TEK Possible source of fumaric acid (I cannot find anywhere to buy it in the UK).

[Perihelic lunacy]

Right lads. I have decided to do CIELO. Ethyl acetate comes on Monday. But, for the life of me, i cannot find anywhere that sells fumaric acid in this goddamn country. I had an a idea, though, and i want to run it by some people who actually know what they are doing.

The idea is to extract fumaric acid powder from over the counter ferrous fumerate capsules using HCL to knock it out of solution (because i happen to have a bunch from an A/B extraction i did a while back). the ingredients are ferrous fumarate 305mg, microcrystalline cellulose, gelatin and colours: quinoline yellow (E104), erythrosine (E127), indigotine (E132) and titanium dioxide (E171). Basically, I will dump the powder of, like, 20 caps into a jar (to get a little over 3g. I am assuming this is going to be sloppy as hell in terms of efficiency.), dump a bunch of HCl in there and the fumaric acid should precipitate out of solution as the iron binds to the HCL. Then i just pour it through some filter paper, the ferrous chloride will go through and leave me with fumaric acid and microcystaline cellulous.

Then I need to seperate the fumaric acid from the filler (the microcrystalline cellulous). To do this i will add them to some fresh water and heat in a water bath (would like to know a good temprature to do this), so that the fumaric acid dissolves into the water, while the cellulous doesn't. Then just filter again and drop the temprature with an ice bath (or something more gradual to avoid the jar shattering), so the fumaric acid crashes back out of solution. Then, yet again, filter it, let it dry, and boom, fumaric acid powder.

I know this seems like a lot of effort, but i really don't want to use citric acid, I want something more forgiving of water and a salt with a higher efficiency (I have already compromised by choosing fumerate over HCL.)

So can anyone tell me if this will work? If not, why and how can it be altered to work?

 

[RitualOpossum]

I hope you find a source for fumaric acid. That sucks that you have to extract it and yet you are brilliant and ingenius for resolving this issue yourself

 

[Perihelic lunacy]

Thanks. I am definitely trying this, though. I have hyped myself up to do it and already ordered the capsules. I will post about the process and results when they arrive, might be of help to anyone else who cannot find the fumaric acid. no one should have to settle for citric.

 

[RitualOpossum]

Yeah keep citric in HIELO
I'm interested in your process though. Very fascinating

 

[Perihelic lunacy]

Update: I gave it ago. it sort of did work. I have successfully precipitated fumaric acid. only issue is it is pretty dirty, kind of coated in ferrous chloride. Not sure how i can clean it. Cannot even use water and a filter because the cake clogs it instantly.

 

[SashaThuh2nd]

Completion can be dialed in synthesis. If you use a solvent wash, this should work. Good tek, very interesting.

 

[pete666]

Update: I gave it ago. it sort of did work. I have successfully precipitated fumaric acid. only issue is it is pretty dirty, kind of coated in ferrous chloride. Not sure how i can clean it. Cannot even use water and a filter because the cake clogs it instantly.

Have you read my pm?

 

[Perihelic lunacy]

Have you read my pm?

yeah, just by the time i got it i had already committed to the bit, and now i am too impatient to wait further for something to arrive from Poland.

 

[Perihelic lunacy]

Completion can be dialed in synthesis. If you use a solvent wash, this should work. Good tek, very interesting.

I think possibly, what i could do is use ethyl acetate (fresh ethyl acetate, that is), it should dissolve the fumaric acid, but not the ferrous chloride, then pour it through a filter, then just dump that ethyl acetate into the alkaloid filled ethyl acetate. Or just bite the bullet and dump the dubious tan powder in (which is what i am probably going to do, since i have no fresh ethyl acetate to attempt this.)

 

[dstark93]

Guys try Etsy, I ordered from Ukraine from a shop that sells such stuff for charcuterie.
edit: HomemadeSausage

 

[TransistorBass]

Have you searched Ebay? Its not cheap but its available.

 

[Perihelic lunacy]

Have you searched Ebay? Its not cheap but its available.

yeah, there was a single result in my country. I tried to order it, but then i got a message saying they were out of stock and got refunded. The item is still listed, but with a price in the hundreds instead of the 15 or so quid it was previously (I assume so no one tries to order it, because they have no stock)

 

[RitualOpossum]

Dude that's crap; hundreds of quid for some fumaric acid!? Boo, I say!

 

[doubledog]

Yes, it seems that fumaric acid is in general not very accessible in Europe. I was lucky to buy it for cheap in local eshop for home made cosmetics enthusiasts.

 

[HumanOcean]

Was also able to extract and purify Fumaric Acid from OTC Iron Fumarate according to: https://www.sciencemadness.org/whisper/viewthread.php?tid=64856#pid433620

"Slurry the iron fumarate in water, then add acid (HCl or H2SO4) to pH 1 or so. You will preciptate the fumaric acid and the iron chloride or sulfate will remain in solution. You may have to provide some heat to the reaction to get it to completion. You do not need a lot of solubility of the iron fumarate to get this to work. It's a simple double-decomposition reaction. Keep in mind that the fumaric acid will have greatly reduced solubility in the aqueous acid reaction mixture. Isolate the fumaric acid by filtration and recrystallize it from aqueous acetic acid or other solvent of your choosing."

I'd say go for 99% Isopropyl Alcohol as recrystallizing solvent, since Fumaric dissolves best in IPA, IIRC.

 

[TransistorBass]

Just tried looking on Temu, but nothing, ended up going down a coke-holder-spoon rabbit hole!

 

[Perihelic lunacy]

Okay, Update i guess: I tried it, i did a really sloppy job due to laziness and being too trusting, but it absolutely sort of worked.

Basically, i did the conversion to ferrous chloride and fumaric acid, but neglected to perform any form of additional filtration besides separating off the ferrous chloride. I was under the impression (due to the ingredient list of the capsules i bought) that there were no binders or additives. This was not the case, it seems. So what i added to the heavy ethyl acetate WAS fumaric acid, but also a bunch of other insoluble stuff. I filtered and fiddled the resulting powders as best as i could (did a few recrystalisations with water, which separated most of the insoluble slag, but even then, some of the finer, sandier dross got through), and it resulted in about 1g of tan, easy flowing powder/crystals of various size. A marquis reagent test has confirmed the strong presence of mescaline. It is definitely mescaline. Just not entirely sure how much of it IS mescaline VS. the other stuff. At least whatever that stuff is is food grade. Only real issue is dosing, the primary benefit of extraction, is going to be way harder. I have no idea to what extent the 1~g yield was down to potentcy or my clowning, but I think it would have been higher if i were not an idiot, or just went for a citrate, like a coward.

If there was some moral to this thread, i would say it is: Do not half-arse it when you bullshit together a solution, full-ass it. And filter things, even when you (an idiot) believe it will probably be fine without it.

Maybe at some point i will retry and tighten up the whole process, get it right. Then other people in my situation will have something to work with.