Two grams of ergotamine tartrate (no caffeine) can be purchased as a migraine headache medicine for about $500. Could the following procedure work for extracting and purifying the substance?
Take 2000 1 mg Ergomar pills and crush them with a mortar and pestle. Extract them with 1 L .1 N HCl. Wash the solution with 4x100 mL toluene. Add some pH indicator and increase the pH to 12 with 30% ammonia solution. Extract the solution with 4x100 mL toluene. Wash the toluene with 4x100 mL 10% NaHCO3 solution. Remove the toluene under vacuum. Dissolve the solids in the minimum amount of boiling acetone under inert gas, add 10% of that volume in water, and place the solution in the freezer. Vacuum filter, dry, and weigh the product. Dissolve the product in the minimum amount of anhydrous MeOH. Add the product's weight / 581.662 / 2 * 150.087 in d-tartaric acid. Add more MeOH to dissolve everything if necessary. Add Et2O dropwise to precipitate ergotamine tartrate. It may be necessary to allow the mixture to stand in the freezer. Vacuum filter. Add more Et2O to the product and repeat the process until no more ergotamine tartrate precipitates. Dry the product, weigh it, and store it in an opaque, airtight container.
Expected yield: ~1 g ergotamine tartrate
I've given a little thought to merely doing a crude extraction with MeOH, stripping the solvent, and chromotographing the impure ergotamine tartrate. I think that there would be less risk of loss of product this way. What solvents would be appropriate for the chromotography? Would this be done on alumina or silica gel? Would this be done in a column or on large (20x20 cm) TLC plates?
I would greatly appreciate assistance in writing a working preparation for ergotamine tartrate from migraine medication.
Oxygen69
