Hello everyone. I've been a reader of this forum for quite some time, and I finally decided to register today. I would like to say that the information provided on these boards has been absolutely INVALUABLE. Thanks a million times for what you're all doing here!
Now that we're acquainted, I have a question.
SWIM was experimenting with an idea he had for getting pure spice by using a secondary mini A/B extraction, and decided he could save on naptha by doing one large pull with xylene, salting with acidic water, using a weak base to drive the alkaloids back out in freebase form, and finally pulling from the clear basic solution with a minimal amount of heated naptha and evaporating. He tried this twice. Once using sodium carbonate as the base (which yielded 370 milligrams of some of the cleanest white spice SWIM's ever seen without re-crystallization),and once again using calcium hydroxide. He was iffy about using calcium hydroxide because of it's limited solubility in water, and unknown (at least to SWIM) solubility in naptha. He went ahead and pulled with naptha anyway, only to find that it was saturated with calcium hydroxide. It's evaporating now, and SWIM wants to know what the best way to wash out the excess base in the final product would be. He figured he would just dissolve his spice in 99% IPA and filter out the contaminants by covering his re-crystallization vessel with a coffee filter, and decanting the alcohol into a separate container. Would this work? If not does anyone have any ideas?
Now that we're acquainted, I have a question.
SWIM was experimenting with an idea he had for getting pure spice by using a secondary mini A/B extraction, and decided he could save on naptha by doing one large pull with xylene, salting with acidic water, using a weak base to drive the alkaloids back out in freebase form, and finally pulling from the clear basic solution with a minimal amount of heated naptha and evaporating. He tried this twice. Once using sodium carbonate as the base (which yielded 370 milligrams of some of the cleanest white spice SWIM's ever seen without re-crystallization),and once again using calcium hydroxide. He was iffy about using calcium hydroxide because of it's limited solubility in water, and unknown (at least to SWIM) solubility in naptha. He went ahead and pulled with naptha anyway, only to find that it was saturated with calcium hydroxide. It's evaporating now, and SWIM wants to know what the best way to wash out the excess base in the final product would be. He figured he would just dissolve his spice in 99% IPA and filter out the contaminants by covering his re-crystallization vessel with a coffee filter, and decanting the alcohol into a separate container. Would this work? If not does anyone have any ideas?
And good luck with your extractions 
