mordoh - 24-6-2004 at 11:20
i did this procedure :
took the leafs of 2 plants - green tea and nettle , then i grind them to small pieces and extracted the nettle with 70% ethanol and the green tea with
purified water and with ethanol separately, and then combined both (extract made with hot ethanol for 3 hours).
then i evaporated both tinctures until i had 30ml from each tincture (really thick liquid).
i then combined the two (in separate bowl - 2ml from each of the tinctures) and add ethanol 95% , at that time i noticed that i have
"sediments" in the liquid, but not on the bottom of the bowl but in the liquid , big pieces like that.... next i tried the same with 40%
alcohol , and i saw "sediments" this time on the bottom of the bowl (not as before , small pieces not together)...
i then filtered the liquid with the "sediments" (in the 95% add-on) and saw it stayed on the gaza , thick and sticky with green color...
it made me wonder... what is this substance , any idea anyone?
Esplosivo - 24-6-2004 at 11:26
I'm not sure but as far as I know it could be anything ranging from proteins to nucleic acid chains, also including chlorophyll (because of the
green colour, which is most probably an impurity).
PHILOU Zrealone - 1-7-2004 at 08:30
If it is tea you have, more than certainly what you have are polyphenols (tanins or tanic acid -maybe written with two n).
Antioxydants properties by free radical scavenger effect.
chemoleo - 5-7-2004 at 18:23
How about these are just microscopic plant cell particles (like from the cell wall/membrane etc)? Did you grind the plants? That would answer it.
Else... some proteins precipitate in ethanol.
And the floating behaviour of the precipitate is dependent on the density of the liquied it is submerged in, thus the difference between 40 and 95%
EtOH.
If I was you I wouldnt worry too much about it.
Also, I thought for such plant cell extractions more powerful solvents are normally used.
What are you trying to extract?