Beta Carboline MAOIs - towards a more effective e-liquid

[slopes]

tceight : "now you are coming around to my way of thinking!
might I suggest, oh.... 0.5 to 1 ml per gram?

" you want the tobacco barely moist, not wet at all......""

That's how I've been doing it. tobacco barely moistened with the carbonate solution and then working in the carbonate powder, letting it sit for a while before adding the oil. Just feels right, somehow.

 

[kinabaloo]

assuming a partition coefficient of say 4:1 (I hope that's worst case

Might be nearer 1:1 :shock

In the case of freebase alkaloids. A lot better though for protonated form (salts). That's my possible assessment.

 

[tceight]

I think that's partly the reason I ended up with goo on this latest rendition. I added the full 1ml per gram, rather than 'eyeballing' it, so that I could document an 'exact recipe'. It did seem too wet. I then used FAR more oil than normal, and in the end I had a real mess to deal with.
shoulda just stuck with what I knew worked rather than trying to tweak on the fly.
anyhow,
I've got a 'hint' of tint now. going to let it sit while I go have some family time. Hope to get back at it later this evening.

 

[kinabaloo]

tceight : "now you are coming around to my way of thinking!
might I suggest, oh.... 0.5 to 1 ml per gram?

" you want the tobacco barely moist, not wet at all......""

That's how I've been doing it. Tobacco barely moistened with the carbonate solution and then working in the carbonate powder, letting it sit for a while before adding the oil. Just feels right, somehow.

That's what I do too as is how it is written up.

 

[tceight]

Might be nearer 1:1 :shock

if it is.. then we are fully back to the 'minimal oil, maximal concentration' as per original recipe.
at least then, the acid becomes almost irrelevant, as it's more a 'diffusion extraction' than a forced one.
I could be happy with that too. The bitartrate was the best tasting vape anyhow.

 

[tceight]

That's what I do too as is how it is written up.

ok, I was just remembering you guys pressing the tobacco, and getting water back out.
I never got water back out.
Of course, you can press a lot harder with a garlic press than an icing gun.

 

[kinabaloo]

if it is.. then we are fully back to the 'minimal oil, maximal concentration' as per original recipe.
at least then, the acid becomes almost irrelevant, as it's more a 'diffusion extraction' than a forced one.
I could be happy with that too. The bitartrate was the best tasting vape anyhow.

Assuming an even spread of the freebase alkaloids, more oil than water is advisable, say 3 -4 times more, but not 'a lot'. Important thing is minimal water and not adding the oil till later. Maybe don't use any water, just add carbonate powder and mash; the tobacco's own water content being sufficient?

 

[kinabaloo]

if it is.. then we are fully back to the 'minimal oil, maximal concentration' as per original recipe.
at least then, the acid becomes almost irrelevant, as it's more a 'diffusion extraction' than a forced one.
I could be happy with that too. The bitartrate was the best tasting vape anyhow.

Maybe it wasn't protonating too much, indeed. Or, tartrates more easily heat decompose to release the freebase (in the atomiser).

 

[kinabaloo]

Slopes - a 1:1 patition for the freebase might be why you found you could extract from the water twice with oil

 

[tceight]

Maybe it wasn't protonating too much, indeed. Or, tartrates more easily heat decompose to release the freebase (in the atomiser).

funny this...
something that 'by theory' shouldn't have worked, did it anyway more on gut feel and intuition than anything else, and it did work.
now we are trying to figure out why it worked! lol
normally, it's the other way around...something looks good in theory, but then trying to get it to work is fraught with difficulty.

 

[slopes]

Slopes - a 1:1 patition for the freebase might be why you found you could extract from the water twice with oil

Maybe - but if colour is anything to go by, I also got a 'stronger' oil out of a second pressing of the tobacco.

NOTE: If I've been a bit quiet lately, it's not because I've lost interest, it's because i've been working on the world's smallest e-cig!

 

[kinabaloo]

Maybe - but if colour is anything to go by, I also got a 'stronger' oil out of a second pressing of the tobacco.

NOTE: If I've been a bit quiet lately, it's not because I've lost interest, it's because i've been working on the world's smallest e-cig!

That caught my interest! No wires?

 

[kinabaloo]

I'm afreaid that the freebase alkaloids might in fact prefer being dissolved in water

 

[slopes]

It's got wires (cheating, I know). But it's shorter and narrower than a real ciggie - edging closer towards roll-up territory here!

 

[DVap]

So isn't that the problem right there.

One can dissolve 100g of freebase alkaloids in 1 liter of water.

So the idea that as organc molecules they will prefer to be dissolved in the organic solvent (the oil) seems quite wrong.

So perhaps the only thing we can do is keep the carbonate solution to an absolute minimum volume-wise compared to the oil.

I see what you're getting at, and there's something to it... driving the partitioning via limiting the volume of the non-desired phase... but you'd do better focusing on the known fact that adequate alkali is absolutely critical. I've tested on un-pH modified tobacco, and the recovery is truely horrible, so don't skimp on the alkali. To compromise adequate pH modification based on a partition coefficient that we don't even know (but should probably easily favor the oil) isn't a direction I'd take. It's likely more a possible concern for full purifications. My losses could be simple sloppiness/laziness as I didn't do multiple additions of organic.

I have an old table of partition coefficients for non-protonated nicotine in various solvents.. but I sure don't know what I did with it. I may have to dig.

 

[DVap]

I agree that Kin does an incredible amount of research, more than you know. He's even spent time researching some stuff for me unrelated to this. I've nothing but respect for what he has accomplished here.
if you want to "give kina some credit", great, by all means. Text is cheap. but try to do so in a way that doesn't disparage others, or the others may just walk away. No one is being paid to be here or to contribute.

Maybe I'm hitting something that's gonna be mentioned in the posts above this one that I've not read yet.. but it looks like it was an unfortunate choice of words that seemed "pointed" to some of us, but really wasn't directed that way.

 

[DVap]

I've got some nicotine in PG that I might be able to dilute in saturated sodium carbonate such that 1 gram of nicotine is present. Then the trick would be to simply shake with an equal volume of oil, toss the sodium carbonate solution, and extract the oil with strongly acidic water (~ pH 1), then basify the acidic water and extract with a hazardous solvent with a very high partition coefficient -vs- water. The point isn't to vape the stuff, but to determine how much of the 1 gram is recovered.

 

[tceight]

.................dilute in saturated sodium carbonate..............determine how much of the 1 gram is recovered.

this would be invaluable information, for understanding what we can and/or can't expect. It would certainly reduce much speculation.

I'm on a hunt right now, for my alkaloids... pretty sure some of em are named Waldo.

 

[kinabaloo]

I see what you're getting at, and there's something to it... driving the partitioning via limiting the volume of the non-desired phase... but you'd do better focusing on the known fact that adequate alkali is absolutely critical. I've tested on un-pH modified tobacco, and the recovery is truely horrible, so don't skimp on the alkali. To compromise adequate pH modification based on a partition coefficient that we don't even know (but should probably easily favor the oil) isn't a direction I'd take. It's likely more a possible concern for full purifications. My losses could be simple sloppiness/laziness as I didn't do multiple additions of organic.

I have an old table of partition coefficients for non-protonated nicotine in various solvents.. but I sure don't know what I did with it. I may have to dig.

A minimum in volume but I have emphasised the need to ensure all the tobacco is coated, and leaving some time for it to do its thing before adding the oil. I even suggested adding extra carbonate powder to maintain solution levels as the tobacco's own water is released.

 

[kinabaloo]

this would be invaluable information, for understanding what we can and/or can't expect. It would certainly reduce much speculation.

ouch

but we know that freebase alkaloids dissolve well in water, because they are polar just like H-OH. As there's nothing special about the oil, I think it's only a matter of relative volumes. I'm expecting a bit less than 50% to migrate to the oil. We'll know soon enough now that DVap has graciously agreed to do the measurement (equal volumes). But I'd really love to be proved wrong, for so far have no alternate solution to what would be a most unfortunate, though not disastrous, limitation.