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A few good harmla extraction and purification references

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Dr_Sister

Dr_Sister

Synaptic cleft explorer
Senior Member
Senior member Chemical engineer
Sister thought there might be a few nexians out there to whom this stuff might be interesting

A good freebase extraction tek with quantitative data using three different solvents

This one is an HPLC tek, but Sister is posting it for the extraction tek that is nested. If you read the extraction section you will see they are getting yields of 17%. Thats no typo 17%. Although this extraction tek uses a massive quantity of alcohol (methanol). Scaled up it would amount to 7.5 litres to extract 100g of rue seeds 3X. But if you are getting yields like that, there is no need to extract 100g!!!

Sister posted this one previously, but in the wrong section, so she is repeating the post in the proper section for posterity. It is a paper by the scientist who discovered harmline in 1847 and it has TONS of data about forming the various acid salts. It also has a harmline to harmine reduction using otc chemicals. It is a real inspiration.
books.google.ca

The Chemical Gazette, Or, Journal of Practical Chemistry, in All Its Applications to Pharmacy, Arts, and Manufactures

books.google.ca
 
Dr_Sister said:
...This one is an HPLC tek, but Sister is posting it for the extraction tek that is nested. If you read the extraction section you will see they are getting yields of 17%. Thats no typo 17%. Although this extraction tek uses a massive quantity of alcohol (methanol). Scaled up it would amount to 7.5 litres to extract 100g of rue seeds 3X. But if you are getting yields like that, there is no need to extract 100g!!!
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Here’s a quote from the article:

The seeds contain from 2.5 to 4% mixed harmala alkaloids (Wagner and Bladt, 1996) and are known to possess hypothermic (Abdel-Fattah et al., 1995) and hallucinogenic properties (Lamchouri et al., 1999, Gella et al., 1998).
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You can’t get more harmalas out than what is in the seeds to begin with, no matter how good your extraction technique is!

Where did you get 17% ???
 
Did you read the reference Gibran? It is from the Journal of Applied Sciences. The extraction section is on the second page of the pdf.

The yield they claim from from one gram was .17g total alkaloid content. But Sister wasn't there, and she didn't write it, she is only sharing what she has found. Take it for what it is worth . . .

Although in the course of Sisters research into the subject she has come across other references that claim higher content that what the ref you just posted claim.
 
Thanks for these papers. Though I'm too tired to really read them right now, it looks like some nice information.

I'm not sure at all how to interpret those 17% yields (1g seeds -> 0.17g extract) they are getting since before and after they say something about 4% alkaloids or .465% harmine and .355% harmaline, but that still doesn't add up to 17%. Maybe this still has some other alkaloids mixed in that aren't as interesting? Maybe I'm just too tired...

anyway, again, thank you for this.
Enoon
 
Yes Sister was thinking it sounded optimistic/on the high side too. Especially since she just finished extracting 100g of rue seeds and got only a 4g yield (using a different quik and dirty tek though, and partially ground seeds). Maybe as you say there was more than harmlas in the extract. The experiment took place in Iran, maybe they have kick ass seeds over there.
 
Dr_Sister said:
Did you read the reference Gibran? It is from the Journal of Applied Sciences. The extraction section is on the second page of the pdf.

The yield they claim from from one gram was .17g total alkaloid content. But Sister wasn't there, and she didn't write it, she is only sharing what she has found. Take it for what it is worth . . .

Although in the course of Sisters research into the subject she has come across other references that claim higher content that what the ref you just posted claim.
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Yes, I looked at the second page – they say they started with 1g of P. Harmala seeds and end up with 0.17g alkaloids. That sure is 17%. Either there’s a typo (always a possibility – maybe they started with 10g for a yield of 1.7% ?) or they have very high-yielding seeds.

Keep in mind that the method used is not responsible for the high yield – it’s the alkaloid content of the seeds. Any method that removes most/all alkaloids would produce a similar yield.

I recently did a simple A/B extraction of P. Harmala (same TEK I use for caapi) and got a yield of 7%, so yields exceeding what is normally listed in the literature aren’t too surprising, but 17% sounds very high. Good seeds.

(As an aside, academic literature regarding alkaloid content in b. caapi ranges from 0.05% to 0.83% in stems. I’ve had yields ranging from just under 1% for yellow caapi to almost 3.4% for black caapi, so the literature isn’t always accurate!)
 
Dr_Sister said:
The yield they claim from from one gram was .17g total alkaloid content. But Sister wasn't there, and she didn't write it, she is only sharing what she has found. Take it for what it is worth . . .
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Harmine and Harmaline are not the only alkaloids present in peganum harmala and you'll find, that alcohol is an ideal solvent for extracting vasicine from P. harmala seeds as well. So given that this high-yielding total alkaloid extraction seems far too high for it to have been purely harmine/harmaline, I would posit that this was because the 17% alkaloid yield was comprised of, at minimum, harmine, harmaline, vasicine and vasicinone.

just my $.02
 
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