Difference between revisions of "Harmalas Extraction and Separation Guide"

Revision as of 09:56, 16 April 2010

Note:

This page is a transcription of Harmalas Extraction and Separation Guide[1].

Here's how you can get pure harmala alkaloids with food-safe materials.

Materials Required
Source Material: Syrian Rue (seeds)
Solvents: Distilled water
Reagents/Desiccants: Salt (rock salt or iodine free table salt) Vinegar Sodium Carbonate
Equipment: Funnel Coffee Filters Cotton 2 big pots for boiling and transfering liquids 2 big jars for transfering liquids

Resumed Process

A- Boil seeds 3x, filter (discard solids)

B- Reduce, filter (discard solids)

C- Saturate with salt, filter (keep solids, discard liquid)

D- Redissolve in warm water, filter (discard solids)

Repeat C and D a few times for purifying product

E- Add sodium carbonate, filter (keep solids, discard liquid) Repeat C, D and E a couple of times for having purer product.

F- (optional) Instead of precipitating all the alkaloids in step E, first add sodium bicarbonate to precipitate harmine, then add sodium carbonate to precipitate harmaline

Step one

Grind rue seeds in blender or grinder (for the making of this guide 200 grams were used, but adjust to your desired quantity)

Step two

Boil for half an hour in water with a little dash of vinegar. No need to be exact with amount of water, just dont use too little that it forms a thick syrup, better give a bit more water space for the alkaloids to move out to.

Step three

Pour the water out and keep it in a separate container, filtering in some very coarse filter such as very loosely-put cotton on the bottom of a funnel or even better an old tshirt/cloth.

Step four

Put the seeds back in the pot, with more fresh water and dash of vinegar, and repeat steps 2-4 for a total of 3 or 4 times.

Step five

Put together the liquids from all the boils and discard the solids

Step six

Filter in a funnel with cotton plug. Be patient, it may take some minutes. It goes faster when there is a lot of liquid in the funnel to press down on the rest. If its taking much too long, filter again once or twice through a coarser cloth filter or dont pack the cotton plug so tightly.

Step seven

STILL IN CONSTRUCTION.. CHECK THE LINK ABOVE FOR NOW

Repeat step 6 packing the cotton tighter for removing finer particles

Step eight

Put filtered liquid back in the pot to reduce in low fire. If you had, say, 4 liters of filtered rue tea, reduce to 1l so that its more manageable later.

Step nine

After reducing, filter again like in steps 6 and 7 because more solid impurities will have appeared in the process of reducing.

Step ten

Saturate the tea with salt. Have the tea boiling in a pot, and keep adding salt and stirring until no more salt dissolves (it will be a lot of salt, I usually dont measure because its unnecessary but it might be around 100g salt per liter water). Then decant the tea into a container leaving the undissolved salt behind, and put it in the fridge.(Too much salt is no problem as excess salt will be removed later). What is happening here is that with excess of salt, the harmalas get the Chlorine ions from salt and precipitate in the salt harmala form, harmine and harmaline HCl, which are insoluble in salt saturated water therefore precipitate. In this step one removes the uterotonic and possibly more toxic alkaloids vasicine and vasicinone, dangerous specially for pregnant women because they are abortifacient. Analysis done by Shulgin and others have shown salt-precipitated harmalas to be indeed free of these mentioned alkaloids.

Picture of the harmala salts precipitating in the second or third round. Notice the lighter precipitating alkaloids and the yellower liquid.

Step eleven

Filter with a coffee filter. This time you want to keep the alkaloids so you have to use a finer filter that wont let the alkaloids pass, like a cloth or cotton might. Therefore, this step may be slower. Some shortcuts can be made which is to use a vacuum filtering system, and if one cannot afford a propper one, it can be improvised at very low cost, or adapting a paper filter in a french coffee press

Step twelve

Redissolve the Harmalas HCl in warm/hot water with a bit of vinegar.

Step thirteen

Filter a couple of times with coffee filter. Now there are less impurities, so using a fine filter like coffee filter, a few times, will help getting more and more rid of the finer impurities too. A coarse filter would not be enough. The colours change beautifully from the yellowish salt precipitation to the clear reddish colour when redissolved.

Step fourteen

Repeat steps 10-13 A few times to make product cleaner. I recommend at least 3. In the first runs it is a darker brown, and then it gets progressively lighter yellower, like in these pictures:

For keeping the mixed harmalas, read step 15, for separating harmine and harmaline, go to step 16

Step fifteen

Slowly add sodium carbonate. At first it might bubble from sodium carbonate reacting with acetic acid from vinegar until it neutralizes. Dont add too fast or it might bubble up and make a mess. After it stops bubbling, the colour starts changing as the pH rises and alkaloids start precipitating. Keep adding a bit of sodium carbonate even after colour stopped changing, just to make sure everything will precipitate. Let it rest for at least a couple of hours, and then filter with coffee filter.

This is a mix of harmaline and harmine. Just let it dry and you're ready to go, or if you want to separate, go to step 16

Step sixteen

To separate harmine and harmaline, we use the difference in their pKa, which is basically the measure that says at a certain pH, how many of its molecules will be freebase or in salt form. Harmine becomes a freebase in a pH where most harmaline is still salt, so one can separate them. If you have accurate pH meter, at pH 8,75, 92% of harmine will precipitate while only 8% of harmaline will precipitate. Add sodium carbonate till pH 8,75 or add sodium bicarbonate freely, till it stops changing colour and a bit more, to precipitate harmine. Wait at least half an hour and filter with coffee filter, and add sodium carbonate freely to precipitate harmaline. Wait at least 2 hours and then filter with coffee filter to retrieve your harmaline. Dry and enjoy :)

The more one repeats the whole process, the cleaner the alkaloids get. I recommend repeating and alternating a few times between the salt precipitation and the freebase precipitation, with more runs on the salt than on the freebase. The reason for this is because even at a high pH, it is possible that a small quantity of harmaline still does not precipitate, so every basing could lose a small amount of it. It might not be such a significant quantity but maybe if one repeated many many times one could lose some alkaloids. One could make for example 3x salt precipitation, 1x base, again 1 or 2x salt and 1 or 2x base. If one does this, this is what happens:

In the first two or so base precipitations the product browner, with maybe a dark pink tone.

Then after repeating the clean ups it starts getting lighter tan.

And after one or another clean up run, the final products can be such as this:

Harmine

Harmaline

Reference

1. ↑ Harmalas Extraction and Separation Guide [1]