doubledog said:
downwardsfromzero said:
There are several ways of testing this hypothesis, as well as the solubility of mescaline malate in acetone.
Dfz, could you please describe somehow these ways of testing?
One that most easily springs to mind would be:
Extract freebase mescaline into one of the usual nonpolar solvents and salt with malic acid (available from brewing supplies). Use the resulting mescaline malate to test it solubility in acetone and also as a reference standard for later use.
Then, if this works:
drnocturne said:
To make a brew, you just need to dry, pulverize and extract thoroughly with hot distilled water only. You don't need to add lemon or vinegar or anything else, as the M as the malic acid salt is already very water soluble.
(
Here)
it should be possible to evaporate that plain water extract to dryness and pull from the residue with hot acetone. Titrating this with sulfuric acid could separate mescaline sulfate from the malic acid - but it would be prudent to check the solubility of malic acid in acetone first. Anyhow, after filtration the resulting liquid might possibly be a solution of malic acid in acetone, most likely with a bunch of other compounds, and with the assumption that both mescaline malate and malic acid are indeed soluble in acetone.
This would be subject to confirmatory tests such as TLC and presumptive colour reagents.
Another approach would be to treat the plain water cactus extract with Ca(OH)2, dry, pull mescaline with a solvent - acetone? - dry the lime residue then treat it with sulfuric acid to liberate crude malic acid. Purify the malic acid with recrystallisation, perhaps taking advantage of different solubilities in different solvents.
moyshekapoyre said:
I would like to report that my second attempt was not very successful. I don't know why the first one seemed to be so efficient.
Was this from a different batch of dried cactus? It seems a bit odd, otherwise, that damp acetone should make a difference considering M malate is said to be soluble in both.
Dealing with living organisms as we are, all sorts of variables come into play. For example, many plants esterify the hydroxy group of malic acid with caffeic acid to make caffeoylmalic acid. Something like this may also happen in cacti, I'll have to check the literature [and, though Trout's Cactus Chemistry mentions caffeic acid but once, a number of ferulic acid derivatives are listed - ferulic acid being a methylated derivative of caffeic acid]. [This article:
https://www.researchgate.net/public...alized_tyrosine_metabolism_pathways_in_plants shows how these things tie together somewhat.]
A caffeoylmalate would exhibit a different solubility profile and will likely interact with metal cations to a greater extent than plain malate; A caffeoylmalate complexed to, e.g., calcium or magnesium would quite possibly exhibit a lower solubility in acetone than plain malate would.
One advantage, therefore, of acid boils is that it would circumvent this particular variable, should it be the case.
