SWIM just did his 3rd pull of naptha that had been sitting in the bark mix for 3 days.

He proceeded to do the soda wash as he had done on every pull, but noticed this time that the naptha is cloudy as hell.

SWIM thinks he may have not noticed this earlier on another "final pull" and is why he ended up with a pile of stuff that wouldn't dissolve in heptane.

Thoughts?

(noman tek)

I can't imagine sodium carbonate going into the heptane... mystifying. I'd certainly filter or otherwise clean the insoluble product from your spice with heptane. It would be interesting to know what it smells like as a pure product... if the sodium carbonate is performing chemistry on something in the nonpolar extract, we should know about it and I'll remove that step. This is the first I've heard of problems with it.

To be clear, you're using sodium carbonate (washing soda), not sodium bicarbonate (baking soda)?

If the water is too cold it will cause the naptha to cool down to a point where the DMT starts to precipitate out. This happened to me on my last extraction too, I used ice cold soda/water and my naptha went cloudy. I recognised it as the same cloudiness as when the naptha starts to cool down during the freeze precipitate phase and gave it a short heat bath, just to warm it up a little (back to luke warm)and it fixed the problem.
Lesson learned!!

Use room temp water for a sodium carbonate wash.

?Right?

WS

SWIM used warm water since he was worried about cooling the naphtha but thought he was being paranoid. It shall be noted.

The water is room tempurature.

This is the culprit:


SWIM was careless and did not read carefully. SWIM placed an order for the real deal.
Still waiting for the suspension to settle (it's doing it, slowly).

Millions of crackheads can't be wrong?

Lesson learned. SWIM feels like a noob.

I don't know that baking soda is necessarily the culprit, it will basify the solution just fine. SWIM just hasn't tried it since Vovin said to use washing soda; warming up the naphtha and water ought to clarify the cloudiness if it's DMT precipitating.

SWIM did a few quick tests to confirm this. First he heated up naptha and heptane and adding baking soda. No dissolve. This would explain SWIM's previous post.

Then SWIM heated up his "cloudy naptha" and that cleared up, save for a slightly yellowish tint.

Now SWIM is going to re crystalize all of his alkaloids. SWIM is thinking of redissolving it all back into hot heptane and then filtering it to get any leftover bicarbonate.

SWIM was definitely confused about the bicarbonate vs. carbonate, because the bicarbonate does basify the wash right up to about 8.5~9.

This may explain why SWIM's first 65mg test did not push him through the veil, even though he felt like a mentally handicapped 4 year old on the 3rd toke.

I've updated the Overview to clarify this point, I probably should've foreseen that confusion. Glad it seems to have worked out.

If the water is too warm some of the DMT can mix into it, so room temp should be good enough.


you can get this at most supermarkets in the laundry detergent area, its about $1.00 for a box big enough for a life time of extractions!!

Look for a large yellow box that says
"Arm & Hammer SUPER WASHING SODA"
it is 99.9% sodium carbonate.

By the way, when you do the Sodium carbonate wash, the first wash uses the SC but washes 2 & 3 use only water!
The Idea is to put the SC water in there and mix it around. The residual lye and other crap that may be left over from the extraction will bond to the sodium carbonate and be washed out with the water layer, but some of the sodium carbonate will be left behind in the naptha. Washes 2 & 3 then collect the extra SC from your naptha with the water.
So wash #1 will be a little cloudy with sodium carbonate. Be sure to use just a tiny, tiny pinch of the soda!! it goes a long way!!

WS

Look for a large yellow box that says
"Arm & Hammer SUPER WASHING SODA"
it is 99.9% sodium carbonate.



--> is it important to have pure sodium carbonate? i've found washing soda etc but with not much more than 30%. swim has a ph meter.

Unless you know what that other 70% is, I wouldn't use it

yup!!

c'mon its a buck

WS