freddurgan
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Alkaloid salts - need some knowledge
This is currently what I think I know.
Once you have your alkaloid extracted into your polar solvent, you can add some sort of acid to it in order to turn the alkaloids into salts?
What are you supposed to do now? I don't have or know how to use a chromatography column (most advanced tech I could find).
Also, is it worth extracting with a nonpolar solvent ever? It seems like you could just do a polar solvent because it wont pick up the nonpolar stuff
anyway.
Thanks! this is a cool forum
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not_important
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| Quote: | Originally posted by freddurgan
This is currently what I think I know.
Once you have your alkaloid extracted into your polar solvent, you can add some sort of acid to it in order to turn the alkaloids into salts?
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All depends. One traditional method is to add dry HCl (gas) to precipitate the hydrochloride. Organic acids such as tartaric acid can be added to form
salts of those acids. Doing so leaves behind neutral and acidic materials that were extracted into the solvent.
| Quote: | | What are you supposed to do now? I don't have or know how to use a chromatography column (most advanced tech I could find). |
Depends on whay you have, how you made it (what other stuff might be mixed in), and what your goals are. You could treat it with sodium nitrite and
acid to convert primary amine groups into alcohols and alkenes. You could slowly add it to hot sulfuric acid and hydrogen peroxide, to convert it into
carbon dioxide and water. All depends.
| Quote: |
Also, is it worth extracting with a nonpolar solvent ever? It seems like you could just do a polar solvent because it wont pick up the nonpolar stuff
anyway.
Thanks! this is a cool forum |
Again, depends on how you got to where you are, thus what is likely to be in the reaction mix. A lot of fairly non-polar materials will dissolve to
some degree in polar solvents and v.v.; dry ethyl alcohol is miscible with carbon tetrachloride, benzene, and hexane. You might convert an acidic
product to a salt, extract with a non-polar solvent to pull out relatively non-polar non-acidic material, neutralize to get the free acid, extract it
with a fairly polar solvent to leave behind very polar material.
There are a number of types of cookbooks. Some assume you know nothing, and tell you how to boil water. Some assume that you have some experience, and
don't tell you how to crack eggs. And some are for the experienced chief who knows the general methods of making sauces, roasting meats, and so on. If
you are the sort of person the first category is targeted at, but are using a book from the third, you'd best pick up some hands-on experience before
using that book in preparing a meal for guests. This may mean baking cakes you don't care for, preparing vegetable dishes that you hate, and whatnot,
just to learn how to do the techniques that the cookbook assumes you know.
edit: damn forwards backwards slashes...
[Edited on 28-9-2006 by not_important]
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