ok, swij has been messing around with some ephedra recently...a few weeks ago a long wet rp/i/sludge reaction was performed, the sludge being a methanol ephedra extract that had been to some extent worked up with an a/b...anyway, to cut a long story short, the reaction worked and the speed was some of the nicest gear seen in these parts for a long time...very strong, very clean...yields were predictably pathetic but it would seem as there is potential to tighten up the whole act which brings us to the main point...swij is developing a bit of a procedure and needs a little help with some details so here's the story:
METHANOL PULL....swij uses a continous percolation type setup but he's not sure how long to percolate for. a respectable bee or two have hinted that after two hours bad stuff starts to come over but that is with soaking not percolation so swij has decided apon 3.5 hours because it takes 1/2 an hour for methanol to get from top to bottom of the percolatiohn tube, and he likes the number 7...
DISTILL EPHEDRINE: ok, so the methanol is evaporated and the residue is then refluxed in distilled water whilst collecting the condensate. this is done with three portions of water and then the water is titrated with hcl and evaporated for the ephedrine hcl/muck...now the pseudo...
WASH RESIDUE: right, this is where swij needs some technical help. he'd like to dry the residue, place it tightly in a cylinder and then percolate it with water to remove water soluable crap before titrating...he was all prepared to do this tonight when it occured to him that boiling water may melt the pseudo and wash it away as an oil but this was based on having looked at the melting point of ephedrine freebase which is roughly 38 C, not psuedo freebase which melts at about 118 C...ok experienced bees...if you have a little cylinder of powdered extract, wrapped up in some filter paper or something like that, and you then percolate it with water, is the psuedo going to be washed away? tonight swij decided to just boil the stuff in water, let cool and filter...fuck, you've never seen anything take so long to filter in your life..hours under vacuum!! so as you can see, a percolation would rock, as they say..even if heat mobilises the pseudo, a cold water wash might do...getting rid of all that water soluable crap before titration would be so nifty..
NP WASHES: ok, straight forward from here...titrate, filter(sand filter),np washes...emulsion...all of the emulsions swij has seen have been beaten with filtering through a single coffee filter, thanks rhodium...over the next few months a fair bit of experience should be gained with all this so there will be more to say on the pre titration, np wash stage...maybe there will be more to ad this morning if this stuff ever filters
anyway, have fun and bye for now,
aunty jack
