Author Topic: question about using sodium carbonate  (Read 2250 times)

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12cheman12

  • Guest
question about using sodium carbonate
« on: May 17, 2004, 03:50:00 AM »
Most of the topics i have read about dry basing, they say add equal amounts of sodium carbonate to pillmass or, or use the same amount of sodium carbonate as you have available pseudoephedrine in the pill mass.
Now swim is currently trying to extract some pseudo from a type of pill that contains 30mg pseudo, 500mg para each. Now say swim had 144 of these pills. Thats 4.32Gs of Pseudoephedrine and 72Gs of Paracetamol. Now should swim add about 5 grams of Sodium Carbonate or 72Gs? Because swim is thinking 72 Gs of sodium carbonate is way to much in anyones books.

DrLucifer

  • Guest
Dry basing.
« Reply #1 on: May 17, 2004, 07:13:00 AM »
Contrary to mixed beliefs, swim runs with 1g NaOH for every 1g of pseudoephedrine HCl available in the pill mass.
Swim believes this ratio would need to be increased in the case of sodium carbonate because it is apparently a weaker base than NaOH.
Now swim is no expert on the subject, but swim always acheives above average yields using NaOH.
If you wish to extract from 120/240mg sulfate pills which (in australia) are generally loaded with orange gaak, then swim suggests that you stick with sodium carbonate as it reduces the amount of gaak released. However, swim does not know how much too add as he doesnt use sodium carbonate.
If someone can tell swim(and cheman) how to measure the ph of powder, then im sure it wouldnt be too difficult! :P
Swim thinks someone with more experience will answer your questions...after all, i am no expert  ;)


Red_Crown

  • Guest
powder =/= liquid
« Reply #2 on: May 17, 2004, 11:57:00 AM »
First of all, measurement fo the pH of a powder is preposterous. The whole "concentration of H+" (or "inverse concentration of OH-") per se does not even arise until the compounds are in solution, whence they are ionized into H+ & Cl- or Na+ & OH- for instance..

As such, it is not necessary to think of the dry basing issue in terms of the active ingredient. You just need to be confident that all grains of the active ingredient have adequate opportunity to come into contact with the base. That is the logic behind adding roughly equal volumes of dry base to pill mass. You must bear in mind that when someone, for instance, has 100 30mg pills, there may be 3g of active ingredient, but the after all the fillers the total pillmass may be 10-20x more than that.  Put another way, if I had a 30mg pill the size of a lightbulb with 500g filler I would NOT still put 30mg base in there, it would be more..  In all cases, an excess of base vs. active ingredient is used.

As for the paracetamol, I don't know. Read the original Tetra Trap thread.

geezmeister

  • Guest
An excess is not harmful
« Reply #3 on: May 17, 2004, 01:33:00 PM »
An excess of sodium carbonate, at least within reason, has never appeared to be harmful to the pseudo or to its extraction. Calculate the pseudo present in the pill mass and base with double or triple that amount of sodium carbonate.

If the yields are on the low side, you can add more base to catch what you may have missed and extract again with solvent. You may even want to use some NaOH with the sodium carbonate.