It might have been discussed somewhere already, but from what swim read it is recommended that Sodium Carbonate be used instead of Ammonia (when using Nomans tek); but swim sees no reason why both are not used, since the two seem to wash off different "impurities"- the Ammonia washes away fats and oils, whereas the Sodium carbonate washes away the lye...so if ones' goal would be pure elves' spice, than why not do both of them?

Ammonia may wash away some of the DMT (if not really weak), from what I've heard, so it's probably better to stick to only sodium carbonate. What impurities will get washed away with ammonia, but not with sodium carbonate you say?

Noman's tek is a straight-to-base tek, so it skips the acidifying of the MHRB and "defatting" it with naphta afterwards, instead the way swims understands it, the tek "defats" at a later stage once you have the crystals. Maybe swim is totally mistaken and the ammonia is just used for removing the lye, but Noman says: "This will remove any remaining lye and some other impurities from the extract.", so swim guesses under "other imputities" he means plant's fats and oils, concentrated stuff that ones pulls out from the plant material together with the elves' spice, if one goes straight to base, without acidifying (and defatting with naphta/petroleumether). And at least so it is wtitten on the Ammonia bottle: "deoiling", i.e. removing oils, so swim assumed this is why ammonia is used.

Why would there be lye left over unless you messed up siphoning naptha? And isn't the burning point of lye pretty damn high?

I don't use either.

I get the solvent right off and put the individual jars in the freezer, then once I have all the dmt, I throw it all together and do 1 re-xtalisation with minimal solvent and let it evap at room temperature for as long as it takes.

Some people do the sodium carbonate wash and I can see why they do.

The ammonia wash... seems a bit counter-productive to me.

I've also had pure white fluffly 1/2 inch glass shards from the first freeze, but I think that has a lot to do with the quality of the plant material.

What swim is mostly concerned about is having traces of lye, fats and oils (which concentrated might be as well carcinogenic), so my question is once swim's gotten the "crystals", how swim can make sure nothing of the above (besides the elves' spice) is left.

If you want to wash, always wash the spice laden naphtha with sodium (bi)carbonate (before freeze precipitation or during a recrystalization).

If you want to remove oils, you need to recrystalize.

Ammonia seems to just dissolve a lot of spice and wastes a lot. I would avoid it at all costs.

Thanks, acolon_5, sounds simple and clear...