Sciencemadness Discussion Board

looking for a procedure to extract trigonelline

gluon47 - 3-4-2017 at 21:09

I've been lacking inspiration lately and haven't done any experiments for a long time. I thought I might try a small experiment just to see if I can reawaken the purpose and joy chemistry used to give to me.

Extracting an alkaloid seems like an cool project. I've got a lot of fenugreek seeds floating around at the moment and I thought maybe I could try extracting trigonelline from them.

Trouble is, I can't find any useful information on how to perform the extraction apart from academic articles I can't access. Would a simple solvent extraction with ethanol followed by a re-crystallization of the trigonelline suffice?

Any advice on how to extract the trigonelline would be greatly appreciated:).

Lambda-Eyde - 3-4-2017 at 22:03

Quote: Originally posted by gluon47  
Trouble is, I can't find any useful information on how to perform the extraction apart from academic articles I can't access.

Are people still complaining about this in this day and age? :P http://sci-hub.cc/

gluon47 - 4-4-2017 at 20:39

Amazing, I had no idea you could do that:)!. unfortunately, having now seen the articles, they don't seem very useful. I'm not set up for chromatography. Thinking about it, it might just be best to find another alkaloid to extract. I'm thinking maybe scopolamine from datura (not to take of course).

Thanks for the link.

Texium - 4-4-2017 at 20:54

I'd think twice about extracting scopolamine. Even if you don't intentionally consume it (which would obviously be a terribly stupid and possibly suicidal thing to do), it's still so toxic that just having it around is hazardous. Think if some spilled on your lab bench without you noticing. Later you're cleaning up and it gets on your skin. You could end up in a pretty bad state before you know it... I just don't see the value in doing such an extraction with the risk involved.

gluon47 - 4-4-2017 at 21:11

Yeah thanks for the warning, I guess scopolamine probably is a little to toxic. It's just that there's lots of daturas around where I live. I might find some other alkaloid to try extracting. It's hard to find interesting alkaloids with much data on how to extract them. I was thinking of lupinine, but I don't like the idea of using lead or mercury salts and don't have vacuum equipment.

[Edited on 5-4-2017 by gluon47]