Food Safe Purification Questions

There are only a few ways to extract it, and you have to convert it from a salt to a freebase, then back to separate the alks from the plant material.  This requires some sort of base.  You can use what Bancopuma did in his extraction, which is food safe, but you can't clean it up with just a solvent, you need to manipulate the pH, to get anything to separate.  Look back at the suggestions I listed already and choose one way, because you are not going to figure out a new way to extract.  You do not understand enough about chemistry to deviate from the tried and true methods.  I'd suggest a methanol extraction, where you salt the alkaloids out with hydrochloric acid, or bancopuma's method, or chris jenks/my tek.  Those are  your possible choices...

Hi patientorchard, I doubt people on this forum get mad at you asking questions for that is what we are here for.  Also, you give out a lot of information, your not a bad guy and kind nice having ya around - just so ya know. Best,   cinderpath

You don't need to know the concentration of the ammonia, just add an excess of ammonia. It will evaporate anyway. To test the purity of your ammonia, evaporate a bit of it and see if there is any residue left over. It there is residue, don't use it. If there isn't, then I'd say its fine because any volatile impurities in there will evaporate and therefore, won't be present in your product. BTW there are plenty of food grade acids to be had. In my country, you can get pure citric acid in the pharmacies. I'm not sure what solubility properties the citrate salts will have though so it might be best to stick to the tried and true methods. You talk about limonene and vinegar like they are interchangeable but thats not the case in this situation. Vinegar is an acid, limonene isn't. I'm guessing limonene is just used as a solvent. Vinegar converts ibogaine and the other iboga alkaloids to their acetate salts (because vinegar is just a solution of acetic acid). The extraction method that Chris Jenks invented is just an acid/base extraction (using vinegar as the acid and ammonia as the base). You can't wash with vinegar because vinegar will convert the alkoids into salts. What you wash with depends on whether the alkaloids are in their freebase form, or their salt form. In the Chris Jenks method, you first convert the iboga alkaloids to their acetate salts by adding the vinegar. Then you convert them back into their freebase form by adding the ammonia. So to wash your product then, you wanna use a polar solvent (one that isn't acidic enough to react with the alkaloids though so you can't use vinegar) because freebase alkaloids are non polar, therefore they won't dissolve in polar solvents like water. Things aren't always so simple in chemistry though, methanol and ethanol are relatively polar solvents but freebase ibogaine happens to be fairly soluble in them, therefore you can't wash the product with alcohols. I'd personally just use cold water. Also, to dry your product, I recommend using a vacuum desiccator, rather than using heat. They're dead simple to make. Just will a bowl with calcium chloride (they sell it in hardware stores), then place your product on some tin foil or something and place the tin foil on top of the pile of calcium chloride, then seal the bowl with cling film. Thats a hobos vacuum desiccator lol. I'll be happy to answer any chemistry related questions you have because I'm finally getting to do something productive with my chemistry knowledge. Plus, you've helped me like mad by answering my questions and providing info so I'll return the favour.  EDIT: BTW, for cleaning solvents and reagents, activated charcoal is your friend. Don't attempt to clean your product with it because it will absorb your product but its very good for absorbing impurities in your solvents (i.e. hardware store acetone) and reagents (i.e. household ammonia).