Sciencemadness Discussion Board

taurine extraction?

reckless explosive - 24-12-2011 at 15:06

i want to know if there is a precedure to remove pure taurine from taurine supplement pills i believe each one is 500 mg of taurine so it wouldnt take many to get a decent quantity but i want it to test its properties and to add to my colection of compounds found in energy drinks

zoombafu - 24-12-2011 at 15:41

Well I guess you would have to find out what other compounds are used as 'fillers' in the pills, and possibly find a solvent that would only dissolve Taurine and not the other substances. Taurine is soluble in water.

reckless explosive - 24-12-2011 at 17:52

okay i feel completely retarded now it says on the bottle its free form taurine and there are no other compounds listed on the bottle used that i would asume as fillers i believe its just the capsules ingredients well heres the list of ingredients ive never worked with the stuff
vegetable cellulose
microcrystalline cellulose
vegetable stearic acid
taurine

mr.crow - 24-12-2011 at 18:06

wtf why would it say free from taurine but supposed to be a taurine pill? I hope its not homeopathic

Taurine contains both an acid and base so extraction sounds difficult

reckless explosive - 24-12-2011 at 18:13

no no no not free FROM free FORM as in its already pure taurine sorry if there was confusion

zoombafu - 24-12-2011 at 20:26

well if you have a scale weigh the pill, if it weighs .5 g then it is probably pure taurine

mr.crow - 24-12-2011 at 21:34

Ah ok I see

You want to get rid of the cellulose first. You cant use water since it will turn into goop. Maybe some sort of solvent like acetone that is capable of dissolving taurine.

reckless explosive - 25-12-2011 at 04:43

i was thinking about using the scale idea but i do not have an accurate enough scale and the cellulose is part of the cell and the shell can be pulled apart quite easily

Bot0nist - 29-12-2011 at 18:50

Why not just weigh 10, or 100 pills and divide by X amount of pills, etc, to find out the mass of the none taurine ingredients.

GreenD - 16-1-2012 at 10:23

I believe taurine would be soluble in water over a large range of pH.

You could dissolve the pill in water, lower the ph to about ~1 if any ppt form, filter. Increase the pH to about 10 or 11, if anything ppts out, filter. . .

Otherwise - you state the shell can come off quite easily. . . Its free form, no other ingredients, and you can take the capsule off. What else do you want ?

DDTea - 28-1-2012 at 21:57

According to this information sheet: http://www.chemicalbook.com/ChemicalProductProperty_EN_CB274... , taurine is quite soluble in water (5-10 g per 100 mL at 23.5 C). Because of the sulfur atom and the squishiness of its electron cloud, it should be soluble in methylene chloride, chloroform, and DMSO due to London dispersion forces. The amine group should allow it to dissolve especially well in chloroform. Using MeCl2 or chloroform would be nice because they are easily evaporated.

madscientist - 28-1-2012 at 22:04

If it does in fact dissolve well in DCM, I would extract with DCM first, then extract the taurine from the DCM with aqueous HCl.

[Edited on 29-1-2012 by madscientist]