Poured salted xylene into my MHRB extraction

[FLeP]

I got some salted xylene mixed up with my recycled naphtha and ended up pouring it into my STB MHRB extraction. The xylene immediate clouded upon contact signaling that I had just majorly screwed up. I blame proper ventilation for me not realizing it was xylene. I removed it immediately and tried pouring in some recycled naphtha to see how bad I had screwed up. The naptha clouded up immediately confirming that I had definitely majorly screwed up. The xylene was salted with fumaric acid and contained acetone as well (mescaline extraction.) There are almost definitely some secondary alks from the mescaline extraction in there since I don't think they precip out well using fumaric.

What did I do here? Did I just create something new by mixing the fumaric with the basified water? If not can I just evap these solvents and redisolve in water, base and pull etc? Thanks for any help.

 

[BongWizard]

Hmmmm... This is tricky, indeed.

If there were leftover alks from your mesc extraction (dissolved in the acetone as fumarate), what you could be seeing is these alks crashing out of the acetone as it dissolves into the alkaline solution and the fumaric acid is neutralised.

Alternatively, it could be the sodium fumarate produced by the neutralisation (insoluble in non polars), although it should readily dissolve into the aqueous layer (unless it's saturated).

Did you keep the cloudy xylene and naphtha? Are they still cloudy? I would evap these solvents and see what they yield. As for the MHRB extract, gently heat it to drive off any acetone that may have mixed with the aqueous layer. Next, you could try doing another pull with clean xylene and see what happens. If it still goes cloudy, your best option may be to filter the bark out and start over (painful though that may sound).

 

[FLeP]

Thanks, BongWizard. The clouds settled and there is a bit of junk at the bottom of the xylene jar. Think I'm going to junk it since evapping is a bit shady and disgusting. I'll remove the naphtha that's sitting in the vessel, heat it to evap any acetone, add some base and see what I get with another pull. I don't think there is much in these cloudy solvents that I need to be concerned with unless a bunch of DMT jumped up into the solvent when I introduced the acidity. It seems they would just crash out back into the acqeuous layer anyway. If the new naphtha clouds up then I'll just use the dirty solvent and evap and clean up from there.

 

[BongWizard]

Don't toss that cloudy xylene. Extract the alks with a few acid pulls, then you can toss it. Base and extract from that acid solution as usual. Should help give you an idea of what exactly happened

If the naphtha keeps clouding up, I would just extract as usual, evap and do a second A/B to clean it up.

 

[endlessness]

What I'd do is remove the non polar solvent, add a bit more base to the basified liquid just in case (though I'd imagine the amount of fumaric acid was small compared to the basified material) and make several more pulls on the basified layer. With each pull apart from getting the alkaloids it should remove a little bit of the acetone that also mixed with your acqueous layer. That acetone might hold some alkaloids in the acqueous layer, which is why I'd do many pulls.

Then I'd try salting with FASA. And depending on what I'd get I'd proceed to recrystallize or clean up in any other way.

I wouldnt heat anything.

 

[ouro]

Won't the acetone carry water along with the NPS? acetone is miscible with xylene and water so you will get a mixture of all 3. In that case, you will need to dry the pulls with dry epsom salts before doing fasa again. Alternately you can just evap the whole thing to dryness to remove the tone and proceed as normal. Having water present will eat your fasa precip yields.

 

[BongWizard]

That why I originally suggested heating the base solution to drive off acetone. Acetone boils at 56.5C and form no azeotrope with water, thus, holding the solution at 60C for a couple hours (or until the volume stops reducing) will remove any acetone.

 

[FLeP]

I think I will continue to follow BongWizards advice on this. It seems like any acetone should be removed and then I can neutralize any remaining acid with some more basic water. I will save my dirty solvents and use them in the case that the fresh solvent clouds up after these procedures. Thanks, guys. You keep this forum a head above the rest.

 

[FLeP]

Just an update to this old mess: I continued witht the extraction as per usual only I left the solvent to settle for longer than usual hoping the xylene and acetone would fall to the bottom. After the usual cleanup steps I ended up with what I usually end up with. Phew!