Just browsing the newsgroups, and came across:
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&selm=20011228060021.10093.00000948%40mb-cm.aol.com (http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&selm=20011228060021.10093.00000948%40mb-cm.aol.com)
I thought that since the Hive isn't accepting new members, that I'd throw it up for discussion.
I remember asking a long time ago if this would work, but attempted only a short reaction time (30 mins or something), and it didn't work. It appears that sodium carbonate (the decomposition product of boiling sodium bicarbonate in water) is a strong enough base to react with GBL. Cool stuff, now no one has an excuse to use drain cleaner lye. (even though the reaction does take 36hrs of reflux)
Has anyone here at The Hive done something similiar to this?
All of the recpies that use NaOH to make G have the same problem the reaction only goes about half way leaving lots of unreacted lactone in the mixture.
If you've ever had pure ghb or powder(pharm-grade) ghb you do notice a difference in effects and also have less side effects(headaches etc.), also there will be no smell at all in your ghb and the taste will be better if it doesn't contain lactone. There are a whole slew of reasons for wanting g without lactone and I could go on and on.. also when you use this method since the reaction goes to 100% na-ghb you get more mileage(products) out of your lactone...
Also not using caustic chemicals eliminates alot of headaches and even if you screw up the worst that would happen is a mixture of baking soda lactone and water which is not very bad compared with swallowing a posion (which people have done and been hospitalized for as seen in MM2K etc.) Also good about this recipe is that you know how much final grams of na-ghb you're going to have you will better be able to determine dosing....... When using an NaOH recipe results can vary due to the nature of the reaction and you end up with batches of various potency etc.
It is also easier to measure the ingredients,baking soda is of high purity and available for almost nothing at your local grocery store and you can easily make a powdered ghb simply by boiling the water away and letting dry...
Making NaGHB with baking soda and Lactone and water in a crock pot.... The only real problem with this recipe is that it takes time for it to happen, the reaction happens gradually thus allowing all the reactants to react if you give it enough time thus leaving you with no traces of lactone etc. the final product will smell like water and the taste will be nicer then your used to if your used to g made with NaOH...If all you have is lactone and you wanted some right away you could make some with NaOH, then use what you'd like then dump that mix into a crock pot add some baking soda and get the rest of the lactone to react and purify/clean your g mix up...(note: SWIM has yet to do that, though his plan might be to make some G with KOH and make some NAGHB with baking soda then add the K-GHB to crockpot add additional baking soda to react with lactone in the KGHB and have a k/Na g mixture without any lactone/impurities)..
The recipe is very simple..and a crock pot can be bought from walmart for $9.99...
1 part GBL
1 part Baking soda
2 parts water
(example: 250g GBL,250g arm+hammer,500mL H2O)
(trivia: sodium bicarbonate is 84g's per mole and butyrolactone is 86g's per mole, thus the above combination will give you a slight excess of baking soda thus making sure all the GBL reacts, if you put say only .9 parts Baking soda for 1 part GBL then you'd have some left over unreacted lactone.. not good! you
might want to put in a few extra grams baking soda just to be double sure...) dump ingredients together into the crock pot...turn the crockpot on low heat,
you must cover the crock pot with a bowl and then fill that bowl up with water, this will keep the lid cool and let the lactone drip back down into the solution so you don't waste lactone by boiling it off, if anyone wants a little picture or diagram of this let me know! It's really simple just put a big ceramic bowl from your cabinet on the top of the crockpot acting as your lid and pour water into the bowl..(the water will slowly boil away and you should add more to the bowl whenever you get a chance, if you come home and find the bowl empty NBD just fill it back up and everything should still be fine, perhaps a tiny bit or reactants/product may have escaped but probably not much and very possibly none at all)
You then leave this crockpot on LOW heat for 36 hours and all the reactants will go thru to final product...SWIM likes to leave it go for an extra day or two so you definetly have a product containing no lactone and everything gets reacted etc. Most of the stuff will react in about 18 hours , so if you wanted to steal a little from the pot then let the rest keep reacting to completion then you should wait a day or so after starting before doing so...
Much credit goes out to c610n2o2 who originally designed and formulated the recipe. If anyone has any questions or if there is enough interest I will put it up on a/my website...maybe even make a diagram/illustration and extensive commentary...of course if the lycaeum is interested in hosting such a page as well, I'd be Honored if murple or someone at the lycaeum or erowid put it up!!
Thanks all and let me know any comments etc.!
Mike
(RockTheShow@aol.com)
I remember asking a long time ago if this would work, but attempted only a short reaction time (30 mins or something), and it didn't work.
Then what is the rationale behind Post 294049 (https://www.thevespiary.org/talk/index.php?topic=9661.msg29404900#msg29404900)
(Chromic: "Rxn time", Methods Discourse)?
There's a faster way to get rid of all the lactone. Use NaOH as usual but boil until bubbling stops. You are left with the solid form of NaGHB.
Supposedly the yields with the baking soda method are better.
NaOH is soluble in (? degrees C) water at 111g per 100ml. Baking soda is soluble in 21C water at a rate of 8.6 grams per 100ml. She usually dissolved the 30 grams of NaOH in 80mL water. Otherwise it would take too long to dissolve. So she made it so that it was at around 1/3 of the saturation point, by mass.
Baking soda is much less soluble than NaOH so she decided to shoot for 1/2 of the saturation point (to avoid using so much water). That would be 4.3 grams per 100mL. Then she found out that Sodium Carbonate, which is soluble at 45.5 g(26 g Carbonate ion) per 100mL in hot water, would be formed when an aqueous solution of Sodium Bicarbonate was heated. Half of the saturation point by mass would be around 13 grams Carbonate ion per 100mL. She was not sure how to convert this into grams of Sodium Bicarbonate added at the beginning. But she hypothesized with the help of Post 283622 (https://www.thevespiary.org/talk/index.php?topic=9661.msg28362200#msg28362200)
(Chromic: "Re: GHB synthesis - a must read", Methods Discourse) that for every Bicarbonate ion there would only be half as many Carbonate ions (and roughly half as much mass of those ions) around after the water had been heated. The Bicarbonate ion is 61 grams per mole. The Carbonate ion is 60 grams per mole. If 61 grams worth of Bicarb ions are put in that will result in about 30 grams of Carb ions after the water is heated. So to reach the point of half solubility (by mass) she would put in 26 grams per 100mL of Bicarbonate ion. This works out to about 36 grams of Baking Soda per 100mL. To achieve 1/3 saturation, it would be 23 grams per 100mL.
A crockpot was not used as she was not making beef stew. She always tries to use the proper equipment for a job.
22.5g Sodium Bicarbonate (84g/mol divided by 86g/mol, times 23g lactone)
21.9mL lactone originally 20.5mL (23g/1.125g/ml) but added 1.4 for good measure
100mL Water
This is her report:
Baking soda was dissolved in water and heated to 100C. Bubbling (decomposition of Bicarbonate) began at 35C and slowed at 85C. A good amount of excess baking soda had deposited on the bottom of the beaker and did not dissappear until 85C. The solution became clear at this point. It had previously been cloudy. When temperature reached 100C GBL was added. The bubbling seemed to be about 10% of the intensity of that witnessed during previous NaOH reactions. The solution was boiled down until temperature reached 210C (that's what it has registered as on two different thermometers during numerous reactions, either they are broken in exactly the same way or the temperature was that high) and most of the bubbling had stopped. During the boiling down the solution had become cloudy again. The reason for this might be that not all of the Sodium Carbonate had reacted, and it precipitated as the water boiled off because it was insoluble in melted NaGHB. A crude melting point test was done by dipping the thermometer in hot solution then removing it and noting the point at which crystals began forming. This was pretty consistently 120C. In NaOH reactions it was somewhere around 135C although it is difficult to remember. Melting point data for NaGHB could not be found as chemfinder.com is down. At this point the beaker was removed from heat and left to cool. Product was poured into a glass baking pan at 155C. Texture of liquid was smoother than that from NaOH reactions. Texture and color of solid are exactly the same as that of NaOH product.
She's not sure how to properly calculate yield. Before she had added grams of NaOH to grams of GBL to get theoretical yield. But she doesn't know whether that was correct. Nevertheless, for comparison purposes, using that method she got yields of around 95%. In those reactions she used a ratio of 2mL (not grams) GBL to 1g NaOH. Extrapolating from that would tell you that in this new reaction, the theoretical yield would be 35.6g ((21.9*1.125)+(21.9/2)). The actual yield is therefore 91%, which is pretty impressive considering the extra 1.4mL lactone probably didn't even get reacted with. If you exclude that 1.4mL then the yield is 98%. Some of that weight is probably sodium carbonate, but she's not sure how much.
She says she is happy with this procedure and will continue using it from this day forward. She thinks that there may be up to 5% sodium carbonate in the product which she will try to reduce in the future (ingestion is listed as slightly toxic in the MSDS and it is not commonly used in products meant for ingestion).
Be careful once you have decomposed the baking soda. Sodium carbonate is not NaOH, but it is still a strong base.