Extracting Nicotine from tobacco

[callousparade]

Hey all, chemistry student here hoping to help with the "i dunno how much nicotine is in my diy liquid" question

The biggest problem everyone seems to be facing is not knowing how much nicotine is in their liquid. well, that's because you're using water/alcohol with nicotine suspended in it.

There is a detailed, high product way of extracting nicotine using an acid base reaction if you are able to get a hold of HCL and benzene, but i'm just going to explain the easier way.


Get water, and a bunch of tobacco some american spirit is best or some other additive free kind.

Boil the water with the tobacco in it until it gets nicely discolored. Pour off the water and save it. Add some more water and boil until it gets discolored, save it too. Keep going until your water doesn't look as strongly colored. Also, don't let the water you're saving cool down. Just keep it on heat but not boiling.

Filter the saved water through some coffee bags to make sure all the solid tobacco is out. Boil the solution down to about a quarter of what you originally had, or until you start to see crystals precipitate out. Let the solution cool covered in a fridge. Keep it away from direct light.

Leave it to cool for at least 12 hours, there should be white-yellow crystals growing in the solution.

Now is the only part that you need some equipment. You need to vacuum filter the final solution. Searching on google some people said to just get a wet vac and a funnel, put some coffee filters in the funnel and the funnel on the end of the vac hose and do it that way. I just use chemistry equipment that i've jacked from the lab i work in haha. Filter the solution, and you will have pure nicotine crystals.

Now, make your DIY liquid using just water, pg/vg, and flavoring. Mix in the appropriate amount of nicotine by weight (26 mg/mL, 36 mg/mL, whatever) and enjoy.

 

[emus]

Any idea what the density of the filtered crystals is so it could be mixed by volume?

 

[Linthorn]

How much nicotine do you get per gram (or oz or kg or metric ton) of tobacco?

 

[emus]

Metric ton sound good to me

 

[Justncredible]

Are you useing a precipitate agent?

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That thread was started in 2005, and the last entry was 2009. They seem to have tried quite a few ways to get nicotine extracted. To bad they missed just boiling it until crystals appeared as of by magick.


Since you mention american sprit tobacco, if boiled down you might see a wax layer form on top.

American Spirit cigarettes contain 36 percent free-base nicotine, compared with 9.6 percent in a Marlboro, 2.7 percent in a Camel, and 6.2 percent in a Winston.

2. Smoking smarter?

So what are you extracting by boiling it down, do you have access to a spectrometer to verify?? Also can you explain better the mix ratios. Do we make a no nicotine mixture then just add a lump of the crystals?

I had posted this in another diy extraction thread, maybe a mod can write up a nice sticky on known nicotine extraction methods. The last thing e-cigs need is some body boiling up a pound of tobacco leaf and killing themselves with a unknown dose of nicotine.

If a safe extraction way can be found, then I would expect to see tobacco plants in half the gardens next year.

 

[Scubabatdan]

If a safe extraction way can be found, then I would expect to see tobacco plants in half the gardens next year.

Aready have 3 different plant seeds for next years crop

 

[Justncredible]

page 4 on the mad thread the guy gives a detailed way to extract nicotine, but it leaves me with questions, like what grade kerosene, what salts,,, seems you have to be a chem major to be able to do it. Not alot of people have thier own personal mass spectrometer....

 

[geeker]

You should do a spectophotometric quantitation of your extract, and whatever nic-juice you have. There are some articles in Analytical Chemistry on how to do this.

 

[emus]

Yeah...I tink I need one of dos mass spectrometery thingys

 

[chemist]

I don't even know where to begin here.


First of all, there was recently a big thread on this very subject. Search around for it.


Second, good luck getting any water out of the boiled tobacco / water mixture. The tobacco swells and absorbs a large amount of water, leaving you with a jelly-like mess that's difficult to strain. Read the Sciencemadness thread for more details.


Third, the crystals you get won't be nicotine. Nicotine salts are notoriously hard to crystalize, even when all the water is removed. You won't magically get nicotine-containing crystals by boiling the juice down. Don't bother trying to add more alcohol to precipitate the crystals out; nicotine salts are water-soluble. And finally, nicotine is a water-soluble liquid, not a solid. You're referring to a nicotine salt (most of the nicotine in tobacco is in salt form), not pure nicotine. Pure (i.e. freebase) nicotine is made by reacting a salt with a base, usually sodium hydroxide (lye).


You don't need benzene or kerosene to do the extraction. All you need is a non-reactive nonpolar (oil-type) solvent. I recommend using either paint thinner or napata (spelling?). Toluene and xylene should work well too. All of these are readily available in the painting section of any hardware store. Vegetable oils will react with strong bases, so they're out. (This is how soap is made.) Don't even think about using benzene: it's carcinogenic and nearly impossible to find because it's been phased out in favor of less dangerous solvents.


Spectrophotometry and mass spectroscopy are very, very different things. In the former, you send a light beam at a specific frequency through a sample and measure how much is absorbed. (The frequency chosen is usually an absorption peak of the compound you're interested in.) In the latter, you vaporize the sample under a high vacuum, ionize it with an electron beam, send it through a mass / charge separator, measure the mass / charge ratio of the fragments you get, and try to figure out what was in the sample in the first place.


Tobacco usually contains 1-3% nicotine. I have no idea where that 36% figure came from.

 

[Justncredible]

So if I walk into a lab what test would I ask for to find the nicotine levels in a liquid??? and what would the cost be for such testings?

Does the tobacco have to be cured before extracting or can green leaf be used?

Can tobacco be baked to atomize off the nicotine, then cool and condense it?

 

[chemist]

A minor correction to my previous post: nicotine salts are water and alcohol-soluble. There is a double salt (nicotine chloride + zinc chloride) that's alcohol-insoluble, but getting the nicotine out of this requires vacuum distillation.

The nicotine content could be measured, but I don't know where you'd find a lab that would do it for you. They'd probably use either TLC (thin layer chromatography) or HPTLC (slight variation of TLC). This is like paper chromatography, only instead of paper you use a thin layer of fine powder on a glass plate.

Most of the nicotine in tobacco is in a salt form, so heating it in an oven wouldn't give you much vapor unless you mixed it with a base beforehand. There's a thread on this too around here somewhere.

It doesn't matter if the tobacco is fresh off the plant or processed. I'd personally prefer the fresh kind because most of the carcinogenic tobacco-specific nitrosamines are formed during fermenting / curing. Remember that gram for gram, undried tobacco has a lower nicotine content than dried tobacco (more water weight).

 

[phantasm48]

A minor correction to my previous post: nicotine salts are water and alcohol-soluble. There is a double salt (nicotine chloride + zinc chloride) that's alcohol-insoluble, but getting the nicotine out of this requires vacuum distillation.

The nicotine content could be measured, but I don't know where you'd find a lab that would do it for you. They'd probably use either TLC (thin layer chromatography) or HPTLC (slight variation of TLC). This is like paper chromatography, only instead of paper you use a thin layer of fine powder on a glass plate.

Most of the nicotine in tobacco is in a salt form, so heating it in an oven wouldn't give you much vapor unless you mixed it with a base beforehand. There's a thread on this too around here somewhere.

It doesn't matter if the tobacco is fresh off the plant or processed. I'd personally prefer the fresh kind because most of the carcinogenic tobacco-specific nitrosamines are formed during fermenting / curing. Remember that gram for gram, undried tobacco has a lower nicotine content than dried tobacco (more water weight).

Chemist, you really sound like you know your stuff, thus the handle I'm sure and I'd like to thank you for posting. I would also like to pose this possible procedure for extraction and get your opinion on how affective you believe it would be.

What I'm contemplating doing is to purchase a quantity of good quality rolling tobacco, and actually putting it in my espresso machine, and filling the boiler with 90% isopropyl/rubbing alcohol instead of water, then slowly reducing the resulting liquid down to a nice syrup, which I would hope to be a fairly high concentraction of nicotine and accompanying tobacco flavorings. What are your thoughts on the efficacy of this procedure?

 

[mbolack]

Oh, Phantasm! I'd never put alcohol in my espresso machine! Goodness knows what it would loosen and send through those little tubes! Why not nice clean distilled water?

 

[bearscreek]

You don't really mean rubbing alcohol, do you?

 

[phantasm48]

Oh, Phantasm! I'd never put alcohol in my espresso machine! Goodness knows what it would loosen and send through those little tubes! Why not nice clean distilled water?

There are no tubes in mine, just a cup with extremely tiny perforations in the bottom to let the coffee through. I'd thought about that though and I could just as easily put filter paper under the tobacco. Also, to address your other point, rubbing alcohol is 90% alcohol and 10% pure water anyways. The alcohol is a solvant (hopefully for nicotine) and also a disinfectant, so microbially speaking it's very sterile already. The alcohol I know also evaporates at a lower temperature than water so it would be the first to "steam" through the tobacco.

I'm not worried at all about messing up the machine as I don't see how doing this really could, and if it even did somehow, I wouldn't lose any sleep over it as I hardly use the thing.

 

[Stephaniems]

I'm not worried at all about messing up the machine as I don't see how doing this really could, and if it even did somehow, I wouldn't lose any sleep over it as I hardly use the thing.

OMG My coffee maker rates right below the computer and then I'm not sure if it ties with the TV or not but its a close thing!!!!! Let me put it this way If one morning I got up and my coffee maker didnt produce "ambrosia from the Gods" for me, I'd immediately go to 24/7 wally world and buy another one and the hell if it caused an NSF or not! LOL

 

[davey]

can anyone post pics of this process or any diy liquid process liek step by step pics would be nice..

 

[phantasm48]

can anyone post pics of this process or any diy liquid process liek step by step pics would be nice..

I'm waiting on a reply from the Chemist as to whether or not he thinks I'd be wasting my time. If I do decide to go through with it, I will most certainly try to figure out how to post pictures up on here or links to them. ...especially if it might mean documenting the destruction of a perfectly good espresso machine eh! Here is what I plan on doing, pictures will come later if I do it:

1. Purchase some good rolling tobacco.
2. Grind it in my magic bullet or coffee grinder, untill it's powderized.
3. Put some coffee filter paper in the bottom of the espresso machine cup thing that holds the grounds.
4. Put the powderized tobacco in the cup, on top of the filter paper.
5. Fill the water chamber with rubbing alcohol of the highest purity I can find, which thus far is 91%.
6. Turn on the machine and "solvent steam" the heck out of the tobacco.
7. Pour the resulting "tobacco tea" into a larger pot to simmer it down and reduce it to a syrup consistancy.
8. Put on my home made haz-mat suit.
9. Very carefully pour the tobacco syrup into a secure container.
10. Store it out of reach of children and clutzes.

Now Davey, just so we're clear, this is just a plan. I've not tried this out yet and have no idea if it's going to work. If you want to try the above method, by all means do so and of course be carefull and good luck. Hopefully you'll be succsesful but if not, it is of course entirely not my problem.

 

[Justncredible]

read the mad sceintist thread....... for gods sake

and NO, that will not work

The stuff you get out will for sure have nicotine in it, but will be about the same as dip spit from dippers.

So read the processes that are used to get nicotine out of the leafs.

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Making up nutty ways to extract nicotine might be a running joke in here, but if some fool trys something like discussed and dies, I do not think a disclaimer means to much. I am all for ligitimate discussions on the ways to extract nicotine and am hoping to learn myself, but posting stuff that very well could make people sick or kill them borders on criminal. Even if you guys are joking, which I am not sure if you are, God I hope you are.