Edit
5.7
*****This document is going through continued edits and
will be for some time to come. For the most recent version you
can find it at this URL: http://forums.lycaeum.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=2&t=000965
W A R N I N G :
DO NOT ATTEMPT TO USE CRUDE OR REFINED
SALVINORIN AS A DRUG. IT IS FAR TOO POTENT, ESPECIALLY WHEN IN
CRYSTAL FORM. 5X Enhanced leaf is only 1.5% Salvinorin by
weight. Before trying this process, inform yourself of the
potential dangers of trying to smoke the extract itself by
going to Daniel Siebert's cautionary page at http://www.sagewisdom.org/caution.html
Acetone is very flammable. Educate yourself as to proper
organic solvent handling techniques. Avoid risking sparks from
metallic utensils, desktop or computer fans, and don't try to
evaporate it in closed areas.
There are several methods to extract Salvia Divinorum,
You can use whole, crushed, or powdered leaf to extract
Salvinorin using many different kinds of solvents. The
following are my experiences using Acetone and Isopropanol on
whole to powdered leaf, from room temperature to chilled.
The first time I stumbled upon a method of extracting
fairly potent Salvinorin without also extracting wax was
through the use of chilled Acetone with whole dried leaf. I
found this method quite by accident by leaving a bottle of
reagent grade Acetone outside in minus -20 degree weather and
then using while still cold to extract from whole dried leaf.
I soaked about 75 gram of leaf in a quart sized canning jar
for just one minute, the solvent took on very little color.
Although as the solvent evaporated down to the last few ounces
of fluid the color became a more pronounced green. When the
Acetone was completely evaporated away I was was astounded how
the extract appeared, it was light green that looked
crystaline. I was almost jumping with joy at the results, I
thought I had found a simple way of extracting Salvinorin
almost completely wax free. The quick and easy test to know if
it was really Salvinorin was to dissolve a small amount of it
into leaf and try it for myself. It worked, and it worked damn
well. There was no denying the Salvia space I found myself in.
I thought I broke through to a new extraction method for
crystaline Salvinorin and began posting about it in the Yahoo
SalviaD forum. Several individuals thanked me for the news,
apparently no one had heard of this method before. I began
posting that my extract was fairly pure, because by all
appearances it was Salvinorin, although I should have known it
wasn't high purity because of the volume of extract, but I
didn't have an accurate scale to measure how much. Daniel
Siebert contacted me shortly after my post on SalviaD and
asked me how I was able to produce the Salvinorin from just
Acetone and whole leaf. I told him that I had just used
Acetone for one minute with whole dried leaf, nothing more. He
tested the method himself but came back with an answer that
the extract was only 12% pure and had waxes in it. These
weren't the results that I had found and it took me almost two
days to figure out what I was missing. I tried a one minute
extraction with whole leaf again and once the Acetone was
evaporated off found lots of wax. I couldn't understand what I
had done differently, but then it occured to me, my Acetone
was cold from being outside in minus 20 degree F. temperatures
of a Alaskan winter. Ah-ha! The missing piece. I tried once
more, this time leaving my Acetone outside for a few hours and
was able to reproduce my first results. It took a few more
weeks until I was able to figure out that although a simple
extraction of whole or crushed leaf with chilled Acetone will
greatly reduce the amount of wax extracted, the extract was
still fairly low purity.
Here is the first photograph that I took of a whole leaf
cold Acetone extraction without the sediments removed, taken
about two and a half years ago: http://www.geocities.com/salviasage2001/
What I didn't know about my newly found method was that the
majority of my extract were fine sediments from the leaf that
had lots of Salvinorin infused into it making it look
crystaline. I didn't know this until I took all of my extract
and dissolved it into eight ounces of 151 proof Everclear
Alcohol. After doing so I found that the container had lots of
sediment in the bottom that would not dissolve into the
Alcohol and instead of being green looked brown. My chilled
Acetone extractions were not nearly as good as I had thought
and my extract was more sediment than Salvinorin. Although the
Alcohol dissolved most of the Salvinorin out of the sediments
it required a few more washes of Alcohol to remove the rest of
the Salvinorin from them. From there I everaporated the
Alcohol and found that my extract was much purer, but still
had a fair amount of wax it it. I had an idea, since I had
been experimenting with partioning extracts with Naphtha and
Methanol and water in a separatory funnel, I wondered if just
pure Naphtha might wash the waxes out of the extract. I dried
all of the Alcohol out of the extract and put it all in a
small 25 ml glass vial and poured in a few ml of Naphtha which
immediately took on a very dark color, leaving a lighter
colored extract in the bottom of the container! I found my
method, I continued washing the extract with more Naphtha
until it was a very light green. After the first seven washes
the Naphtha would not take on much more of the wax and begain
to become more translucent with each wash. I dried the extract
and it was a fairly light color, but not the white that I knew
fairly pure Salvinorin is. Next I tried washing the extract
with 99% Isopropanol and it immediately took on a very dark
color! I found that the Isopropanol would pick up where the
Naphtha left off and that if being careful to use just a few
ml of this solvent at a time, that I could wash all of the
green color out of the extract and get down to white
Salvinorin. Although, at some cost. Since Salvinorin is almost
insoluble to Naphtha it was a good choice for the first
washes, but Isopropanol/IPA will dissolve some of the
Salvinorin into it, in addition to the waxes with each wash.
Because of this I was loosing a couple mg of Salvinorin or
more per ml of IPA with each wash of my extract. Although I
was loosing Salvinorin with each wash the amount that was
being carried away was less and less each time. The reason for
this is that IPA will hold about .75 mg of Salvinorin per ml
of fluid when at room temperature when the Salvinorin is pure,
but when waxes are present it can remove much more per ml,
when heavy with wax as many as several mg per ml of fluid. As
I continued to clean the wax from the extract the IPA took
away less and less Salvinorin. From my own experience, if your
careful not to use too much IPA you should be able to wash
your extract to white and loose no more than 25% of your
Salvinorin to the washes, resulting in nice white Salvinorin
to work with to either make extra strength leaf, or for
growing crystals. Growing crystals is not necessary for any
purpose other than knowing roughly how pure your extract is,
but I enjoy growing them as a curosity alone. When loosing
Salvinorin from IPA washes it shouldn't be a complete loss
because you can use the IPA you pour off with the black wax to
make some nice tincture or 5X leaf, depending upon how much
leaf your extracted from.
Although chilled Acetone is still a good method to extract
Salvinorin without much wax I no longer use chilled Acetone
for my Salvia Divinorum extractions. I use either room
temperature reagent grade Acetone or 99% Isopropanol and soak
my leaf for long periods of time doing multiple extractions to
a batch of powdered leaf progressively removing Salvinorin
with at least three separate extractions to powdered leaf, one
right after the other. Since finding how well pure Naphtha
will remove waxes from a room temperature Acetone or 99%
Isopropanol extraction (after evaporating out all of the
extracting solvent) I no longer use chilled Acetone to reduce
the amount of wax extracted. When extracting powdered leaf
with either Acetone or 99% Isopropanol (not 70, 80 or 94%) at
room temperature you will have as high an extraction
efficiency as possible due to having the leaf powdered as
finely as possible to provide the most surface area for the
solvent to draw from together with solvents which have higher
solubilities to Salvinorin at room temperature compared to
when chilled which also requires less time to extract
Salvinorin with the highest efficiency that either Acetone or
99% Isopropanol will provide at room temperature.
Question and Answers for Salvia Divinorum Extractions:
How much solvent is required to extract leaf?
If extracting from a whole kg of powdered leaf, whether
using 99% Isopropanol or Acetone a gallon ought to be more
than enough. If your extracting from a full kilo of crushed
leaf then it requires about twice as much solvent due to the
volume of crushed or whole leaf compared to the much smaller
volume when powdered.
When extracting from leaf with either Acetone or
Isopropanol, what temperature should the solvents be and how
long should I soak it to get most of the Salvinorin out?
When extracting from 50 grams to 250 grams of powdered leaf
I like to use a quart sized jar and a bowl when working with
either crushed or whole leaf due to the increased volume of
both the leaf and solvent needed to completely cover it when
crushed. If using a jar for your extraction do not fill the
container more than a third full of leaf when powdered so that
there will be enough room for both the solvent and leaf to be
able to mix together without compacting. When extracting the
leaf you can either stir your leaf in a large bowl or if using
a sealed container or jar shake it the whole time for a better
mixing. When using crushed or whole leaf you can fill your jar
from half to three quarters full because there is enough space
for the solvent and leaf to move around when stirring or
shaking jar. When using Acetone you can use it to extract from
either whole, crushed or powdered because Acetone is so
effective regardless of the leaf being whole or powdered.
Powdering your leaf will allow your solvent to pull out more
of the waxes, but also reduces the amount of time required to
get the Salvinorin out of it which means a greater efficiency
for a given amount of time, so powdered leaf is preferrable to
crushed, especially when using room temperature Acetone which
will pull over lots of waxes out of your leaf regardless of
being powdered or not. At room temperature Acetone should
extract close to two thirds or more of the Salvinorin out of
the leaf with a single 5 minute extraction of the leaf, but
not all of it. Because of this you should extract the leaf at
least once more to have a reasonable extraction efficiency. I
always extract a third time to get every bit of the Salvinorin
out of the leaf that I can. Multiple washes to the leaf is
helpful in more than one way because each additional wash will
also replace most of the solvent which has wetted your leaf
from the previous wash. Even though you may try to squeeze out
every last drop of Acetone from your wet it, it can contain a
fair amount of Salvinorin due to the ability of Acetone to
hold over 20 mg of Salvinorin per ml of fluid when at room
temperature.
If making a short extracting with Isopropanol instead of
Acetone be sure to only use 99% Isopropanol, not 70 or 91%.
Alcohols can be fairly effective extracting Salvinorin out of
leaf in a short amount of time, but to be able to do so cannot
have much water in them, this includes drinking Alcohols such
as Everclear Alcohol which is sold either 151 proof or 190
proof, dending on your local laws. Many cities in the United
States prohibit the sale of 190 proof which would be a good
choice with only 5% water, but 99% Isopropanol is a better
choice because it can usually be purchased at 99%, containing
only one percent water. When using Alcohol to extract from
leaf it needs to be as finely powdered as you can reasonably
get it. I have found that the small coffee grinders with a
stainless steel bowl built into the top with a steel blade
that turns around at high speed is great for powdering leaf,
although you may only be able to powder a few grams at a time
due to the small capacity of these units. I am not saying that
you can't use whole or crushed leaf with 99% Isopropanol, but
your efficiency will be low compared to using powdered leaf.
Acetone can easily extract Salvinorin out of whole or crushed
leaf whether at room temperature or chilled, but Isopropanol
isn't nearly as efficient at room temperature because it is
comparitively slow and inefficient when chilled. It will take
more work to extract Salvinorin when using 99% Isopropanol,
you can make up for the lower solubility of Salvinorin to
Alcohol by stirring and shaking your bowl or jar of leaf as
vigorously as you can and extract for longer periods of time,
increasing the amount of times the batch is extracted is
important too. When using 99% Isopropanol I extract my
powdered leaf for a minimum of 5 minutes each time up to six
times, one right after the other with another couple of good
wash throughs with fresh IPA when I am done. I have found that
I am able to get close to 80 percent or more of the Salvinorin
out of leaf when using 99% Isopropanol when using this method
so it will work, but is just more work. The advantage to using
99% Isopropanol is that it evaporates out completely clean and
is easy to find. Finding clean or reagent grade Acetone can be
difficult and usually expensive. This is why I started testing
Isopropyl Alcohols with Salvia, because buying reagent grade
Acetone was too expensive. I have found that even with my best
efforts when using 99% Isopropanol I can't get the last 20
percent of the Salvinorin out of the leaf without an
additional long term soaking of the leaf, because of this when
your done with all of your IPA extractions pour more 99% IPA
back into the jar of powdered leaf and set it away in a dark
place somewhere for a day or more to get the last of the
Salvinorin out of it. Be sure to store your jar away from
light because you could loose some of your Salvinorin due to
the interaction of light with Salvinorin when in solvent,
especially when in Acetone. This isn't a problem for short
periods of time, however when extracting leaf in solvents for
more than a few hours you should store your container of
Salvinorin containing solvent in the dark.
I heard that chilled Acetone will work to reduce the
waxes so much that your extract is almost pure, how do you
extract using chilled Acetone?
Chilled Acetone with either whole, crushed or powdered leaf
is a great method of reducing the amount of wax extracted from
leaf, but unless your extractions are very brief using only
cold Acetone it won't be very pure. Cold Acetone isn't as
quick or efficient for extracting Salvinorin out of leaf
compared to room temperature, but it can be used to trade
efficiency for purity and leave the bulk of the wax behind at
the cost of efficiency leaving an estimated 20 percent or more
of the Salvinorin behind depending how cold it is and how many
times you extract your batch of leaf. The method that I
believe has the best trade offs between leaving the most wax
behind while extraction the majority of the Salvinorin is
using Acetone chilled to 20 degrees F. extracting finely
crushed leaf three times for three minutes with a more couple
quick washes of the leaf. If using Acetone that has been
chilled minus -20 degrees F. this will reduce the waxes being
extracted even further, but leave more of the Salvinorin
behind. When using Salvinorin chilled to minus 20 degrees F.
the ratio of Salvinorin to wax will be increased extracting a
relatively clean crude Salvinorin compared to using Acetone
chilled to only +20 degrees. However, when using chilled to
-20 deg. F. the efficiency of the extraction will be lower.
You can make up for some of the lowered efficiency by
increasing the amount of time that your leaf is in the solvent
to five minutes for each of your three extractions one right
after the other, but if you increase the time too much using
colder solvent will be moot as it will begin to pull over more
waxes anyway. Although you can use whole or crushed leaf whith
chilled Acetone. I recommend powdering the leaf to help
increase the efficiency, especially when at minus -20 degrees
F. When using chilled Acetone I like to have it chilled to at
least 20 degrees F. When working in a warm room with chilled
Acetone from the fridge I have had the Acetone warm up from 20
degrees to 40 degrees F. just as I finished the last of three
extractions on a batch of leaf (one right after the other) and
it didn't pull over too much extra wax, but extended soaks
with Acetone at 40 degrees F. is far too warm to reap the
benefits of using chilled Acetone to reduce the amount of
waxes extracted. Because Acetone remains fairly efficient from
20 degrees F. through to room temperature it is the best
solvent I have been able to find for chilled extractions.
How much leaf can I extract at one time, is half kilo or
more too much for one extraction?
The amount of leaf is not a problem, except for finding a
large enough container to do it all in. If your trying to
process a full kilo of leaf all at one time then you probably
won't want to try to put all of it in a huge glass jug to
shake it, but you could if you had a big enough one. When
working with large quantities of leaf I believe that it is far
better to use a big bowl and just mix it all up, smashing it
down and around using a potato masher or large spoon, but I
don't recommend trying to process a full kilo of leaf at one
time. You would be better to break your kilo into four 250
gram piles and do each one seperately, or start out with just
50 to 100 grams the first time through as a trial run to get
the hang of it.
How can I remove the sediments before washing my
extract?
Although I have been telling people to remove sediments
prior to evaporating your extraction solvent, you can
evaporate your Acetone right away without removing the fine
sediments, clean the wax from your extract with Naphtha or
Isopropanol, and then remove the sediments as a last step.
Although, when the sediments are present while cleaning your
extract with Naphtha or IPA your extract won't lighten up to
white if removing all of the waxes which is a pleasure to see,
it will work out in the end as long as you realize that
additional washes to your extract will not make it white due
to the sediment impurities. If you keep trying to make your
extract lighten up to white with too many washes of IPA and
your extract is getting a darker and darker color, what you
are doing is removing all of the Salvinorin which colors the
brown sediment a light tan color, so don't go to far when the
sediments are present, just remove the green and no more. Once
your done washing the wax out of your extract and are ready to
separate the Salvinorin from the sediments, all you need to do
is dissolve the wax free extract into 100 ml of Acetone and
have the sediments drop out then. Even though this will work,
removing the sediments would be a better method, especially if
using a filter instead of waiting for the sediments to fall
out of the fluid, saving both time and later allowing you to
see how well your extract is cleaning up when removing the
wax. I have not used filtering yet myself because I do not
have a filter that will work, but if you have something
suitable that will stop the fine particles from leaking
through while allowing the Salvinorin passes through without
being absorbed in the filter, this would better. Perhaps all
one would need to do this is to simply use a glass or metal
tube filled with cotton balls. I have tried paper coffee
filters and can tell you from experience that they are not up
to the task and will leak sediments through them almost like a
sieve, requiring several pass throughs of your solvent to get
the majority of sediments out.
Although some kind of effective filtering would be better,
the easiest poor mans way that I have found to remove the
sediments is to simply let them fall out of your extraction
solvent, just waiting for them to fall to the bottom of the
container, time consuming as it is. To use the gravity method
of removing sediments (after you have removed all of your
small leaf bits and particles from the fluid) let your Acetone
stand in a cool place undisturbed for at least eight hours
when extracting from whole or crushed leaf, and up to twelve
or more hours when having extracted powdered leaf which
produces more sediments. You might not be able to see the
sediments in your fluid and swear that it doesn't have any,
but they will be there. Right after your extraction you can
see that your solvent has some amount of cloudyness to it. It
is this cloudyness that you don't want, being caused by the
extremely fine sediments from the leaf. Once all of your
sediments are either filtered out or laying in the bottom of
your container your solvent will still be the same color, but
have a noted crispness to the color without any cloudyness at
all as when the sediments were present.
Exactly what these sediments are, whether they are just
fine leaf particles or tannins, I'm not sure and do not have
the facilities to test, but this stuff is exceedingly fine.
Not that this material needs to be removed if all you are
going to do is add your extract back to finely crushed leaf to
make enhanced leaf, but it will be a problem if you intend on
making a tincture, or purifying your extract into white
Salvinorin for use to standardize enhanced leaf, or to grow
crystals as a curiosity. The sediments have been a block for
most people because many times they don't allow enough time
for all of the sediments to settle out, or try to use paper
coffee filters to get them out. I like to separate these
sediments from my solvent using the gravity separation method
in three steps, by pouring the Acetone or Isopropanol off from
a settling bowl at eight hour intervals, leaving about 5% or
more of the fluid behind each time due to the difficulty of
getting that last bit of fluid out without the sediments that
will churn up as you try to pour the fluid off the top of
them.
When your done separating the fluid from the sediments take
all of the sediments (and solvent that you couldn't pour off
without sediments) and pour them in a jar adding more Acetone,
this ought to get the remaining Salvinorin out of the
sediments that might have been leaft behind and dilute the
remaining fluid into a larger volume making it easier to get
the last of the Salvinorin out. Of course, you will need to
let that jar settle out too.
There has been some discussion on the net that someone has
recently determined that Salvinorin can decompose in warm
Acetone. The question I have is how long and how warm before
you need be concerned? Because of this unconfirmed report I am
beginning to think that filtering the sediments might be a
better route to take to remove them instead of waiting for
them to fall out of your solvent.
What are the relative solubilities of different solvents
used to extract Salvinorin, how much of these solvents does it
take to hold an amount of Salvinorin?
Acetone: 23 mg per ml of fluid.
Methyl Alcohol: 3.15
(Methanol)
Ethyl Alcohol: 1.28
Isopropyl Alcohol: .74
Why so much solvent if only a milliliter of Acetone will
hold so much Salvinorin?
The amount of solvent I have recommended will be in excess
of the amount needed to dissolve the amount of Salvinorin in
your leaf on a solubility basis (for the amount of Salvinorin
in the leaf) but you need to use lots of solvent so that you
have enough solvent to allow the leaf to get lots of exposure
to solvent when stirring or shaking your leaf in a jar. I like
to use a ratio of powdered leaf to solvent that is close to
50% powdered leaf to 50% solvent, when using this much then
there is no question as to having enough solvent. You could do
it with less, but solvent is relatively cheap compared to leaf
so why limit yourself. I have been outlining short extractions
of just a few minutes but done mulitiple times to powdered
leaf, one after the other because when you continue to extract
the same leaf over and over again you will get more and more
of the Salvinorin out of the leaf. Multiple extractions helps
increase the efficiency, especially when using short soaks
such as 5 to 10 minutes each. It is very important to do this
when working with Isopropanol because it isn't as effective as
Acetone, but you would still want to do the same thing with
Acetone because although it is more efficient and takes less
time to get the Salvinorin out of the leaf, multiple washings
of the powdered leaf removes some of the old solvent each time
you wash it. Because Acetone can hold so much Salvinorin per
ml, reported to be up in the 20 mg per ml or more, you really
need to wash it through several times. This is because if you
only extracted from your leaf once, when your pour the solvent
off the powder will still have lots of Acetone in it. You want
to get this Acetone out because it can hold so much Salvinorin
per ml of fluid. You can try squeezing it out but you can't
get it all out that way. IMHO the best way to get the solvent
out is just to pour more solvent in to dilute the amount of
Salvinorin that will remain in the wet leaf. Each time you
wash it you will be diluting the amount in both the leaf and
the old solvent left behind that will be carried away with
each additional washing with fluid.
Can I use chilled 99% Isopropanol instead of chilled
Acetone for a extraction on either crushed or powdered leaf
I have found that 99% Isopropanol will extract the leaf
almost wax free at 20 degrees F., the same as Acetone.
However, the efficiency is approximately 1/4 the efficiency of
Acetone for a given amount of time when at 20 degrees F. If
using chilled Acetone with powdered leaf you will extract more
Salvinorin cleaner, quicker and with less work than if using
room temperature Isopropanol, but 99% IPA will work out just
as good as a chilled Acetone extraction as long as you powder
your leaf and soak it long enough at room temperature and then
remove the wax using washes of your dried extract with pure
Naphtha. At one time I thought that using crushed leaf with
chilled Acetone was the only way to go for Salvia extractions
because so little wax was extracted when using either whole or
crushed leaf. My main interest at the time was in extracting
out fairly pure Salvinorin because I could then use it to make
25 mg portions of enhanced leaf which contained 1.5 mg of
Salvinorin that were wax free enough for me as a non smoker to
be able to tollerate. However, I later found a way to wash
waxes out of extract using Naphtha and Isopropanol which
worked so well that I abandoned using chilled Acetone in favor
of increased efficiency. I don't recommend it, but if you
decide to use chilled IPA with powdered leaf do not chill the
solvent any lower than 40 degrees F. or your efficiency will
be far too low to be worth your efforts. However, with Acetone
if you chill it to only 40 degrees F. you will extract far too
much wax.
I can't find 99% Isopropanol anywhere. Can I use 70%
instead and at what temperature will this work?
You can use 70% Isopropanol to extraction from leaf if the
leaf is powdered and soaked for several days. When using
Isopropanol which contains 30 percent water long extractions
are required, at least five full days, shaking it a few
minutes each day. When using 70% IPA the water in it willl
extract out far more tannins than you would have if you used
99 percent IPA. Tannins can make tincture taste harsher than
it would without it. A chilled water wash of whole leaf can
remove some of the tannins prior to extracting from the leaf,
but tests has shown that as much as thirty percent of the
Salvinorin in leaf can be lost through warm water washes of
leaf. If you are going to water wash your leaf in an effort to
reduce tannin keep it cool and keep it short. You can avoid
potential losses of Salvinorin from a water wash by using 99%
Isopropanol which is more efficient and quicker than 70%. I
have tried extracting Salvinorin using 70% IPA and 99% IPA
chilled to near freezing and found that chilled 70% IPA is
useless for quick extractions, the chilled 70% had no evidence
of Salvinorin at all and had plenty of water soluble brown
gummy tannin in it. The 99% IPA resulted in a almost
completely wax free extraction, however when chilled the
efficiency was very low and is not suitable for short
extractions to reduce wax due to the low efficiency. At room
temperature 70 percent IPA will work to extract Salvinorin if
your leaf is powdered and the extraction is done for several
days, but I guarantee that you will get gummy tannins if you
have as much water in your IPA that 70% does. I know people
have used 70% IPA or 151 proof Alcohol with success in the
past for either enhanced leaf or tincture, so it will work as
long as you powder your leaf and soak it long enough, it just
isn't as good and takes longer. You would be better off using
151 proof drinking Alcohol over 70% IPA because it has five
percent less water in it than 70% IPA, although toxic
requiring complete evaporation. Although, even if you use 151
proof Alcohol which isn't toxic like IPA, you will likely need
to evaporate it completely down after your extraction anyway,
if you use more of it than is required to make your tincture
from a given amount of leaf and reduce the amount of fluid by
evaporation the ratio of water to Alcohol will rapidly
increase when evaporated, due to the Alcohol evaporating off
first. If your going to extract from leaf using 190 proof
drinking Alcohol this would be far better than using 151 proof
Alcohol because it has only 5% water. 190 proof Alcohol won't
be quite as good as 99% IPA, but it might turn out to be a
close second. However, you would be extracting out more tannin
with that too, even though it has only 5% water. When using
Alcohol to extract from leaf I prefer using 99% IPA Alcohol
over any other kind of Alcohol because it is quick, clean,
cheap and relatively easy to aquire. If the highest purity IPA
that you can find is 94% IPA this will work too, but it might
take longer than 99% IPA. I just don't know about using either
190 proof drinking Alcohol or 94% Isopropanol because I have
never tried either of them. Although I have mentioned using
chilled IPA, I no longer recommend chilled IPA for extractions
due to its low efficiency, even if using 99% IPA. If you
decide to use Isopropanol use room temperature, use the
highest purity you can find and only use it with powdered leaf
as finely crushed leaf has a lower efficiency.
I extracted my leaf and used 2000 ml of solvent but it
has been sitting in a bowl for two days and has not evaporated
much, how can I get it to evaporate faster?
Evaporating out either Isopropanol or Acetone can be very
slow unless you have airflow across the surface of your
solvent. The evaporation rate is increased even more if you
evaporate your solvent in a large flat container. Pyrex makes
some nice flat cooking dishes out of clear glass that are
ideal for evaporating your solvent. To speed things up have a
fan close enough to the container that it causes ripples, or
waves on the surface of the fluid. If it is strong enough to
do this, then 2000 ml of either Acetone or Isopropanol should
evaporate out in a few hours when using a large six inch by
sixteen inch or larger glass pan. One individual I know uses a
crock pot with a screen on top with a fan attached to it to
push air down into the pot set at 100 degrees F. This will
work, but as the last ounce or two of solvent evaporates
completely out the temperature will spike because the cooling
from rapid evaporation will no longer keep it at 100 degrees
F., I do not like to heat solvents above this temperature. Do
not do this where static sparks might occur, or where open
flame is present from a water heater or any other kind of
heater or oven that has red hot heating elements which coulde
ignite vapors. Never use a fan to evaporate solvents in a
closed room without lots of air exchange because most fans use
a comutator which produce sparks internally to the motor, if
the vapors are a high enough concentration the fan could
ignite the fumes. These solvents are very flammible and you do
not want to have a high concentration of vapors for health
reasons too, even if they can't catch fire.
I want to grow crystals in Alcohol. Can dissolving
Salvinorin powder in hot boiling solvents cause the Salvinorin
to be destroyed?
There are losses each time you dissolve Salvinorin into
solvents, each time I have done so and have evaporated the
solvent back out of the Salvinorin I have found that some of
my Salvinorin has been lost. However, this is a good method to
grow crystals. If you heat a vial full of Salvinorin powder in
151 proof Everclear drinking Alcohol (about 25% water) to just
under boiling, it will hold far more Salvinorin in the
dissolved state when hot than when at room temperature, when
the Alcohol cools, crystals will often precipitate out of the
fluid, although usually very small. I took the same 25 ml vial
full of Salvinorin and re-heated it to boiling four times
before I was able to get some nice crystals to appear, but
lost Salvinorin each time I did so. Crystals can be grown in
99% Isopropanol or Methanol too, but I have found that 151
proof Alcohol seems to grow larger crystals if re-heated
several times, waiting an hour or two for crystals to form
between heatings. Do not use a microwave to boil solvents,
uneven heating can cause far greater losses than you might
have if having heated your vial using hot water. For crystals
to form your Salvinorin powder should be fairly clean, close
to 95 percent or more wax free.
Here is a link that shows the vial that I re-heated several
times trying to get bigger
crystals:
[URL=http://photos.yahoo.com/bc/salvinorin2003/vwp?.dir=/IPA+Extractions+at+Room+Temp.&.src=ph&.dnm=Crystal_4.jpg&.view=t&.done=http%3a//photos.yahoo.com/bc/salvinorin2003/lst%3f%2
6.dir
I was hoping I could use something easily available
(like tequila) to make tincture, but from what I have read, it
seems this would be totally useless... I don't think I can get
my hands on 190 proof alcohol very easily... any suggestions??
You can use 151 proof drinking Alcohol of any kind
to make tincture out of your extract but it contains close to
25% water in it which will cause it to be unable to hold as
much Salvinorin as Alcohol without much water in it. If you
use 151 proof Alcohol I would use something that has no flavor
like Everclear® Alcohol. To me that would be a better choice,
maybe 151 proof Rum might improve the flavor for all I know,
but I have not tried it.
For tincture what kind of dosage would be required... I
know that the dosage for sublingual absorbtion is a lot more
than through smoking... The kind of tincture I had in mind
would be one that would only require a drop or two to have an
effect...
Answer: As far as I know, no one is
making a Alcohol tincture that is strong enough to have
effects with only a drop or two because Salvinorin isn't very
soluble in Alcohol, because of this you can't get enough
Salvinorin in the Alcohol to make it that strong. Daniel
Siebert's tincture has been tested by someone who says that
they found it to contain 1.36 mg of Salvinorin per ml of
fluid. I am not sure what the upward limit is, but I believe
it to be somewhere between 1.5 and 1.8 mg per ml if you have
enough wax present in the Alcohol if the Alcohol is pure
enough. I believe that Daniel's tincture uses 98% pure
Alcohol, if I remember what that chemist who tested it told me
correctly. I am not sure how much Salvinorin 151 proof Alcohol
will hold on a ml basis with close to 25% water in it, surely
less. Your leaf, if it is average potency ought to contain
about 2.5 mg per gram of dried weight. 100g of leaf ought to
have at least 250 mg of Salvinorin but due to losses I
wouldn't bet on being able to extract out more than 200 mg. If
you extracted the leaf using 70% Isopropanol, even if for
several days, it could be closer to 175 mg, especially if the
leaf wasn't powdered finely enough. An ounce of Alcohol
contains 28 ml of fluid so if you extracted from 100g of
average leaf you ought to be able to make at least 5 ounces of
strong tincture, depending on how much Salvinorin is in your
leaf and how efficiently the extraction went. I am being very
conservative with those estimates, if your extraction went
extremely well you could make at 6 ounces of tincture out of
100g of average potency leaf.
When working with solvents containing Salvinorin try to
minimize the exposure of light because Salvinorin can be
destroyed by light exposure while in Acetone. Be sure to keep
everything, you might want to try working with it again just
to be sure you get all of the Salvinorin out. I never throw
away anything from my extractions. I keep the black wax, the
sediment and the old leaf just in case I later learn something
new and want to use it for something, or decide to re-extract
from it again after finding another method of getting the last
of the Salvinorin out that I might have left behind before.
Where can I get clean Naphtha?
It is difficult to find Naphtha that will evaporate
completely clean. Do NOT try to use any kind of Naphtha unless
your sure that it is only Naphtha and does not have oils, or
rust inhibitors added to it, such as is common with camp stove
fuels. What ever Naphtha that you choose to use, evaporate out
a ounce or more of it and see if any residue remains,
evaporating out as much as you intend on using is a better way
to check, but since your pouring the Naphtha off of your
extract evaporating an ounce ought to be enough to see because
you will have far less than that amount in your extract, once
poured off. If you do not want to use Naphtha, you can use
just 99% Isopropanol to clean the waxes out of an extract if
you are very careful to use as little as possible you won't
loose too much Salvinorin, especially if the IPA is chilled,
it will carry away even less Salvinorin with each wash when
chilled to 40 degrees F. because it is unable to hold as much
Salvinorin but will still wash the waxes out. This might sound
contradictory considering chilled solvents are used to help
leave wax behind when extracting from leaf, but once it is
extracted into a high concentration cold 99 percent
Isopropanol will remove some of the waxes with each wash, even
when cold although marginal compared to room temperature
Isopropanol it is one alternative to using Naphtha or room
temperature Isopropanol which will work too but carries away
more Salvinorin with each wash so use it sparingly. I have
tried one brand of Naphtha lighter fluid sold under the brand
name of Ronsonol and have been able to evaporate eight ounces
of it completely out without a hint of residues, but some
people object to using it because it contains less than 30
parts per million benzene. Considering that it is only used to
clean the extract and is not evaporated down with the extract,
and that benzene evaporates out very easily, I don't see it as
a big issue but you should be aware of it. The amount of
benzene that we each are exposed to on a daily basis (if you
live in a city) is somewhere around 250 micrograms, just from
breathing the air and nothing more. The amount remaining from
using Ronsonol lighter fluid to clean the wax out of extract
will be far less than that, if you don't evaporate it down
into your extract and just pour it off, probably a few
micrograms
How can I extract from Salvia Divinorum leaf to obtain
white Salvinorin for crystal growth?
The following was written for 100 to 250 gram extraction:
1. Finely powder or crush Salvia leaf, extract using room
temp. Acetone three separate times for five minutes each.
2. Wash wet leaf through twice more with fresh Acetone to
remove residuals.
3. Combine Acetone from all three
extractions and last washes, remove all leaf particles, filter
sediments from solvent or let fluid stand undisturbed for up
to 12 hours for sediments to settle out. While waiting for
sediments to settle store your extract solvent in a dark cool
place to reduce possible losses due to interaction of light
and heat. Save your sediments to re-extract with fresh
solvent.
4. After the fine sediments are removed from
your Acetone, completely evaporate this solvent completely out
and then scrape all of the dried waxy extract remains out of
your evaporation container and place in a small 25-50 ml glass
vial. Do not fill the vial more than one one third full of
dried extract.
5. Fill your vial of extract full of pure Naphtha, stir or
shake for one minute and wait at least 30 minutes for the
Salvinorin particles to fall to the bottom of the vial. Remove
no more than half of the fluid from your vial using a eye
dropper, being careful not to dip too deep into your dark
Naphtha when doing so because you will not be able to see
where the layer of crude Salvinorin is until enough wax has
been removed. Continue washing the wax out of your extract via
multiple washes of Naphtha waiting for the Salvinorin
particles to settle each time, when the Naphtha stops taking
on color and becomes fairly translucent remove all Naphtha and
dry.
6. To remove more waxes begin washing the extract with
multiple washings using 99 percent IPA until the extract is a
light colored Salvinorin. As the Salvinorin becomes cleaner
and cleaner the particles will take longer to settle, taking
as long as a hour to do so for each wash.
*7. Dry, redissolve Salvinorin in 100 ml Acetone, let
sediments settle 8 hours in dark, decant Acetone from
sediments (go ahead and evaporate your first pour off of
Acetone), wash sediments twice more, let sediments from second
wash settle another eight hours and pour off Acetone for
evaporation
8. Slowly evaporate the Acetone at room
temperature to form crystals.
*NOTE: Step 7 is to assure that your extract is as high a
purity as possible, to remove sediments that might not have
been removed well enough earlier. Naphtha removes the waxes
without dissolving the Salvinorin. Isopropanol is far more
effective at removing waxes but also removes Salvinorin, use
it sparingly. Save all of your Naphtha and Isopropanol used
for the washes. After the Naphtha has set a few hours 10% or
more of the Salvinorin will be found in the bottom of the
container. Save all of the IPA used to wash your extract
because it can be used to enhance leaf or for making tincture,
depending on how much Salvinorin was removed through the
washes.
Here is a standardization procedure so that you can add
Salvinorin back to leaf. This came from a well known Salvia
Divinorum researcher:
The method is simple: Dissolve a measured quantity of
Salvinorin A in a solvent, and then absorb it onto a measured
quantity of crumbled salvia leaves. Evaporate off the solvent,
and Wha-la!
Here is a more detailed explanation: To make salvinorin A
enhanced leaf that contains 15 mg salvinorin A per gram of
leaf, dissolve 12.5 mg* pure salvinorin A in 1 ml of warm
acetone, and then add 1 gram of crumbled salvia leaves and
stir. The leaves will absorb the salvinorin A-containing
acetone. Place the container in a well-ventilated location and
wait for the acetone to evaporate off. Stir the leaves
occasionally during the evaporation period. Make sure that the
acetone has evaporated completely--there should be absolutely
no smell of acetone left on the leaves.
* The amount of salvinorin A to use will vary depending on
the salvinorin A content of the leaves that it is being
absorbed onto. If the leaves are of average potency,
containing 2.5 mg salvinorin A per gram, then you would
deposit 12.5 mg salvinorin A onto them to bring the
concentration to 15 mg per gram (as in the above example). Of
course, one can standardize the leaves to other concentrations
as well. The more precisely you know the salvinorin A content
of the leaves, the more accurately you can standardize them. I
use very pure salvinorin A for this procedure. If you are
using material that is impure, you will need to take into
consideration the percentage of impurities when calculating
the amount of material to use. Obviously, the same technique
can be used to deposit salvinorin A onto other types of leaf.
I strongly advise against smoking leaf that contains more
than 15 mg salvinorin A per gram unless the individual doses
can be accurately weighed. At this concentration, the amount
of smoke produced provides a certain amount of safety because
it makes it difficult for a person to accidentally inhale too
large a dose in a single inhalation. If you have a precision
balance that can accurately weigh small doses, then stronger
concentrations are preferable since the amount of smoke can be
minimized without compromising safety.
Link to 99% Isopropanol extraction and cleaning
photoguide: (IPA will do a fine job of extracting
Salvinorin too, but takes longer than Acetone.)
http://photos.yahoo.com/bc/salvinorin2003/lst?&.dir=/IPA+Extractions+at+Room+Temp.&.src=ph&.begin=9999&.view=t&.order=&.done=http%3a//photos.yahoo.com/bc/salvinorin2003/lst%3f
Here is a link to some interesting Salvinorin crystal
formations:
http://photos.yahoo.com/bc/salvinorin2003/lst?&.dir=/IPA+Extractions+at+Room+Temp./Salvinorin+Crystals&.src=ph&.begin=9999&.view=t&.order=&.done=http%3a//photos.yahoo.com/bc/s
Summary
There is more than one way to extract Salvinorin, much of
it depends on what you want to do with your extract. You can
do a regular room temperature extraction with powdered leaf
that will produce an extract that is heavy with black wax and
use it to enhance leaf without cleaning it at all and it will
work, but you can't make leaf any stronger than about 6X
without removing some of the black wax or your leaf will have
far too much wax in it making it very difficult to smoke. If
your going to make 10X leaf you have to remove close to half
of the waxes or it will be too difficult to smoke due to the
volume of impurities added back to the leaf. I don't recommend
enhancing leaf stronger than 10X because then it can be far
too easy to smoke. You can do it, but beyond 10X my belief is
that the dosages need to be more carefully measured than just
eyeing a tenth of a bag for a strong dose. Supplying someone a
gram bag of 15-20X leaf would be inviting trouble because it
is far too strong to pinch measure a dose and if selling
something that strong you really ought to have pre-measured
doses. Many vendors won't sell 12X+ leaf unless the doses are
pre-measured because it is just too strong that way and opens
the door for problems. There was a time when 5X was the
strongest you could buy, competition seems to keep driving the
X factor up.
--------------------
WARNING: DO NOT USE CRUDE SALVINORIN EXTRACT OR SALVINORIN
CRYSTALS AS A DRUG. IT IS FAR TOO POTENT. 5X Enhanced leaf is
only 1.5% Salvinorin by weight.
posted May 25, 2003 01:10 AM 
posted May 25, 2003 04:37 AM 
...
