Opinions needed on some extraction ideas/questions?

Space_cadet

Well-Known Member
Hi all

Iv done a couple of basic (slovents, a&b ect) extractions on a few different things in the past, some were great successes others spectacular failures.

Iv been thinking a little about the failures and a way around them if i ever decide to revisit them

The main two problems i hit were
1. Sometimes after an alcohol extraction i would end up with a ball of tar that wont dissolve in water making it useless to attempt an a&b

2. Sometimes attempting a solvent extraction results in huge losses due to the freebase alkaloids evaperating with the solvent

So anyways ill ask my questions

Question 1.

Can i salt freebase alkaloids by lowering the ph of an alcohol (or other solvents? If so wichtch ones? )with an acid? Will this force the freebase alkaloids to bond to the acid salt preventing it from evaperating with the alcohol? Or is this infeasible?

Question 2.

This revolves around my extraction tec ideas an if sound possible

Idea 1.

If one was to do a basic solvent extraction (ill use alcohol as example). Then salt the extetraction mixture with an acid. Reduce the alcohol content by lets say 2/3 by evaporation, crash the remaining extraction solution with enough water to force out all water insolubles (theroy being alkaloids are in salt form and stay dissolved in the water while waxes and oils will separate). Either with filtration or a separatory funnle seprate the remaining water mixture and set aside. redissolve the trash in alcohol repeat the process to recover any trapped alkolids and collect the water/alkaloid mixture. Move on to an a&b to remove any other impurities.

Dose this teck sound feasible?

Idea 2.

Now understanding that some freebase oils are freaking volitile and will just waft away with your chosen solvent leaving you with a pile of inactive crud. i figgered i could try an use this to my advantage. It dose require some fraction steam distilling tho (similar to steam disstilling essential oils).

Anyways was thinking maybe do the alcohol extraction, then reduce the alcohol volume down to 40% (may not be needed due to use of steam) adding distlled water. Then make a slurry mixture of sand and slacked lime (or something alkaline to aid the freebase seperation but this might not even be necessary or could maybe done in actual solvent exctraction)

Place slurry in a vessel equvilnt to a double neck flask, hook it up to another flask filled with water so that when water boils steam will flow through into the bottom of the slurry vessel through the slurry mixture then up a colloum with a thermometer on top, then through a condenser.

Idea being the steam will pick up the alcohol and freebase oils, travel up column were you will be able to faction distill by regulating the temp at the top of column.

Distillate will probably still need further cleaning via an a&b if this teck is actually viable

All thoughts, ideas and critiques welcome
 
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