Chilled Acetone with IPA and Naphtha

CIELO

Note:

This page is a workplace for an experimental process. It is intended to summarize information from ongoing discussions in the forum. Feel free to update this page with any observations or comments. Wiki changes are reversible so you can't break anything - be bold. This page is not currently linked to the main wiki and will remain as such until the process is independently verified by others.

Introduction

CIELO stands for Crystals In Ethyl-acetate Leisurely OTC (Over The Counter).

In this TEK, aqueous lime cactus paste is broken down by microwave radiation, saturated with CaCl2, and extracted with ethyl acetate. The extract is chemically dried and salted with citric acid to precipitate mescaline citrate crystals.

Processing the paste in the microwave to make it ready for extraction is the most laborious part of this TEK. There is also a MgSO4 chemichal dry that may need some user practice to perform cleanly.

Materials

• Quart jars with lids*
• Food scale
• 300g water
• 100g powdered dry cacti
• Microwave
• 25g Ca(OH)2 (lime)
• 25g anhydrous CaCl2
• ~ 1000g Ethyl acetate ("MEK substitute")
• Citric acid
• pH paper (optional)

*If lids are plastic, use ethyl acetate resistant LDPE or PP.

Safety

Review ethyl acetate's safety information and check the manufacture's MSDS to verify you have pure ethyl acetate.

Each adult individual needs to review external information throughly and make their personal decision on proceeding.

Process

Paste

Mix water and cactus powder to a homogeneous paste in a canning quart jar.

Microwave paste is short bursts stirring frequently. Monitoring radiations closely to avoid paste swelling outside the jar. Paste will go from green to broen. Continue microwaving until a total of ~50g of water evaporate.

Allow to cool and mix in lime until smooth, them add anhydrous CaCl2 and mix until paste breaks up into soft chunks.

Pull

Add ~ 300g of ethyl acetate to the paste making the jar ~3/4 full. Stir slowly and thoroughly. Cover with lid and let it sit for a few hours or more.

Decant solvent into a second jar. A little extra solvent can be recovered by for example squeezing chunks with the backside of a spoon. About ~50g of solvent will remain in the paste.

Pull three more times with ~200g of ethyl acetate, making the jar ~3/4 full again. Decant into the same jar as the first pull. The paste may become sandy or change in later pulls.

Combined pulls will give ~a quart of clear yellow extract. Optionally, more pulls can be done later for a modest yield improvement.

Salt

Add ~250mg (~1/16 tsp) of citric acid into the extract and place in fridge. Clouds form and after a few hours settle as beautiful mescaline citrate xtals. If xtals have difficulty forming, move extract to freezer. If xtals do not form even in the freezer, there was an issue with the TEK. It should still be possible to recover any product in the solvent with water pulls as is done in other TEKs.

Every 10mg of citric acid (CitH₃) reacts with enough free base mescaline (Mes) to precipitate up to 43mg of mescaline citrate:

3Mes_(↑) + CitH_3(↑) ⇒ 3(MesH)Cit_(↓)

Salting is complete if no clouds form after adding more citric acid (e.g. ~ 50mg), or optionally if pH paper is neutral/acidic. A 250mg of citric acid should be more than enough for the typical cactus (0.5% to 1% yield). However, and outlier like the legendary Ogun would need ~1100mg of citric acid for a 4.7% yield.

Over acidifying is not a big concern. There is room for a lot of excess citric acid in solution since several grams can dissolve in a quart of ethyl acetate.

Note:

Other solid organic acids could work. Fumaric acid was tested and gave wispy tiny xtals (not ideal). Malic would be interesting since that could yield the (reportedly?) natural mescaline salt form. There are many other solid organic acids soluble in ethyl acetate (tartaric, ascorbic, succinic, etc).

Finish

Pour off ethyl acetate into a storage container** leaving the crystals behind (filter can help catch any that accidentally pour out). Rinse xtals with fresh anhydrous ethyl acetate (dried over CaCl2) at least once. Optionally, continue rinsing until yellow color is removed to personal cosmetic satisfaction. Leave xtals uncovered to evaporate all residual solvent, this is the final product. If desired, the product can be dissolved in minimal warm water and passively evaporated undisturbed to obtain long crystal needles.

Mass spectrometry results indicate the product is very clean mescaline. See image below, peak near 210 is from Mescaline, and peak near 194 is from Mescaline with the amine cleaved during measurement.

Yields are highly dependent on starting cacti powder. They can vary from 0.1% to 5% (0.5% to 1% being common).

**Solvent can be washed with brine and reused.