Author Topic: Activated Carbon Ideas  (Read 4078 times)

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k0dog

  • Guest
Activated Carbon Ideas
« on: April 22, 2004, 07:36:00 AM »
Ok so Swim is wishing to clear up some dis-colouration of some honey via activated carbon.  I have done this before however I was thinking of placing th volume of Actived carbon in say a filter paper.  Tieing the paper up and throwing it in the boiling water.

This would eliminate the need to filter that pesky activated carbon.  I mean it would probably need a much longer time to boil to get rid of the crappy brown color but still.

Does any bee kno if this is a bad idea and swim should just do it the time consuming way.  Or should swim start experimenting to see.  Thanks 1 million...


elfspice

  • Guest
beee velly velly careful
« Reply #1 on: April 23, 2004, 03:02:00 AM »
I didn't notice any mention of how much carbon you anticipated using... well, don't use much, a spatula tip, 1/4 of a ml type volume, bugger all really. Use less if we're talking about less than 50ml of solvent with dirty alkaloids in it.

The best thing for removing the carbon is the ol' charmin filter, two passes always does the trick. I can't see the carbon dust staying inside your little teabag myself.

I'm not sure if carbon is any use here anyway, the two places the colour comes from in e/rp/i are the iodine, which a nonpolar solvent will wash out, and from the iodoephedrine itself, which you shouldn't discard adsorbed onto carbon, you should separate it properly and maybe put aside to add to another reaction later.

Decolourising the material only really makes sense in the case of organically extracted substances, as there can be inactive amines that have colour coming across (such as the yellow stuff in mimosa hostilis root bark extracts) Even in those cases, the carbon is feeble in comparison to recrystallisation purification.

k0dog

  • Guest
Oh sorry...
« Reply #2 on: April 23, 2004, 07:58:00 AM »
Naw... swim was talking about the processing of ketamine from the raw intermidates.... What some said is use 5% the weight in activated carbon which is what Swim did in the past which work perfectly altho it is a bitch to filter.

I was thinking of tieing the elusive carbon in a small holed filter paper since the "dye" is actually in solution with the ketamine.  I know that it will not have the full surface area that just dumping that stuff in the solution would but if I could do this but leave the "tea bag" as you said... in the solution for like a day or so while having it at an elevated temperature (like 60'C to 75'C) I would assume it would work just as well except it would eliminate my stupid filtering....

Just a thought.. I dunno any very knowledgable bee.. cough..  cough... know?


elfspice

  • Guest
not what i mean
« Reply #3 on: April 23, 2004, 08:56:00 AM »
The thing I'm trying to tell you is that there isn't any easy way to avoid that evil finely divided carbon turning into a grey cloud. The tea bag idea is a nice one but the thing is that if you do somehow contain the fine particles, you have also successfully reduced the surface area of the carbon, which would result in a less effective process.

I found that if you leave carbon overnight it settles completely - it can then be decanted and the little that is left should come out in one pass of a charmin filter plug filtration. I used it to decolourise purple dyed methylated spirits, and it works a treat. The most effective filtration is a hard packed charmin plug, if you haven't got it hard enough you might have to run it through twice. It helps to have a nice big funnel that you can put the whole load of solvent in. The charmin plug can be replaced with a really long column of cotton wool plugs (i used to have a lovely 200mm diameter pyrex utility funnel, it made filtration such a joy, almost as good as having a buchner  :( )

gsus

  • Guest
dealing with fine carbon
« Reply #4 on: April 23, 2004, 09:21:00 AM »
wash the carbon with dH2O in a buchner and oven dry, or use as is. you've just gotten rid of the particles too small for your filter. hopefully you dont have superfine carbon or coffee filters. you can use more of a less fine charcoal, IMHO. cotton ball in a funnel.


Vaaguh

  • Guest
celite (tm)
« Reply #5 on: April 23, 2004, 11:21:00 AM »
Or perhaps you could try to get some Celite which will enable you to filter off the carbon in an easy way


k0dog

  • Guest
good idea
« Reply #6 on: April 23, 2004, 08:27:00 PM »
Hey that is a wodnerful idea!

I am going to try that.  I am amazed that I didn't even think of it before.  I sorta wished I had.  I will lik eyou know the out come of my experiments.

celite is also a ncie idea.  I will try this as well.  Thanks all


franzo

  • Guest
CA prop 65
« Reply #7 on: August 13, 2004, 01:23:00 AM »
I recently found out that activated carbon of respirable size is now on the CA prop 65 list of chemicals that cause birth defects, and or developmental problems.  what's next, Mc D's