I finally got around to extracting and concentrating the alkaloids from the 20g of tobacco.
I used a nonpolar solvent with a known high partition co-efficient 3 times on the tobacco, washed the resulting solution 3 times with 1/2 volume of basic water, then extracted to acidic water, washed with the non-polar once, basified the acidic water and moved the alkaloids back to the non-polar solvent.
I ended up with ~0.2ml of alkaloids which equates to ~200mg. I still need to titrate to confirm the quantity, as I don't have a scale accurate enough.
If one assumes 1.2% available alkaloids in the tobacco, this amounts to a recovery efficiency of 83%
Next, I will add more basic water to the tobacco and let it sit for a day.
I will then do a second extraction to see if there are more recoverable alkaloids that were missed due to insufficient deprotonation.
I used a nonpolar solvent with a known high partition co-efficient 3 times on the tobacco, washed the resulting solution 3 times with 1/2 volume of basic water, then extracted to acidic water, washed with the non-polar once, basified the acidic water and moved the alkaloids back to the non-polar solvent.
I ended up with ~0.2ml of alkaloids which equates to ~200mg. I still need to titrate to confirm the quantity, as I don't have a scale accurate enough.
If one assumes 1.2% available alkaloids in the tobacco, this amounts to a recovery efficiency of 83%
Next, I will add more basic water to the tobacco and let it sit for a day.
I will then do a second extraction to see if there are more recoverable alkaloids that were missed due to insufficient deprotonation.
