Salvia Divinorum Salvinorin Extraction and Refinement FAQ. Ver. 7.2 September 12, 2004
Extraction notes, insights to the process:
Extraction solvents and fluid volume
The solubility of pure salvinorin at 27 degrees C. in Acetone is approximately 23 mg per ml of fluid, for 98% Ethanol 1.28 mg per ml and for 99% IPA .74 mg per ml of fluid. For Acetone extractions I like to use enough solvent so that its volume is at least the same as the volume of the powdered or crushed leaf being extracted and when using 98% Ethanol or 99% IPA at least two thirds or more times of solvent volume to the amount of crushed or powdered leaf which is in reality is more than required on a solubility basis, but due to these solvents being less effective at dissolving the salvinorin out of the leaf than Acetone I prefer to use more as an added measure just to make sure. Also, increasing the amount of fluid allows the leaf to be easily and thoroughly mixed within the solvent when stirring. The amount of time the leaf is soaked in either solvent can be extended for as long as you wish, this will only help increase the extraction efficiency, however I have found that when extracting Salvia divinorum leaf five times over for five minutes each time with 99% Isopropanol that it won't get all of the salvinorin out, usually leaving 10 to 20% of the salvinorin behind which requires an additional long term soaking of the leaf to get the last of it out. When using Acetone to extract leaf I have found that it will remove the salvinorin so efficiently that when re-extracting the leaf a fourth time over to check and see if any was left behind I have not been able to get enough additional salvinorin to be able to tell. If using Isopropanol I do not recommend using anything less than 99% for this quick extraction method as IPA with large amounts of water in it will dramatically increase the amount of time required to efficiently extract the salvinorin. 91% to 94% IPA found on some store shelves might work for short extractions, but I haven't tried it to know.
Tannin Removal
This extraction process has three separate steps incorporated into it to remove tannin impurities, the first step will get most of it, the second step another portion and the last step every bit of it if you are careful. Waiting 24 hours for the tannin to fall out is better than 12 hours but be sure to keep the extraction solvent in the dark the whole time while waiting because if it is left out in bright sunshine you can loose some of your yield due to the interaction of ultra-violet light which can destroy salvinorin while in solvent. Almost everyone has the same problem with tannin the first few times they try this extraction technique, ending up with far more of it in their extract than they believed possible thinking that all of it must have certainly settled out of the fluid when waiting as many as 24 hours for it to come out of the fluid, but it's still in there to some extent, especially if having used a solvent with any amount of water in it. To deal with this common problem I have worked an additional step into the process to wash out tannin that remains in the extract after cleaning with Naphtha (drying first) using water and then one more tannin removal step at the end of the process by dissolving the cleaned extract into Acetone and waiting 12-24 hours to see if more drops out of the fluid because at that point regardless of your best efforts you will likely still have some of it in the extract. Be careful not to touch your face or other sensitive areas of skin when working with Salvia divinorum wetted by solvent or when having residues from the extract on your hands. Something in the leaf can cause an allergic reaction which I believe is caused by the tannin in the leaf which is a acidic astringent causing sensitive areas of skin to become reddened along with an amount of swelling and later flaking of skin which can last several days. I have never had a problem with the skin on my hands or arms but my face always has this reaction if I scratch my nose or rub my eyes when slight amounts of extraction residues or are present on my fingers this happens every time.
Using Solvents to Remove Chlorophyll
The reason I use Naphtha to remove Chlorophyll from extract first, before switching to Isopropanol, is because salvinorin isn't soluble to Naphtha but the Chlorophyll is. Unfortunately, after a few washes of the extract with Naphtha it becomes ineffective for removing the last of the Chlorophyll requiring the use of another solvent such as 99% Isopropanol to get the last of it. Although 99% Isopropanol does an excellent job of removing the remaining Chlorophyll, this solvent removes at least three quarters of a milligram of the salvinorin per ml of fluid when at 20 degrees C., more when IPA is warmer, less when cooler. Also, the solubility of salvinorin has been reported by an experimenter to be much higher in 99% IPA when large amounts of Chlorophyll compounds from the leaf are present which can result in a significant portion of your yield being removed with each wash of your extract if you use too much, so use it very sparingly. You can recover a large portion of the salvinorin lost to the Isopropanol washes by completely evaporating the solvent and removing the Chlorophyll waxes using the same process over again with Naphtha and IPA in much smaller amounts. Save all of your Naphtha used for the washes because although salvinorin is insoluble to Naphtha there are usually extremely small particles of salvinorin in the fluid which take much longer than an hour fall out of the fluid and can be found in the bottom of the container after a few hours netting another 10% of salvinorin. Save all of the IPA used to wash your extract because it can be evaporated onto leaf to make 5X enhanced leaf or after evaporation reconstituted into drinking Alcohol to make tincture, depending on how much salvinorin was removed through the washes. Be sure to scrape every bit of film from the sides of your evaporation container because high purity salvinorin films stick to the surfaces of evaporation containers whether stainless steel, ceramic or glass. This is one way to know you have salvinorin, because it sticks to these surfaces so well. To see photographs of a room temperature 99% IPA extraction of Salvia divinorum leaf and Chlorophyll being removed from extract using Naphtha and 99% Isopropanol, go to: http://www.erowid.org/plants/salvia/salvia_extraction4.shtml
Reduced Chlorophyll Extractions Using Chilled Acetone
Although I don't believe it's necessary to go to the extent to use chilled Acetone to reduce the amount of Chlorophyll extracted from leaf when most of the dark compounds can be later removed from the extract using washes of pure Naphtha, Acetone chilled to between zero and +20 degrees F. is an effective method of initially obtaining a cleaner extract which is somewhat easier to refine into white salvinorin. A chilled Acetone extraction is done using exactly the same steps as shown above for room temperature solvents, except to reduce the amount of Chlorophyll extracted the amount of time the leaf is in the cold Acetone should be limited to between three to four minutes at the most for each of the three extractions, extracting the same leaf three times over to maintain a fairly high extraction efficiency. When working in a room temperature environment pre-chilling both the leaf and the extraction container with the Acetone together to a temperature no higher than 20 degrees F. will help keep the temperature below 40 degrees F. throughout the extraction. You want to start out cold and keep the solvent cold throughout the extraction, but when working in a warm room the temperature of the fluid can increase by 20 degrees F. to be as high 40 degrees F. while finishing up the last of the three extractions. This amount of temperature increase is ok, but no warmer than that and only during the last couple of minutes the leaf is in the solvent or you will begin to pull over additional Chlorophyll in a hurry. When working in a warm room and extracting with Acetone chilled to close zero degrees F. this should keep the temperature of the leaf in the solvent at or below +20 degrees F. the whole time which results in a cleaner extract, so if you can chill it that far down it's a good way to reduce the amount of Chlorophyll extracted even further without impacting your extraction efficiency because of the high solubility of salvinorin in Acetone, even when chilled to zero degrees F. cold Acetone is still far more effective for dissolving salvinorin from the leaf than high proof room temperature Ethanol Alcohol, so don't worry about chilling the Acetone that far down, your extraction efficiency will still remain very high when using zero degree F. Acetone. If you are considering the idea of using chilled Isopropanol to extract leaf it won't work, I tried 99% IPA and found that it required four times the amount of time in solvent for one quarter the extraction efficiency of Acetone! However, salvinorin has been reported to remain solvent in pure Ethanol Alcohol (grain Alcohol) when chilled to low temperatures and might be worth trying, but I have not done so to confirm this myself. Regardless, chilled Ethanol will not be as effective as chilled Acetone which has a much higher solubility to salvinorin than room temperature Ethanol.
Extremely brief extractions of Salvia divinorum leaf of one minute or less with Acetone chilled to between zero and +20 degrees F., with exception of an amount of tannin extracted, will yield an almost wax free extract of high purity salvinorin. When extracting Salvia leaf for just one minute you won't get all of the salvinorin out but you should get close to a third or more of it. The amount of reduced solubility of salvinorin to chilled Acetone is completely made up for when doing multiple extractions to the same leaf, even when the Acetone is chilled to as far down as zero degrees F. At one time I had reported that chilled Acetone extractions were far less efficient than room temperature Acetone because when using 99% IPA to remove Chlorophyll from the extract I did not wait long enough for the salvinorin particles to all settle out of the fluid and wasn't due to the Acetone being chilled, so if you see any of my old reports that chilled Acetone extractions are less efficient than room temperature you can disregard that report. If your worried that you are leaving salvinorin A behind when using chilled Acetone extract the leaf a fourth time over, but keep that portion of the solvent separate from the rest as it will have more Chlorophyll in it than the previous three extractions. I have done forth extractions to leaf previously extracted three times over for three minutes using both chilled and room temperature Acetone to be sure I didn't leave any salvinorin behind, and after removing tannin and Chlorophyll contaminates found so little salvinorin that I couldn't isolate it through washes with Naphtha and IPA because when finished there was nothing left to be seen in the bottom of the vial. I have also taken the leaf from room temperature and chilled Acetone extractions (after it dried) and powdered the leaf in a small high RPM coffee grinder to a flour-like consistency and when re-extracting it with Acetone was unable to get any amount of salvinorin that I could see out of it.
The photograph below shows a chilled Acetone extraction that started at +5 degrees F. which warmed up to +15 degrees F. by the time it was completed which is fairly typical when working in a warm room, even if you have pre-chilled both your leaf and extraction containers together with the Acetone at the same time. Shown in the photograph is the first wash of the extract with Naphtha, two washes with water and then four washes with 99% IPA to further remove impurities yielding white salvinorin. The weight of salvinorin shown in the photograph of the scale is NOT representative of the extraction efficiency because when I did this extraction I did not wait long enough for the super fine salvinorin particles to fall to the bottom of the glass and unknowingly removed lots of salvinorin when using the IPA to remove Chlorophyll waxes. I later recovered the salvinorin from the last two washes by completely evaporating the IPA and cleaning it once more using Naphtha and more IPA which netted another 200 mg of salvinorin making a total of 525 mg of cleaned salvinorin from the 250 gram extraction, which is very good for average potency leaf. This doesn't include the salvinorin lost from the first two 99% IPA washes. When removing Chlorophyll waxes with 99% IPA the cleaner the salvinorin gets the longer it takes to settle to the bottom, taking an hour or longer to all settle to the bottom of the glass. If you have removed most of the dark green from your salvinorin and are left with a cloudy yellow fluid this means that you still have lots of super fine salvinorin particles floating in the IPA (as seen in the photograph below, the IPA was still cloudy) and must wait until the fluid is completely clear before pouring off the IPA. The fluid can be colored, but not so cloudy that you can't see through it as solvents which are fully saturated with salvinorin are never that cloudy and should be clear unless salvinorin particles are still floating in it (unless fine tannin particles are still present). Even if you have waited long enough for all cloudiness to settle out of IPA used to remove Chlorophyll impurities from your extract be sure to save this solvent because something in the dark Chlorophyll compounds from the leaf appears to increase the solubility of salvinorin to Isopropanol to be able to hold well over 1 mg per ml of salvinorin per ml of fluid, reported to some times be as high as 5 mg per ml by a chemist who had the use of an HPLC to test the solubility of salvinorin in a few different solvents. Whether the ability of IPA to hold that much salvinorin per milliliter was due to an actual increase of a solubility to IPA or whether it was caused by fine particles of salvinorin that were still floating in the solvent is something to consider.
The following image shows a chilled Acetone extraction which yielded a total of 525 milligrams of cleaned salvinorin from 250 grams of finely crushed leaf. The photograph showing 324 mg of cleaned salvinorin did not include the salvinorin recovered from the IPA used to remove chlorophyll. The extraction efficiency was close to 100% but the yield of cleaned salvinorin was close to 85% after recovering the salvinorin lost to only the last two of the four washes of the extract with 99% Isopropanol. The losses of salvinorin to IPA washes was far greater with the cleaning of the extract from this extraction than it should have been because I did not wait long enough for all of the ultra-fine salvinorin particles to settle out of the fluid prior to pouring the IPA off of the amount of salvinorin which had settled to the bottom in the first hour. I should have waited up to three hours for the fluid to completely clear so that all of the ultra-fine particles had time to settle to the bottom of the glass before removing the IPA. I have left the pictures in showing what Isopropanol clouded with salvinorin particles looks like to show you what not to do. In each of the photographs of IPA with salvinorin in the bottom of the glass you can see these particles making the fluid very cloudy, but once they settle you can see through the colored fluid (except the first wash with IPA which is too dark due to chlorophyll). I did not try to recover the salvinorin from the first two 25 ml washes of IPA due to the amount of chlorophyll, but could have done so making the total amount of cleaned salvinorin approach 600 mg. Not bad, considering 250 grams of average potency leaf contains about 2.5 mg per gram of leaf for a total of 625 mg of salvinorin.
Note: The manufactures web site for the small scale in the photograph is http://www.gramprecision.com and they no longer appear to make that model and have since replaced it with a model named the Diagem II CT 50 with a suggested list price of $229.00 USD. It's accuracy is plus or minus two milligrams which is accurate enough for weighing salvinorin to make several grams of enhanced leaf at a time, especially if over measured by 2-4 mg.
How can I grow Salvinorin crystals or isolate them from extract?
Growing crystals isn't always easy or guaranteed to be produced each time, but here are two ways that I have done it. The first two methods were taught to me, the third method I developed myself:
Methods to Salvinorin Crystallization:
1. Crystalline precipitation in cooling solvents: Dissolve as much near pure salvinorin powder as you can into 151 proof Everclear Ethanol Alcohol (25% water) warmed to 130-140 degrees F. and then wait for it to cool to see if crystals appear (191 proof Ethanol containing only 5% water might work better). Sometimes I have to re-heat a vial of Salvinorin and Ethanol several times to at or just below boiling before they might grow when cooling. If they are going to appear they should be there within an hour or two. Each time I re-heat a vial containing salvinorin dissolved into 151 proof Everclear Alcohol I loose some of the Salvinorin and crystals don't always grow, but they usually show up on the fourth try.
2. Crystalline deposits from solvent evaporation: Dissolving high purity salvinorin into Acetone and allowing the solvent to slowly evaporate at room temperature so that it evaporates very slowly will sometimes produce large crystal formations over a period of a few days to a week, but not always. I have grown crystals by evaporating Acetone fairly quickly in either an oven at 120 degrees f (just an ounce of solvent) or by having a fan blow air across an ounce of salvinorin saturated Acetone, but the crystals usually do not form as large as they do when the evaporation occurs slowly. Also, if you have not removed enough of the chlorophyll waxes the crystals will be hard to see, so try to remove as much of it as you reasonably can if your going to try to grow crystals. The extract should be better than 90-95% free of Chlorophyll impurity if trying to grow crystals otherwise the waxy impurities will hide them from view or stick to the surfaces of the crystalline structures, although if the evaporation container is both small and deep enough like some spice bowls are the Chlorophyll in the solvent usually deposits high up on the sides of the glass as the fluid level evaporates down, by the time the solvent level gets near the bottom of the glass where crystals start to precipitate out of the fluid, most of the Chlorophyll is already out of the solvent.
3. Isolation of crystals from dried extract using Naphtha: Through trial and error extraction research I was surprised to find that the dark waxy extract from a 99% Isopropanol extraction of Salvia divinorum is loaded with small crystals which are formed within the dark waxy Chlorophyll compounds as the solvent evaporates. The following explains how to isolate them out of dried extract but will only work if you have removed as much of the tannin contaminate as you can from the extraction solvent first. The way I do this is by letting the extraction solvent sit undisturbed for 12-24 hours to allow enough time for the tannin to settle out of the fluid as a fine sediment. Once the tannin has settled pour the extraction fluid into another container for evaporation, leaving the tannin behind. Next, the extraction solvent is completely evaporated leaving a dry waxy extract behind. Once free of any hint of extraction solvent and completely dry, pour in a few ounces of pure Naphtha and scrape every bit of the extract into the Naphtha, including all flims which may have formed on the sides of the evaporation container. Completely dissolve every bit of the extract into the fluid until all of the clumps are worked out of it. Once your finished working all of the clumps out of the extract it is very important to leave the container of Naphtha alone to sit still for at least a half hour or more to allow enough time for the fine salvinorin particulates stirred up into the Naphtha to settle to the bottom of the container. After the extraction solids have settled you can then pour the Naphtha off of the extract in the bottom and then add more clean Naphtha back to the container to wash the extract through again, waiting a half hour or more each time. Keep washing the extract with Naphtha until it will no longer take on much more color and has become a light tinted translucent green.
After it's obvious that Naphtha has become ineffective removing additional Chlorophyll and unable to take on more color with each additional wash of the extract, pour off all of the Naphtha and completely dry the extract of any hint of Naphtha. Next, pour in an ounce or more of water into your container of extract and stir for a couple of minutes, allow time for the particles to settle to the bottom of the glass and pour the water off, adding more water to the extract and stirring again. If tannin is present in the extract the water will become a yellow to brown tint, but if using a cup or more of water at a time small amounts of tannin being dissolved out of the extract might be so diluted by that large of an amount of water to be unable to see any change of color to know if its being removed, because of this I like to work with only an ounce of water at a time to be able to know when all of the tannin has been completely removed and I can stop washing with water. Once your done removing tannin with water completely dry the extract of all moisture and place all of the dried extract into a small two inch diameter spice bowl, or even a small shot glass or something of similar size. Next, pour in enough fresh Naphtha into the glass of extract so that there is about a half inch of Naphtha on top of the extract and briskly stir for about a minute with a spoon, then place the glass or bowl into an electric oven set to about 120 degrees F. with its door cracked open a couple of inches and evaporate all of the Naphtha out of the glass. Keep the small container of Naphtha as far away from the heating elements as possible because there is potential for fire. When using this technique by leaving the glass or bowl completely undisturbed in a warm oven while the Naphtha is evaporating off the extract, the heavier salvinorin crystals will all fall to the bottom of the glass while the lighter Chlorophyll impurity forms an upper crust on top. Once all of the Naphtha has been completely evaporated out of your extract you can freeze the glass to cause the top layer of wax to stiffen up enough to be able to easily peel the crust off of the top to expose nothing but golden colored to light green high purity sand-like salvinorin crystals in the bottom of your glass. They might not seem like crystals unless seen under magnification, but they are.
Note: I stumbled upon method three as a complete surprise when I was experimenting with water extractions of leaf for an hour in boiling hot water, then removing the leaf and evaporating the water off all the way down to dry tannin which was then extracted using 99% IPA to recover the salvinorin lost to the water, about 50%. I then removed the tannin from the IPA through settling and after evaporation cleaned the extract with Naphtha as well as I could. After drying the Naphtha cleaned extract I then did a water of the powder just to be sure I had removed all of the tannin contaminates and then after pouring the water off dried the extract. As an added measure, just to make sure the extract was clean enough I added about an ounce of Naphtha to it and stirred the powder into the solvent to see if it would take on any more color, which it didn't, so instead of pouring the Naphtha off I just put it into an oven set to 120 F. to evaporate and was later surprised to find nothing but crystals under a thin crust of Chlrophyll. These crystals could not have formed within the Naphtha itself because salvinorin is insoluble to Naphtha, so the crystals had to have come strait out of the extract itself, having formed when the 99% Isopropanol was being evaporated down to a dry extract. Prior seeing this, I didn't know that the dark Chorophyll wax deposited upon evaporation of the extraction solvent had crystals in it and as far as I know neither did anyone else. No one seems to be very interested in using this new method yet, but in my opinion it is the easiest and most efficient way of obtaining high purity salvinorin that there is.
Warning! The above method of evaporating any amount of Naphtha in an electric oven could cause a fire or worse. I only post this for informational purposes. It worked for me without problems but it might not work for you without causing a fire!
Pictures from method one:
I grew the crystals in the pictures below by dissolving 900 milligrams of refined salvinorin powder (light green color) into 100 ml of hot 140 degree F. 151 proof Everclear drinking Alcohol (Ethanol) and then set aside for two hours at room temperature each time to see if crystals formed. I had to go through three cycles of heating and cooling before these beautiful crystals appeared. The first three times only a cloud appeared which was extremely small crystals, not visible to the eye except as a cloud. On the fourth heating I came back two hours later and found these beautiful large crystals had formed. When heating your Alcohol thoroughly shake or mix the salvinorin powder into the Alcohol to dissolve as much as possible. Keep adding salvinorin to the hot fluid until I will no longer dissolve any more and has a few specks of solid salvinorin in the bottom which won't completely dissolve to indicate that you have fully saturated the hot Alcohol. When the Ethanol cools back down to 20 degrees C. sometimes salvinorin crystals will precipitate out of the fuild because the Alcohol cannot hold nearly as much salvinorin when cooled down to room temperature. Just leave it alone and let it cool down to room temperature setting on a shelf, nothing special needed. I have used 99% Isopropanol to grow crystals this way too, but they are always much smaller than when using Ethanol. Acetone won't form crystals at all, Methanol will sometimes form larger crystals than Ethanol, but hasn't been as reliable for me compared to 151 proof Everclear Alcohol which usually takes three or four cycles of re-heating the 100 ml jar before nice crystals form. I have been able to grow crystals in 151 proof Ethanol the same way using a much smaller 30 ml vial of hot Alcohol with as little as 100 mg of Salvinorin producing the same size of crystals.
These crystals were sent in for analysis and were found to exceed 99.5% purity using HPLC without any other peaks showing.
Pictures from method two
The following two pictures are of some very nice white salvinorin crystals which formed through slow evaporation of Acetone at room temperature. These crystals were produce by adding white salvinorin powder into a small bowl full of Acetone warmed to a temperature of about 130 degrees F. then stirring in as much salvinorin-A powder that could be dissolved into it and setting it aside for a week. When I came back I found these crystals. Sometimes crystals will grow, other times none will form at all. The second picture was taken close up using a zoom stereoscope set to 45X magnification. The light brown colored material at the base of the crystals is tannin sediment that was not removed from the salvinorin powder like I should have done by mixing water into the extract to dissolve any remaining tannin contaminate into it and then pouring the water off to remove it. Of course dried before adding to the hot Acetone.
Pictures from method three:
The following pictures are salvinorin crystals obtained strait out of dried Chlorophyll waxes from a 99% IPA extraction. The photograph on the left was taken on macro within about three inches of the bottom of a regular drinking glass used to evaporate Naphtha cleaned extract that had about a half inch of clean Naphtha stirred in just before placing the glass into an oven for evaporation. The smooth layer you see is a waxy crust of Chlorophyll waxes which formed on top of the salvinorin crystals below it. I tore a portion of the wax off the top to show the crystals underneath. The photograph on the right was taken with a zoom stereoscope set to 30X magnification.
If you would like to download a zipped file containing over 100 pictures of Salvinorin crystals go to this link: http://www.entheogen.com/articles/2004/sphere_pics.html
Can handling pure salvinorin be absorbed through your skin when either dry or when dissolved into extraction solvents?
In my experience Salvinorin in the pure crystalline or powdered form is very safe to handle. I have worked with pure salvinorin both dry and dissolved into various solvents and have never had the slightest effect when handling this compound or solvents containing large amounts of it. salvinorin isn't easily absorbed through the skin, even when dissolved into Alcohol and held in the mouth salvinorin is poorly absorbed. I have tried using powdered crystalline salvinorin under my tongue from 5 milligrams working in small increments all the way up to 25 milligrams (which is 25 times the amount some individuals smoke) sublingually without Alcohol with absolutely no effect and when swallowed had no effect either. I have also tried up to 25 mg of the powder sublingually together with a few ml of 151 Proof Ethanol drinking Alcohol under my tongue with no effect. It appears that for salvinorin to be absorbed sublingually that it must be thoroughly dissolved into Alcohol, just having pure crystalline salvinorin powder in your mouth with an amount of 151 Proof Ethanol didn't work for me at all. The only caution I have when handling salvinorin is that if you are a smoker and have transferred salvinorin residues on your hands from an extraction onto a cigarette this could cause an unexpected journey, other than that pure salvinorin appears to be almost inert for effect unless absorbed through the use of a properly prepared tincture or smoked.
What are the relative solubility’s of different solvents at room temperature used to extract salvinorin, how much of these solvents does it take to hold an amount of salvinorin?
@27 deg. C.
Acetone: 23 mg per ml.
Methyl Alcohol: 3.15 mg per ml (Methanol).
Ethyl Alcohol: 1.28 mg per ml.
Isopropyl Alcohol: .74 mg per ml.
Which solvents can I use to extract leaf and how much is required?
Many solvents can be used to extract Salvinorin from leaf but in my experience there is nothing better than Acetone due to the extremely high solubility of salvinorin to this solvent which is far above all of the Alcohol solvents. However, the Alcohols will do the job if you take the extra time and effort to needed to efficiently extract leaf when using them. I have stayed away from using Ethyl Alcohol (Methanol) for extractions because it is so toxic you don't want to be breathing the vapors from it or have it absorbed into your skin. Although my clear preference for Salvia divinorum extractions is reagent or technical grade Acetone, if you cannot find or afford clean technical grade Acetone you can use high proof 98% Ethanol which as a great second choice to Acetone, or medical grade 99% Isopropanol as a great third choice which will also do the job as long as you extract the leaf when using 99% Isopropanol longer and several times over what is required when using Acetone. Although some individuals use hardware store Acetone I don't recommend it, especially any kind of Acetone labeled "extra strength" as these usually contain large amounts of Benzene, a known cancer causing agent. However, it can be done with some of the store bought Acetone products if you know what to do. I'll explain how, when I first started experimenting with salvinorin extractions I couldn't afford to continue purchasing the amount of technical grade Acetone that I needed for my extraction experiments, so started using cheap hardware store Acetone for extractions to extract leaf from which the salvinorin obtained was never going to be used by myself or anyone else. I testing several brands of Acetone, of the ones I tested the one which evaporated most cleanly is made by Klean-Strip, but even this brand had a small amount of very light colored contaminate left in the bottom of a glass bowl when evaporating a 1000 ml of it in a test. I sought the advice of a chemist regarding this contaminate and his advice was that although hardware store solvents can have an amount of contaminate, none of them are produced by a manufacturing process which would contaminate the solvent with heavy metals and his advice regarding the slight amount of contaminate that I found was that it wasn't any more dangerous than the large amounts of waxy compounds extracted from Salvia divinorum leaf itself, making the very slight amount of light film deposited in a small light spot of film in the bottom of my bowl insignificant. When I say a light film I mean it was almost not even there, so there wasn't much to it at all. Regardless, the idea of using hardware store Acetone for Salvia extractions which someone might use for tincture or to smoke enhanced leaf made from it is a very unappealing thought to me and I hope for you too. However, that being said, there is one technique worth considering if using Acetone such as Klean-strip which evaporates very cleanly when I tested my batch of it; if your extracting Salvia leaf with store bought Acetone and after evaporation use Naphtha to remove Chlorophyll wax from the dried extract and then follow up with more washes with small amounts of 99% medical grade IPA, the slight amount of contaminate which might have come over from the Acetone or Naphtha will be washed out of the extract with the dark green Chlorophyll when using Isopropanol to clean the extract to a very light green tint or all the way to white colored, but only if you have cleaned your extract to that extent which is a lossy process because portions of the salvinorin will be dissolved into the IPA and washed out with each wash of the extract. Crystallization of the extract in hot Ethanol will further purify the salvinorin to a very high purity. I have been able to purify salvinorin extracted with hardware store Acetone and the crystals tested using an HPLC to be higher than 99.5% purity without showing evidence of anything else being present. While I have mentioned the above as a possible work around when using relatively clean hardware store Acetone, I would never use it for extractions intended for the commercial manufacture of salvinorin products and don't recommend anyone else do so.
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 151 proof Everclear Alcohol which is close to 25% water and thus a poor choice, but will work if you extract the leaf long enough for many hours and several times over, but how much salvinorin might be left behind is a question when using solvents with that much water in them, even if extracting for days on end. A gallon of Acetone, high proof Ethanol, or 99% Isopropanol should be enough to extract a full kilo of finely crushed to powdered leaf several times over as outlined above, but if your extracting from a full kilo of whole to coarsely crushed leaf then it requires about twice as much solvent due to the larger volume of the leaf and the amount of solvent needed to completely cover it compared to the much smaller volume when finely crushed or powdered, because of this I always finely crush my leaf to reduce the amount of fluid needed. When using Acetone to extract a kilo of leaf three times over far less solvent is really needed on a solubility basis compared to 99% Isopropanol/IPA, but use generous amounts of Acetone when working with either powdered or crushed leaf to be sure to get everything you can get out of the leaf. My recommendations when extracting finely crushed to powdered leaf is to use a ratio of 1/2 leaf to 1/2 Acetone, if using 99% Isopropanol I use a ratio of 1/3 leaf to 2/3 IPA, extracting the leaf several times over with fresh solvent each time whether using Acetone or 99% IPA to progressively remove more and more salvinorin from the leaf and also to dilute the salvinorn contained in the solvent that might be left behind in the wetted leaf. This is especially important when using Acetone because it can hold large amounts of salvinorin in just a few milliliters of fluid. When using either chilled or room temperature Acetone I extract my leaf from 3 to 5 minutes each time three times over and then pour more Acetone through the leaf two more times to remove salvinorin residuals. Extracting the leaf just two times with either chilled or room temperature Acetone for a couple of minutes each time with a single quick single pour through of more solvent should be enough to remove most of the salvinorin if you have stirred or shaken the leaf in the solvent well enough, but I recommend extracting the leaf three times over when using Acetone for longer periods of time and pouring solvent through the leaf two times when your done as added measure just to be thorough. If using 99% Isopropanol or high proof 98% Ethanol I recommend extracting the leaf for at least five minutes each time done at least five times over because the solubility of Salvinorin is so much lower to Alcohol solvents making longer term extraction of the leaf more important than when using Acetone. I don't recommend the use of 70 to 91 percent IPA or 151 proof Ethanol Alcohol to extract leaf because these solvents are far less efficient extracting salvinorin and also because of the extra amount tannin that solvents containing that much water can pull out of the leaf. However, if you cannot find solvents with very little water in them it has been reported on the net that you can extract leaf with 70% IPA if the leaf is soaked for a period of days and extracted several times over to be sure that you get as much salvinorin out that you can with water diluted solvents. I've never tried long term extractions with 70% IPA to know how well it works, but some swear by it as a good method if you soak the leaf for as much as five days in 70% IPA.
If you are able to find 191 proof Everclear in your area which contains less than 5% water this solvent might work well enough for short extractions but I haven't tried to extract leaf using 191 proof drinking Alcohol because the sale of high proof Ethanol is prohibited where I live and expensive to ship to me if I order it online. If you can find it in your area or don't mind the expense of having it shipped to you via air carrier, I believe 191 proof Ethanol would be a good second choice to 98% Ethanol which is even more expensive and harder to find, or as a third choice 99% IPA which is cheap, but for some hard to find too. On a solubility basis 98% Ethanol would be better than using 99% IPA because the solubility of salvinorin in near pure Ethanol approaches twice the solubility of 99% IPA which in my opinion makes 98% Ethanol a better extraction solvent even if it has 1% more water in it than 99% IPA which is a weaker solvent for salvinorin. Also, one thing to be said about extracting with high proof Ethanol or drinking Alcohol is that you would be working with food grade solvents which is a must if you are producing products to be sold for human consumption such as tincture. When doing room temperature extractions of powdered or crushed leaf with high proof Ethanol or 99% Isopropanol extractions will require more work to extract salvinorin out of your leaf than if using Acetone, but 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 extracting for longer periods of time and a couple of more times over beyond what is needed when using Acetone. When using 99% Isopropanol I extract my powdered leaf for a minimum of 5 minutes each time up to five times, one right after the other with another couple of additional pours of fresh IPA through the leaf when I am done. I have found that when using IPA I am able to get close to 80-90 percent or more of the Salvinorin out of leaf when using this method so it will work, just more work. One of the things I like about 99% Isopropanol is that it is medical grade which means its a very clean solvent and can be easily found on many store shelves sitting right next to the 70% IPA. After I am done extracting leaf with any of the Alcohol solvents which include Ethanol and Isopropanol I always do a long term extraction of the leaf to be able to get the last of the salvinorin out. Of course, I could just as well do a long term extraction of the leaf to start with and then be assured at getting every bit of salvinorin which can be extracted out of the leaf, but I like getting on with things and do my extractions the quick way first and then follow up with a long term extraction to make sure to get the rest of it.
The reason I started working with 99% Isopropanol for extractions was because finding clean or reagent grade Acetone can be expensive and difficult to find locallyand expensive to ship as a flammable requiring next day air by most of the carriers. Although 99% IPA will do a fairly good job extracting Salvia divinorum leaf, I have found that even with my best efforts when using 99% Isopropanol I can't get the last 10-20 percent of the salvinorin out without an additional long term soaking of the leaf, but there is a way to increase the effectiveness of 99% Isopropanol, if you heat it to a higher temperature all the way up close to the boiling point it will become far more effective at extracting salvinorin than when at room temperature and should then be able to get the last of the salvinorin out of the leaf fairly easily if warmed that much. Warming any Alcohol will increase the solubility of salvinorin to them making hot Alcohol nearly as effective as room temperature Acetone. However, I don't warm my solvents because of the increased amount of vapors given off and the danger of ignition from static spark or other sources being increased when these vapors are present in large amounts caused by heating. While extracting leaf for long periods of time in any solvent 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. This isn't a problem for short periods of time unless your working in direct sunlight, however when extracting leaf in solvents for more than a few hours you should store your container of salvinorin containing solvent in the dark.
After extracting leaf and removing the tannin impurities first, how can I remove the Chlorophyll impurity to isolate salvinorin crystals?
The easiest and most efficient way I have found to get down to high purity crystalline salvinorin is very simple. I don't know if this works the same way when using Acetone to extract leaf, but this has worked every time for me when extracting leaf with 99% Isopropanol.
The following method can be used to obtain salvinorin crystals by extracting Salvia Divinorum leaf using 99% Isopropanol, removing all of the bits of leaf and then either filtering the extraction fluid or waiting for tannin sediments to fall out of the liquid to remove as much as you can that way first. Next, dissolve all of the extract into the Naphtha by hand working all of the clumps of extract into the Naphtha with a spoon until only fine granules remain in the fluid, then continuing to wash the extract several times over with more fresh Naphtha until it is obvious that the fluid has become ineffective for removing additional Chlorophyll because the extract won't get much lighter with each additional wash, and the Naphtha has become a very light green translucent color. Each time you wash your extract with Naphtha the fine salvinorin crystals will be churned up into the fluid and take a half hour or more to settle to the bottom of the container, so be sure to set the glass your using for the Naphtha washes aside for at least 30 minutes between washings of the extract before pouring the fluid off the solvents. When you first start washing the extract with Naptha the fluid will take on such a dark color that you will likely be unable to see where the fluid ends and the dark colored extract in the bottom begins. If after a half hour or more you are unable to see that the particles in the fluid have completely settled you can remove half of the fluid (as long as the glass wasn't filled more than 1/3 full of extract when it was dry) from the top using an eye dropper and then add more clean Naphtha to the glass stirring the extract for five minutes and waiting another 30 or more minutes for the fine salvinorin particles to settle again. After the second 30 ml wash of extract with Naphtha I have always been able to see a separation between the darker fluid and the lighter colored solid in the bottom of the glass. The amount of Naphtha used for each wash to remove Chlorophyll from the extract isn't critical, what ever amount is needed, you can use larger amounts without fear of loosing any of you salvinorin as long as you wait long enough for the salvinorin to settle to the bottom of the container each time. You can add four or more ounces of Naphtha at a time using a pint sized jar when cleaning your extract instead of a small shot glass and that will work out just fine, just keep adding and pouring off Naphtha until the extract is as clean as you can get it and then pour every last drop of Naphtha off of the extract and dry the extract until no hint of Naphtha remains. Collect all of the Naphtha used to remove Chlorophyll together in one container and set it aside for several hours and check it to see if more salvinorin particles have settle out of the fluid. I have been able to find as much as 10% of the salvinorin in the bottom of the Naphtha that didn't settle all of the way out with each 30 minute settling, so never throw it away until you have checked hours later to make sure your not wasting any of your yield that way.
After your completely finished with the Naphtha washes and the extract is completely dry without any hint of Naphtha smell remaining, crush and mix all of the extract together in a bowl with a spoon as finely as you can so that it is completely powdered and then start washing the powder with room temperature water until it will no longer take on a yellow or brown color. This step is to remove additional tannin that might still be in the extract, I can usually remove the remaining tannin with just a few one ounce washes with water but you can use a full cup or more at a time of you wish as salvinorin is insoluble to water, but when using that much water at a time to clean the extract from a 100g or less extraction of leaf you might not see any color to the water because the small amount of tannin would be so dilute that it might not turn the water a darker color when using that much at one time, that is why I like water washing the extract in a small vial or shot glass so I can see for myself if much tannin came over. Once you can see that the water will no longer take on any color completely dry the extract of all moisture and then put all of the extract into a small shot glass or spice bowl at or under two inch diameter and pour in enough fresh Naphtha so that the extract has about a half inch of Naphtha on top, about an ounce is all you need. Thoroughly stir the extract into the solvent with a spoon and then place the bowl in an electric oven set to about 120 degrees F. with its door cracked open. Keep the glass of Naphtha as far away from the heating elements as possible because there is potential for fire. When using this technique by leaving the glass or bowl undisturbed while the Naphtha evaporates off the heavier salvinorin crystals will all settle to the bottom of the glass while the Chlorophyll wax forms an upper crust. Once completely dry place the glass container in a freezer for long enough to cause the top layer of wax to stiffen up enough to be able to peel off the upper crust by hand leaving almost pure golden colored to light green high purity micro-size crystals in the bottom of the glass. They might not seem like crystals unless seen under enough magnification, but they are.
Where can I get clean Naphtha?
I would never recommend using Naphtha for to remove Chlorophyll from Salvia extract to make commercial products to be sold to the public, but if you are just making it for yourself and follow up the Naphtha washes one last wash with 99% IPA or high proof drinking Alcohol you will wash out the majority of not all of the impurities which might have been introduced by the Naphtha.
It can be 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. A good check of hardware or store bought solvents is to evaporate out as much as you intend on using, 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 98% Ethanol or 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 40-50 degrees F. because it is unable to hold as much salvinorin when cold 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 small amounts of 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 of Chlorophyll compounds and is not evaporated down into the extract itself, 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.
Can I use any kind of 151 Proof Alcohol to make tincture?
151 Proof drinking Alcohol will work for home made tincture, it won’t be as strong as a tincture made out of 191 proof Alcohol because it contains close to 25% water but it will work well enough. I have made tincture using 151 proof Everclear so that there is no other taste added but others have reported using 151 proof rum which turned out to be very good. Tinctures made with 151 proof won't hold as much salvinorin because of the water but seem to work fine anyway, you just have to use more tincture for the same effect as commercially made tinctures that use 95-98% Ethanol.
Is there a way to make tincture that only requires a drop or two to have an effect?
As far as I know, no one is making a 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. I have heard of using small amounts of Acetone which can hold more than 20 mg of salvinorin per ml of fluid and sublingually dosing with it as a tincture requiring less than 10% the amount of fluid required when using high proof Ethanol alcohol, but Acetone isn't something people normally want to put in their mouth and how toxic small amounts of Acetone might be if used sublingually as a tincture is something I have never looked into. 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 98% Ethanol. I am not sure what the upward room temperature limit is, but I believe it to be somewhere around 1.5 mg per ml for 98% Ethanol, perhaps higher if some of the dark Chlorophyll compounds from the leaf are in it. It has been reported to me that when Chlorophyll compounds from the leaf present in Isopropanol or high proof 98% Enthanol that it can hold larger amounts of Salvinorin per ml, but I have not been able to confirm this report yet. Also, I am not sure how much Salvinorin 151 proof Alcohol will hold on a ml basis with close to 25% water in it, probably around one mg per ml of fluid.
If extracting leaf with an average potency of 2.5 mg of salvinorin per gram of dried weight 100 gram of dried leaf ought to have at least 250 mg of salvinorin but due to extraction losses I wouldn't bet on being able to extract out more than 200 mg, especially if using 99% IPA which isn't as efficient as Actone. If you extracted the leaf using 70% Isopropanol, even if for several days, it could be closer to 175 mg because the water in 70% isn't as effective making a solvent which is already weakly soluble to salvinorin even worse. An ounce of Alcohol contains 28 ml of fluid so if you extracted from 100g of average leaf using either 99% IPA or Acetone you ought to be able to make at least 4 to 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 100 gram of average potency leaf.
I tried to make Salvia divinorum tincture out of pure white crystalline salvinorin trying to dissolve 40 mg of white powder into 28 ml of 151 proof Everclear Alcohol by warming the Alcohol to near boiling and stirring it all it. Initially all of the salvinorin completely dissolved into the fluid, but as it cooled at least a quarter of the salvinorin crystallized back out of the fluid making it very clear that 151 proof won't hold what Daniel's 98% proof Ethanol can hold. Later I tried using the tincture and found it to be very weak without much if any effect. Then I made another batch of tincture with enough of the Chlorophyll compounds from the leaf to color the Alcohol a very dark green color and found that the tincture was then effective again. From this I gather that there must be something in the leaf which either helps sublingual absorption of salvinorin or somehow increases the amount of salvinorin that can dissolve into the 151 proof Ethanol. Perhaps both are true, these compounds allow Alcohol to hold more salvinorin and at the same time help with sublingual absorption? Maybe the green compounds from the leaf are not needed as much for a tincture made from super high proof Ethanol such as 98% Alcohol, I wish I knew the answer to this but I am unable to locally obtain that high of a proof of Ethanol to know. What ever the reason, if your making a simple Salvia divinorum tincture with 151 proof Ethanol you want some of those Chlorophyll impurities in it and they might make higher proof tinctures more effective too.
If want to make a 151 proof tincture that isn't as strong or harsh tasting as one made with all of the Chlorophyll compounds extracted from the leaf you can improve the taste by removing a portion of these dark waxy compounds by washing the dried extract with Naphtha until it will no longer take on much more green becoming a light green translucent fluid, at that point stop washing the extract with Naphtha and pour off every last drop and completely dry the extract until no hint of Naphtha remains and reconstitute with Ethanol drinking Alcohol of your choice. If after removing as much of the dark Chlorophyll as you can with Naphtha and you continue to wash the extract with small amounts of 99% IPA as is done to clean the extract to a white purity at some point will take too much of the green compounds out and result in a weakly effective tincture.
Be sure to remove most of the tannin from the extract to be used for making tincture otherwise it will end up as a brown sediment in the bottom of your bottle. Tannin is an acidic astringent, because of this I am wondering if small amounts of it dissolved into the water component of an Alcohol tincture might somehow help the absorption of salvinorin tincture because I have heard that small amounts of ascorbic acid (vit. c) and Menthol mixed into a high proof Alcohol also help absorption. If an acidic component helps bring blood to the surface of your sublingual membranes perhaps that's the reason why and the natural tannin in the leaf might also produce this same effect from its acidity.
Tincture burns my mouth very badly and causes alot of pain every time I try to use it, is there a way of making a tincture that burns less?
If you dilute salvinorin tincture with small amounts of water it will burn less but also be proportionally less effective. One kind of salvinorin tincture I have heard about uses a mixture of 50% 151 proof Ethanol and 50% DMSO (70% pure) that has been reported by others to burn far less than tinctures made with 98% Ethanol. DMSO has been used for a long time in various tinctures, so this isn't completely new, although I have only heard of this being done for home made salvinorin tincture and not currently being sold as a commercial product. I have not worked with tincture using DMSO very much but I can offer the following: I purchased some 70% DMSO (30% water) at a local health food store and made a mixture of half DMSO to half Ethanol and found that it burned far less than tincture made out of 151 proof Ethanol alone, although I only tried one dropper load of it because I didn't like the idea of using DMSO sublingually so being unwilling to use enough of it I can't confirm whether it is an effective method or not. Perhaps an Ethanol/DMSO tincture burns less is due to the DMSO I used was close to one third water further diluting the Ethanol, or perhaps it was because small amounts of DMSO when used sublingually burn less than Alcohol does.
If making a tincture of out a mixture of Ethanol and DMSO the best way I can think to do it is to dissolve as much salvinorin as you can into hot DMSO until it will hold no more first, and then dissolve the remainder of the salvinorin into the Ethanol before mixing them together. I found that salvinorin will dissolve into heated DMSO but it doesn't appear to hold salvinorin as well as Ethanol, whether this is due to the solubility of salvinorin to DMSO itself, or the fact that the only DMSO I could find contained 30% water I don't know. As a side note I have tried dissolving large amounts of salvinorin into 70% DMSO and then tried to dose with it by rubbing it into the side of my arm but it had no effect at all except for making my arm red and stinging like hell. Apparently salvinorin is too large a molecule to be absorbed through the skin through the use of DMSO, or perhaps DMSO won't dissolve salvinorin finely enough to allow it to pass through the skin. One thing to consider about DMSO is that if you don't completely clean your skin first or have any contaminates in the fluid this solvent can induce contaminates right through your skin into your body which isn't a very good thing to do. Skin is meant as a protective barrier so using DMSO this way whether on your arm or sublingually might not be the best idea unless completely free of contaminates or materials which shouldn't be absorbed that way.
Go to this link to see my collection of extraction photographs on yahoo: http://photos.yahoo.com/bc/salvinorin2003/
To find where to buy Salvia divinorum leaf for only 13 cents a gram when ordered in 10 kilo quantities go to http://www.@@@@.com
Quick Tweak To Step 7:
For any lurkers who might be following this post I found one more tweak for the process which should speed things up quite a bit. When washing the extract with small amounts of Isopropanol in a one ounce or smaller glass container the tek suggests waiting an hour or more for all of the fine salvinorin particles to settle to the bottom of the glass before removing the IPA. If you place the glass in a microwave oven for just a few seconds, less than 10 seconds in my machine (top off), the extremely small bubbles which form in the solvent as it starts to boil will cause most of the particles to almost immediately settle to the bottom of the glass.
Using this tweak to the extraction tek you only have to wait 5 minutes after heating the fluid for most of the particles to settle, although it would be best to place the glass in a freezer to cool the fluid to at least room temperature so that the solubility of the fluid is much lower prior to removing the IPA, because warm IPA can hold more salvinorin in the dissolved state than when at room temperature or less. You can then remove the IPA from the small glass using an eye dropper or carefully pour the fluid off watching to make sure that the larger particles of salvinorin don't pour out with the fluid. Then set that fluid aside for an hour or even hours and recover the finer particles which will take longer to fall out of the fluid, but far less than you would have had otherwise.
Only thing is you have to be very careful not to allow the fluid to go into a rolling boil which will cause the fluid to spill out of the glass and raise the already present danger of fire from vapors igniting in a microwave oven. I don't recommend anyone use a microwave for this technique, it would be better to find another way to heat the fluid to just under a rolling boil without flame or red hot surfaces than to use a microwave. I have done it at least a hundred times in my machine, but what happens on attempt 101?
Due to substantially reducing the amount of time it takes to clean the extract with this tweak to the tek this should significantly lower the cost of refining salvinorin for commercial products (using simple methods). I have already edited the FAQ to version 7.2 which includes this information.
Here is a picture of some salvinorin crystals that I just grew. They look like angel wings to me:
They aren't completely pure because there was an amount of chlorophyll that coated some of the crystal formations. Photo taken through the eye piece of a zoom scope at 45X magnification using a digital camera set on 3.2 meg pixel and cropped.
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