DIY e-liquid and nicotine extract method

[Lithium1330]

There is a post here in this forum with a link to another forum where was a disscusion of some different methods (included the apple one) to do a clean nicotine extraction, at the end the OP of that thread on that forum found a method to get a very pure nicotine, I'm going to search that post but it will be a little hard to find it.

[Lithium1330]

Ok, here is the link, it will be better if you read the whole thread:

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OK, to close this off and leave something for others attempting this same item, I finally did it. There were a large (really large) number of problems as detailed previously, but I've found a way of getting the nicotine out of tobacco on a small scale that can be handled at home.

First though, the tobacco chosen is important. For example, good old rolling tobacco you buy in bulk at the discount cigarette store works great. Marlboros have too many additives that mess up the works. Tobacco dust sold in four pound bags works well, but there is actually very little nicotine in it. Something in the processing is removing the nicotine.

So go get the cheap rolling tobacco that has already been ground up.

The initial extraction is to use around 100 grams of tobacco and 300ml of kerosene. Yes, I know that I swore off this stuff because it left a taint to the nicotine, but I found a way to remove it later. Also add 50ml of 40% sodium hydroxide solution to the mix. This frees the nicotine from the salts in the tobacco and helps break down the cellular walls.

Let this set with occasional stirring for 24 hours. The tobacco will swell some and the mix will increase in viscosity. Filter and squeeze through cloth to get all the liquid you can and put the tobacco back in the container for another kerosene extraction with 200 ml this time. Note that you won't get the 300ml back, you'll be lucky if you get 200ml out of the tobacco and the water will have disapeared. 24 hours later filter and squeeze what you can out of the tobacco and just throw it away. Further extractions are an exercise in futility.

Combine the kerosene fractions and set them aside while you prepare a solution of 20ml 30% hydrochloride and 80 ml of water. Just use the old driveway cleaner from the local building supply. Extract once with 50ml of the acidic water and a LOT of stirring, shaking, whatever. The kerosene layer will be on top and will turn a milky yellow color. The water layer, bottom, will turn an amber color; separate and repeat the extraction with the other 50ml of acidic water.

The kerosene can now be discarded or set aside (just in case). The amber water needs to be washed with a little VM&P naptha. Use about 30ml and mix well so it can take up all the left over kerosene. This is the stage where you get rid of the nasty kerosene. Basify to ph>10 with 40% water solution of NaOH and add enough salt so no more will dissolve.

This is where it gets interesting. The basic salt-saturated solution will cause the nicotine to separate at temperatures over 60C. So, just for fun take the temperature up to around 70C and you'll see the oil separate and rise to the top as a separate (very small)layer. This isn't pure nicotine, but includes all the alkaloids and some other contaminants. But it does give one a good idea what you're going to get.

Cool, filter out the solids, and extract twice with 30ml of naptha. Evaporate the naptha at room temperature and you have a small amount of relatively pure nicotine. There isn't enough here to do much with, so dissolve in acetone and save. Repeat the entire procedure saving the nicotine in acetone until you have enough to deal with. I use 4 of the full extractions to get enough nicotine to further purify.

Further purification. The right way to do this is a vacuum distillation under an inert gas, but most of us don't have the equipment to do that so.... First evaporate the acetone at room temperature and dissolve the nicotine in basic water (ph> 11). Extract with pure (distilled) ether. This is important since the ether one can get at the auto parts stores has contaminants in it. You can find instructions on distilling ether on the web, just be sure to keep flames away and use good ventilation. Evaporate most of the ether and use the small amount left to help you pour the fluids into a container for storage. Evaporate the last of the ether from your container by warming slightly and you're done.

If you have the equipment, you can scale this up to larger amounts of tobacco and cut down the effort. One can even arrange a pump to pump the kerosene through the tobacco to extract on a continuing basis and do an acidic water extraction in line by letting the kerosene bubble up through the acidic water before being returned to the tobacco. With a little screening and filtering this could be set up to produce reasonable quantities of high percentage nicotine. The surprising part is how little nicotine there actually is in tobacco. One would think there's 4 or 5 grams in each 100 grams of tobacco, but I just couldn't find it. I did get as much as 3 grams on the first pass, but that was as good as it got and only happened once. So, keep your expectations in check and proceed.

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[jbbishop]

How do you get the nicotine out of the applejuice?



mmmmmmm........ tomacco!

The Simpsons Archive: Simpson Fan Grows Tomacco (The Springfield Times)

[bebop]

um I think the patch idea is sound, I think if left for 24 hours on a damp sponge, you pretty much got it.

[hason74]

Originally Posted by StratOvation

No, Actually It makes no more sense to assume light, manual agitation in a bowl of acetone would solubilize and retain all unwanted agents from the crystal than it makes to assume, a simple acetone rinse of a ni patch would yield a pure ni crystal to begin with.

just said it would take the glue out, scrape the red phosphouros of the striker pad on a matchbook "rinse" it with acetone, the glue goes to the acetone, i dont know about the rest..

[platinum321]

When I was in High School I decided to buy a blow gun with a friend of mine. We did so and along with the blow gun came darts and some instructions on making poisons to coat the darts for hunting. One of them was nicotine sulphate. The procedure was as follows.

Take your tobacco we used a bunch of packs of Marlboro at the time.

Place in water and boil it.
Once boiled sufficiently don't remember the time instructions gave you were to filter it.
We used a coffee filter.

After filtration one was to continue to boil it to bring it down to a gooey substance.

And that was supposed to render nicotine sulphate.

The next thing was to add a bit of toothpaste to the goop.
This enables one to place the tip of the dart in the pasted and let it dry so that it did not come off the end of dart.

The darts were made of piano wire.
It cautioned one to make sure one does not inhale and bring dart into mouth prior to blowing dart out of gun lest one perish and meet St Peter. LOL

Anywho my buddy took these darts and just skinned a bird with one.
The bird went into spasmodic convulsions pretty much instantly and then died.

Why did I share this because it shows just how deadly this stuff can be when not handled properly and at potent levels just what it can do.

By the way I am new to this forum and am awaiting 14 oz of the magic fluid so I can flush me tobacco down the drain.

Take care now . . .

[chemist]

I've done the extraction from the sciencemadness forum. It's involved, but if you know what you're doing and have the equipment, it's well worth it. I got 2g of nicotine from 6oz rolling tobacco. That oughta hold me for a while.


There's a lot of talk around here about the toxicity of nicotine. The LD50 (dose which has a 50% chance of killing you) of nicotine is about 50mg. That's ~4 drops of the pure stuff. Note that only half of what you get on your skin can absorb, so that's more like 8 drops in reality. Just wash it off if you spill it on yourself and you should be fine. It's water-soluble so unless it's dissolved in oil, don't bother with soap. If you do absorb a harmful dose, there is an antidote: atropine. This is also the antidote to VX nerve gas, oddly enough. I think hospitals have this, but I'm not sure.


One thing's been bothering me: carcinogens. Most of the carcinogens in tobacco are TSNAs, tobacco-specific nitrosamines. These are formed during the fermentation, curing, and burning of tobacco. I think these will come over with any extraction process you use because they are structurally very similar to nicotine. I haven't found a way of getting them out of the final product, so I think it may be best to start any extraction with raw, uncured tobacco. Unfortunately, I have yet to find a source. Does anyone know of any?

[chemist]

A correction: 50mg is about 3 drops of nicotine, making the LD50 about 6 on the skin. If I remember correctly, I measured a drop of nicotine to be ~15uL. I should note that being an organic chemist and being used to working with deadly toxins while still half asleep in the morning, I consider “relatively safe” what most people would consider lethal. Take my safety assessments with a grain of salt.


Since cigarettes only deliver 10% of their nicotine, a chemical extraction will give you 10x the nicotine with the same amount of TSNAs, if not lower. (Some are produced during burning.) So by not smoking, you get ~10% of the carcinogenic TSNAs for the same amount of nicotine. Not to mention all of the other carcinogenic combustion products you avoid.

[Fizzled]

I've been reading up on the various methods of nicotine extraction from processed tobacco (cigarettes, dip, etc.) and unprocessed tobacco (leaves direct from plant, etc.)

From those readings I've come across the consensus that Nicotine is soluble in both water and alcohols.

I've done a number of experiments extracting Hydrogen from water and alcohol(s) and I had a "Well, that might work..." moment.

My Hypothesis is that since both Water and Ethanol (for example) are prime candidates to the separation of hydrogen and oxygen by Electrolysis (alcohol moreso), that this might be a valuable way to extract nicotine.

My theory is that by soaking tobacco (processed or natural) a water and/or alcohol solution, the nicotine will be extracted. Except now, you're left with a nicotine and water solution that is not readily vape-able. Upon the addition of a salt (such as baking soda), the solution is ready for electrolysis. Your Cathode and anode would need to be unreactive with the salt and electrolysis process, so platinum contacts would probably needed. The next step would be to run DC current (of what voltage/amperage is best is up to speculation) through the solution to start the separation of H and O, what you'd be left with would be a solution of baking soda and nicotine. (However, I have read texts that say that Baking soda might turn nicotine into a less toxic form of nicotine known as nornicotine, whether or not it has the same physiological effects is unknown to me). How do you get rid of the baking soda? Add vinegar, at the appropriate stoicheometric ratio to turn the mixture into Carbon dioxide and water.

Granted, this will kind of be counter-intuitive, in that why would you reintroduce water when you just spent a lot of time trying to get rid of it, but the amount of water will be negligible and you'll be left with (in theory) relatively pure nicotine (provided you have a way to filter out all the other undesireble soluables and insoluables).

Possible problems: I don't know if electrolysis will destroy the nicotine. I don't know the effect of Sodium Bicaronate (Baking soda) is on nicotine. Vinegar is already a part of standard eliquid, so I think we can rule this out as detrimental. The solution will heat up during the electrolysis process, which will cause the process to go slower (more resistance), but also might destroy the nicotine. It may be necessary to keep the solution cool.

Variables: Ethanol or Water or some ratio of both for a soaking solution. Alcohol will break apart from electrolysis faster, but might strip more from the leaves/tobacco than desired. The type of tobacco plays an important role in the amount you get, a Leaf of Nicotiana rustica would probably be a good place to start vs standard North American tobacco with less than a third the nicotine content.

Thoughts?

[Vapinginjapan]

This may sound stupid.. but why not just boil it off?

Nicotine doesn't boil until well over 100C.

I also heard somewhere in the forum, that if you soak tobacco in ethanol, a greasy slick will form on top, and that this is relativley pure nicotine. You could just siphon it off with a syringe. I believe ethanol is soluble in PG, so you could just mix this in with your PG as a carrier.

Also, there's speculation that nicotine is not directly soluble in PG, so you would need some amount of water as a carrier.