Drug purification questions

[Spiralout]

I'm not sure this is the best sub for this but:

Can anyone help explain why acetone is the typically used solvent for cleaning materials up? It's called for by most people for using on cocaine, meth, mdma, and probably more that I can't remember.

Is acetone used because it is more accessible? Cheaper? Works better ?

Main reason I'm asking is because I'd like to purify some mdma (I'm particularly concerned about Hg) and would rather not bother with making anhydrous acetone. I can't see any reason that washing with naptha, or, maybe even better, doing a mini a/b. I don't have the chemistry chops to intuit this though. Would a naptha wash or acid to base shuffle not work?

What are the things you would want to consider to figure this out on your own? I assume you just need to take into account the solubility properties of the chemical you want to purify, along with the properties of the most likely chemicals it is contaminated with (or the ones you are most concerned about it being contaminated with; that you have the greatest impetus to get rid of) ?

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Dirty T]

MDMA can be very tricky. There is a member here that reclaimed a large bottle of blueberry juice that contained a lot if MDMA and if I remember the yield was very low, like 10% or less. If the crystals pass a field test and are clear/not brown and don't smell flowery I wouldn't even bother. If you don't trust your source or don't have a test kit available I wouldn't touch it. My stepdaughter got a hold of some "MDMA" not too long ago, after erratic behavior (like stealing her sisters car after she pretended to go to bed, she was 15 at the time) she was asked to do a drug test which she brought back positive for cocaine and low temperature with clear liquid inside. I immediately told her mother to test her again and this time watch her, I said it will be positive for methamphetamine and cocaine. It was. As a matter of fact she did not test positive for ecstasy at all. She got "MDMA" from someone she thought she could trust that contained precisely 0 percent MDMA. She wanted to "experience" ecstasy and instead she experienced methamphetamine and cocaine. This is why I've had talks with all my kids about not taking drugs and talking to us if they feel like they want to try something rather than sneaking around and doing something dangerous. She's lucky it was just meth and coke, there are way too many people that are doing unscrupulous things like adding fentanyl to "MDMA" (there was a local guy that had fentanyl shrooms, this dude was trying to get people hooked on shrooms, omg what's wrong with these greedy people?!?). If you are worried about anything other than residual saffrole in your X it may not be X. Good luck and safe travels!

 

[benzyme]

It's because those compounds are typically in HCl salt form, and insoluble in cold acetone.

 

[highlightprotein]

An acid base extraction on your MDMA will always be the best, but it is more effort.

Naptha will only dissolve nonpolar cuts. I may be wrong but I don't think most drugs are cut with nonpolar substances that would dissolve in naptha.

Acetone is cool because it is polar, so it will dissolve a lot of polar cuts which are much more common, yet somehow it does not dissolve MDMA, cocaine, and etc.

It is as if acetone was custom made for this job. And it is OTC and cheap.

If you are worried about it being anhydrous, you could always buy an unopened bottle of acetone, open it, and immediately wash your substance. Then you could throw it away. This will minimize the amount of water in your acetone. You could also collect the wash and evaporate it, and test the result. If the result tests positive for MDMA you know that brand of acetone contains water from the manufacturer.

It isn't hard to make it anhydrous, however. Go to any pharmacy and buy magnesium sulphate (it is for constipation). Get a glass dish and pour some quantity in it. Measure the dish. Microwave it for 2 minutes, and then stir very well, making sure to break up anything. Weigh it. Repeat this process until it stops loosing weight, this is when you know it doesn't have any water in it. It is important to continually stir it and break up clumps. If you don't do this the clumps get too big and hard to break up. This whole process will take you no more than 15 minutes.

Once you are done, pour it in a ziplock bag, and then submerge the ziplock back in water in order to remove all air. Close the ziplock bag.

Now take your acetone and pour it into a marson jar, mix in a few tablespoons of your anhydrous magnesium sulphate, and stir around. Filter it through a coffee filter into another mason jar. It should now be good to wash your substances. Make sure to take your ziplock bag of magnesium sulphate and submerge it again in water in order to remove all air.

 

[Spiralout]

Hey ,

My aversion to acetone is just that I don't want to deal with dehydrating it and worrying about whether it's collecting water from the air as I work with it etc. Honestly I'm really just splitting hairs and making things more difficult on that front now that I think about it.

So the other problem, and this seems much less removable, is what to do about impurities in the acetone? I could just but acs grade acetone I suppose... but the sources I've found are either very expensive or require bulk purchases etc.

The MSDS for the hardware store stuff doesn't seem to state a grade (but I assume it's tech grade) and say's 100% acetone and mentions nothing about impurities ( I guess this isn't a job for an msds) .

The nail polish removers I found at various retail places all have bittering agent, even though they're "100%" acetone.. (dentonium benzoate iirc) ... This stuff isn't toxic, but again the question is what else is in there?

 

[highlightprotein]

Buy the acetone at your local big box hardware store.

Pour a bit out on a plate, and let it evaporate.

If there is any residue after evaporation, that means it is totally unsafe to use for this.

But you will more than likely find that they evaporate cleanly, which means it is safe to use.

 

[benzyme]

hardware store acetone is sufficiently dry to begin with.
But if you're paranoid, get some epsom salt from the grocery store, nuke it for five mins, and pour the acetone in it (once the MgSO4 cools, of course). Then use the acetone for your intended purpose.

 

[Spiralout]

Are there no salient concerns about the possible impurities in acetone? I'm wondering if hardware store stripper vs. pharmacy nail polish remover might be cleaner; my gut feeling is the nail polish remover might be cleaner, despite the bittering agent (having a bittering agent sucks but if it's innocuous healthwise then oh well).

 

[highlightprotein]

If you are worried, you can buy lab grade acetone online from a chemical supply company.

But you can just do the evaporation test on the hardware store acetone. Pour some out in a glass dish and let it evaporate. If there is no residue it means there is no impurity in the acetone that could also evaporate into your compound after you wash it.

If there is residue then you don't want to use it as that residue will evaporate into your compound.

 

[benzyme]

Lab-grade? You mean ACS-grade? There's also HPLC-grade, and LCMS-grade (the purest).

Acetone from a hardware store is 'technical-grade', there's no denatonium benzoate, because nobody is going to drink acetone. The main impurity is residual water, nothing significant.

 

[IridiumAndLace]

Acetone from a hardware store is 'technical-grade', there's no denatonium benzoate, because nobody is going to drink acetone. The main impurity is residual water, nothing significant.

That, and grease from the machinery used to package it. I always do a fractional distillation on my hardware store acetone before using it in the lab, and after distilling 2L of technical-grade acetone I'm always left with several grams of foul-smelling greasy residue.

 

[Spiralout]

Yeah so there was some sort of impurities I saw mentioned regarding hardware acetone and Im' pretty sure they were these greasy things...

What would the proper cost/benefit weights be for this? I've found acs grade acetone but it's very expensive. If someone was doing a large scale purification then opting for the higher grade acetone would make sense given the marginal cost dropping since it's scaled up. But on something like a gram of mdma (or whatever)...

If you were to use a minimal amount of acetone, would the impurities left behind be very significant? More to the point, would they be worse than whatever you are able to get rid of from the mdma (or whatever substance) impurities?

 

[IridiumAndLace]

What would the proper cost/benefit weights be for this? I've found acs grade acetone but it's very expensive. If someone was doing a large scale purification then opting for the higher grade acetone would make sense given the marginal cost dropping since it's scaled up. But on something like a gram of mdma (or whatever)...

For a small one-off workup like that, I'd suggest just ordering a liter of ACS-grade acetone and calling it good.

Acetone is quite ubiquitous in the typical organic chemistry lab; it's used in large amounts to clean glassware. Technical grade acetone isn't clean enough for that, so many working labs just buy cheap bulk acetone and distill it in-house. It's a trivial job—make the intern do it—and it saves a ton of money.

If you were to use a minimal amount of acetone, would the impurities left behind be very significant? More to the point, would they be worse than whatever you are able to get rid of from the mdma (or whatever substance) impurities?

Probably not. It would be milligrams or less, and since MDMA is (typically) ingested, that's a lot more forgiving than something that would be vaporized and inhaled.

 

[Hailstorm]

Removing water from acetone is practically impossible, since it undergoes aldol condensation with itself, existing in a dynamic equilibrium with a bit of water and diacetone alcohol. That is true for ACS-grade acetone as well - no reputable seller will ever offer "anhydrous acetone".

Having said that, the best dehydrating agent for acetone is boric anhydride, which is somewhat hard to find (and tricky to make from boric acid).

The second-best option for dehydrating acetone is molecular sieves. It cannot stand over them for long, since they are mildly basic and promote aldol condensation. 8 hours is reported to work well.

TL;DR: buy it from the hardware store, throw in molecular sieves, and after 8 hours perform a simple distillation, taking care to exclude atmospheric water vapor.

 

[shroombee]

So the other problem, and this seems much less removable, is what to do about impurities in the acetone? I could just but acs grade acetone I suppose... but the sources I've found are either very expensive or require bulk purchases etc.

The MSDS for the hardware store stuff doesn't seem to state a grade (but I assume it's tech grade) and say's 100% acetone and mentions nothing about impurities ( I guess this isn't a job for an msds) .

The nail polish removers I found at various retail places all have bittering agent, even though they're "100%" acetone.. (dentonium benzoate iirc) ... This stuff isn't toxic, but again the question is what else is in there?

You can purchase Pharmco ACS/USP/NF grade acetone from Shop BVV for $41 per gallon (backordered at the moment). If you regularly consume the love medicine (MDMA), the $41 for ACS grade might be worth it.