Cocaine Manufacture Questions

DrugPhreak · Working Bee

I see that in the jungle labs cocaine base is sometimes dissolved into acetone and then HCl in acetone is added. How does the Cocaine HCl precipitate out when it is soluble in acetone? Confused

When SWIDP extracted coca leaves they dissolved the base into toluene or ether and then added HCl in acetone to the base, which worked ok. I don't see how just using acetone would work though. Also, SWIDP is planning to try this procedure next time...

Air-dried coca leaves were forced through a 9 mesh sieve and 1.00 g of the resulting finely manicured material was refluxed in 40 ml 95 per cent ethanol for 15 minutes. The mixture was filtered through Whatman No. 4 filter paper, and filtrate was evaporated under vacuum in a rotary evaporator at 40-50 °C until dry. The residue was then quantitatively transferred into a separatory funnel with the aid of 20 ml of chloroform and partitioned with 10 ml citric acid, 1.5 per cent (W/V). The aqueous layer was washed with an additional 20 ml of chloroform and adjusted to pH 8.2 with solid NaHCO3. Cocaine was then extracted twice from the aqueous layer using 20 ml of chloroform. The chloroform layer was dried over anhydrous sodium sulphate and evaporated to dryness under vacuum.

Cocaine has a pKa of 8.6 and so is best extracted into organic solvents at alkaline pH, preferably below 10. Both rapid extraction and minimal contact with acid and base result in the most efficient extraction and are essential to prevent hydrolysis. Initially, various combinations of acid and base were used to evaluate the recovery of cocaine standard from aqueous solutions. We found that the combination of 2 per cent HCI (pH=0) and concentrated NH4OH (pH=9-9.5) yielded a 93 per cent recovery, a result which compares well with the recovery rate reported elsewhere (93.3 per cent at pH=9.5). However, quantitative recovery was achieved by using 1.5 per cent citric acid (pH=2) and saturated NaHCO3 (pH=8.2). Using this combination of acid and base in the partitioning step and analyzing the cocaine spiked plant material, quantitative overall recovery was determined. This indicated that no hydrolysis of cocaine takes place during the 15 minute reflux. As a result of optimization of solvent system used and refluxing time, the entire extraction procedure can be carried out in less than 45 minutes by a technician with minimum training in chemistry.

This procedure seems nice and simple, but for a kilo of leaves it would use 40l of ethanol... lol. Shocked

Do you think it was typo and they meant 4ml?

Radiumhero · Sun Aug 21, 2005 3:29 pm

I translated a german article , u could read it
Think it would answer ur question just look in the " wanted translations section "

DrugPhreak · Working Bee

Thanks, but I translated that complete paper a while back and posted it here... https://synthetikal.com/synthforum/viewpost.php?p=5694. It doesn't answer this question though. I don't see how this works, but obviously somehow it does. Confused

Radiumhero · Sun Aug 21, 2005 11:56 pm

After reading first 40ml of etoh hmm that should be a typo and around 4l should be enough for the kilo of leaves ....on the other hand a kilo of leaves is a real lot of stuffe ( Volume ) and this writup is probably is for those who can afford even the sightest loss of yield .

DrugPhreak · Working Bee

SWIDP did a little test and 40ml seems to cover 1gm of shredded leaves well. It wasn't passed through a 9 mesh sieve like they did, but since every particle would be 0.0787 inch (2.00 mm) after doing so maybe much less ethanol could be used then. The volume of coca leaves is insane... when SWIDP got the first kilo it looked like it was way more... they are very light. SWIDP is going to chew the rest of this 100gm bag, but next time they will order coarsely powdered leaves and hopefully they will be around 9 mesh.

myhero · Fri Sep 02, 2005 11:28 pm

Cocaine HCL is not very soluble in Acetone, just a little actually. It will work as a crystallization solvent but if you notice the translation tells you to let everything dry as well so you can recover what was not filtered because it stayed in solution.