaloids, more similar to the pulls done with aromatic compounds like xylene or toluene. And perhaps there's traces of other plant oils.

But I am NOT a chemist. And if I were you, unless someone who knows his stuff like benzyme or Inmotion or any local chemist reassured me, I'd redissolve the crystals and either wash them, pull again or do a re-crystallization with a more selective and familiar type of solvent.

Good luck with that.

Thanks very much for the feedback. I will advise a couple of recrystallizatons with heptane, and perhaps an IPA wash for confidence.

I am certainly still open to any further feedback however!

As long as they evap clean, the only problem with odd NP solvents is that they don't freeze precip well or take forever to evap. That does not seem to be the case in this case, so don't sweat it.
If you can re-X with heptane to make sure any slow to evap solvent is gone, you should be good to go.
Remember - don't throw anything away until you're sure you're done.

Okay, thanks for the advice, and also very, very much for the tek, if you're that Noman As soon our search for heptane is a success, well be good to go. Its extremely hard to find where I live.