So as you can tell by the title i cannot find pure lye, for perspective i live in England if anyone knows anywhere i can find it in cleaning products but that's about all so any tips ? should i try to extract lye or ? also i cant find any naphtha in uk but lighter fluid seems to be almost identical will that work instead ? thanks
/u/socat2me · N/A votes · 16th October, 2022 - 07:10 · Link
Try looking for calcium hydroxide instead if you really can't find sodium hydroxide (it's not on amazon or ebay?). It's used for pickling which is why it's also called pickling lime, I had great results using it and doing a straight to base method, and since it's not as water soluble you can create sort of a mud-like textured substance (I'm assuming you're working with powdered root bark). I was able to use the method where you create a bunch of mason jars and after a week or so just take off the organic layer. Except I just used a huge metal pot with a folded hand towel to set all the mason jars in and then heat water around them to speed up the reaction and do it in a day. Didn't even need a separatory funnel. Just pour off the nonpolar layer after an hour or so of heating and then freeze precipitate (if you don't have naptha forget about the freeze precipitation it isn't going to work. You're going to have to evaporate your solvent, and then if you end up with a oil/resin ubstance keep dissolving it in acetone and re-evaporating the acetone and you'll end up with a powder eventually. ). This was almost 10 years ago now though so I can't remember the exact procedure I used. Lighter fluid has more long chain heavy hydrocarbons than naphta it will be a bitch to evaporate. Camping fuel like coleman camp fuel isn't available in England? If you know any people who do fire performance like poi and shit see what they mix with paraffin to make their fuel. Check if there's an equivalent of coleman, but if not coleman, do an evaporation test first and make sure that it doesn't leave behind any additives. If you can't find any of those you need some other nonpolar solvent. Try and use ebay to check for hexane or petroleum ether although I doubt you'll find it if you can't find naphta. Look for toluene. If that fails too absolute worst case scenario use Xylene or MEK.
/u/Shadow590348 · N/A votes · 16th October, 2022 - 09:17 · Link
i managed to some caustic soda but none of its food grade its 99.9 % do you think that will work or should i get calcium hydroxide as it will be food grade ?
/u/cornilius · N/A votes · 17th October, 2022 - 09:25 · Link
Can't just name other NPS' and say they'll work. Xylene for example, will not evaporate under standard conditions, at least not at an acceptable rate, meaning it cannot be a direct substitute for naphtha, as the alkaloids would need to be salted out of xylene instead of simply evaporating it. In saying that, xylene in particular is actually an excellent choice of solvent for DMT extractions. It's no where near as selective as naphtha, meaning you get pretty much everything, in one pull. Xylene for first pull, salt dmt out, then re-crystallise with heptane for the best results. Calcium hydroxide isn't a great substitute for naoh either. I mean, yeah, it can work, but if we're talking about efficiency it's a terrible choice. Mud pie teks typically have low yields, and the chance of contamination is much higher.
/u/socat2me · N/A votes · 16th October, 2022 - 10:38 · Link
Nah you're good to use it the production process is pretty straightforward with that stuff, there won't be anything in there to be worried about.
/u/socat2me · N/A votes · 19th October, 2022 - 00:44 · Link
Not quite what I was doing, I spent years working in an organic research lab during my time at university. Xylene and MEK suck, hence why I said absolute worst case scenario. If we're talking ideal solvents though, naphtha is certainly not a solvent you'll find being used in a laboratory setting, it's just readily available and an easy choice for home chemistry. Although I'm not really sure what you're referring to in regards to CaOH? Not that a strong base is really required for this reaction but It's quite strong. The water solubility is low but the strength of a base is inversely proportionate to the strength of--and directly proportionate to the stability of, the conjugate acid. In this case a calcium ion, hence strong base. The poor yields that people get are probably due to the poor water solubility, so the ionization isn't great and thus neither is the reaction rate. As I mentioned though, I was able to get essentially quantitative yields by increasing the temperature. See van't hoff or arrhenius equations for explanation of the temperature dependence on reaction rate. Really you can substitute all kinds of stuff because of how simple the reaction is. It's just an acid/base reaction on an alkaloid with an easy extraction workup. No need to think too hard about it, as long as you don't do something crazy yields should be close to quantitative for any of these reactions.