Drug info - Safrole

[Medicator]

SWIM was curious about safrole extraction from the sassafras plant. SWIM lives in an area where sassafras is every where. SWIM would deeply you appreciate if anyone could help SWIM out.

[Greenport]

Well swiY posted this in the wrong section, this is the 'herbal XTC' section...but eh look on the rhodium archives:

http://www.drugs-forum.com/chemistry...try/index.html

Specifically,
http://www.drugs-forum.com/chemistry...afrolefaq.html
http://www.drugs-forum.com/chemistry...tillation.html

Those are good places to start.

Know that the extraction of safrole generally requires distillation...it's not the easiest thing to do unless swiY already has a still. Safrole's boiling point is 232-234C so swiY would have to heat a little less than that and throw away/set aside what comes over. Then heat a little more than that and collect the oil that comes over, this will be swiY's safrole as a liquid - so save this. Anything that's left in the distillation flask is tossable. An even better way to do this is with vacuum distillation, to lower the boiling point required for the oil to come over but without a proper lab setup that may be a daunting task.

Safrole's melting point is 11C so it will solidify upon putting in the fridge or freezer.

Reputation Comments on this post:

good answer, plus redirect to proper forum

[Medicator]

Swim looked around and anything to do with safrole Swim was told went here. Swim sends his appologies. Swim has been trying to make a distiller but has not been successfull, partially because Swim is not currently able to get copper piping as Swim usually would, obviously Swim is impatient and Swim improvised on the distillation and Swim failed, but Swim says thanks for the info and Swim will be quick to check it out.

[Greenport]

Making a distiller is not an easy task. In most cases it's easier to buy a lab-grade distiller - they're not ridiculous but they're worth a pretty penny and swiY doesn't need any kind of special license to have one, as long as swiY isn't planning to distill ethanol with it .

Also it is important to note that if for whatever reason a search warrant is attained that any distiller found will almost certainly be tested for precursor/drug residue. If swiY does decide to distill safrole for whatever reason (not suggesting to), it would be wise for him/her to not ever tell a soul anything about it and to keep that apparatus squeaky clean.

A distillation apparatus separates various components of a chemical mixture via their boiling points at a set pressure. The distillation flask consists of a heat-resiliant material sitting on top of a heat source, or in a water/oil bath. Glass can be satisfactory but likes to shatter upon quick heating/cooling/excess heat. There are better materials though. This flask is attached to an adapter (with a thermometer in the top) which is in-turn attached to a condenser. The condenser is simply a tube with a surrounding section that fills with flowing water from source, which cools the distilling vapors back into liquid. The condenser usually won't allow vapors to enter the receiving flask until they are liquified. The receiving flask is just that - another flask which often sits in an ice-bath to hold the liquid that spills over.

The condenser is the hardest part to make, and homemade condensers usually instead work by running a small metal pipe in a coil to increase the surface area.

Of course yields will be much higher with a lab-grade setup regardless what swiY is distilling.

Ftw SwiM's dragon once made a distillation setup, out of a glass beer bottle, a pepsi bottle and some piping. It used it to distill a mixture of acetone and water and collected the acetone on the other side...with around 30% yield The other 70% was lost to the air...making it airtight is very important, but vapor must also be allowed to escape if pressure gets too high or things might go boom! Exploding glass is baaadd, especially with hot chemicals inside.