The idea behind the following extraction is that acetaminophen and aspirin (I’ll use A/A from now on) are very insoluble in cold water. Codeine phosphate (the most common salt of codeine) is very soluble in water including cold water. The following table explains:
Solubility (31C water) Solubility (21C water)
Aspirin 1g / 100 ml 1g / 300ml
Acetaminophen 1g / 70 ml 1g / 150 ml
Codeine 1g / 2.3 ml 1g / 0.7 ml Phosphate
So as you can see, both A/A aren’t very soluble in 21C water, so if you cool the water to around 10C, the solubility will drop even further. That way you can dissolve 20 tablets in 50ml of hot water, cool the water down to 10C, filter the solution and end up with the same amount of codeine as the tablets contained but only a fraction of the original amount of A/A.
1. Obtain a quantity of tablets containing codeine, check to see if they contain anything other than codeine, caffeine, acetaminophen or aspirin. If they do, and you don’t know whether or not it will be a problem, your best bet is not to use them. Measure out your desired amount of codeine (ex. 64 mg = 8 tablets * 8mg/tablet). You may want to add 2 extra tablets as it is quite likely you will lose some codeine in the procedure. As you get more experience with the procedure you will be able to get approx. 95% of the codeine extracted.
2. Measure out some nice hot water, use approx. 40ml / 20 tablets or more if needed. I would suggest you don’t go over 50ml for 20 tablets. I don’t know if the use of boiling water would destroy any of the codeine but your best bet is not to use it. Use hot water but not boiling. Make sure the tablets dissolve completely. Some dissolve on contact with water while others need some help dissolving by crushing them. Note : not all of the tablet will dissolve, there are water-insoluble fillers in the tablet and not all of the A/A will dissolve either(which is what we want).
3. Place the solution in a cold bath, I just use some ice cubes in a container of water. Stir the mixture occasionally until the solution drops to about 15C or lower. You won’t need a thermometer to measure the temperature, just make sure it’s ”cold”. This will take about 30 min. If you wish to speed this up, you can use less water to dissolve the tablets, and add ice chips to cool the mixture faster. Just make sure you don’t add so much ice that you drastically increase the volume of the mixture.
4. Filter the solution using whatever you have. Coffee filters work well, but lab filters work the best. Just make sure you don’t end up with obvious solids in the filtered solution. This will take about 1 hr. You may also want to rinse the solids left over in the filter with some ice-water to extract any remaining codeine.
Solubility (31C water) Solubility (21C water)
Aspirin 1g / 100 ml 1g / 300ml
Acetaminophen 1g / 70 ml 1g / 150 ml
Codeine 1g / 2.3 ml 1g / 0.7 ml Phosphate
So as you can see, both A/A aren’t very soluble in 21C water, so if you cool the water to around 10C, the solubility will drop even further. That way you can dissolve 20 tablets in 50ml of hot water, cool the water down to 10C, filter the solution and end up with the same amount of codeine as the tablets contained but only a fraction of the original amount of A/A.
1. Obtain a quantity of tablets containing codeine, check to see if they contain anything other than codeine, caffeine, acetaminophen or aspirin. If they do, and you don’t know whether or not it will be a problem, your best bet is not to use them. Measure out your desired amount of codeine (ex. 64 mg = 8 tablets * 8mg/tablet). You may want to add 2 extra tablets as it is quite likely you will lose some codeine in the procedure. As you get more experience with the procedure you will be able to get approx. 95% of the codeine extracted.
2. Measure out some nice hot water, use approx. 40ml / 20 tablets or more if needed. I would suggest you don’t go over 50ml for 20 tablets. I don’t know if the use of boiling water would destroy any of the codeine but your best bet is not to use it. Use hot water but not boiling. Make sure the tablets dissolve completely. Some dissolve on contact with water while others need some help dissolving by crushing them. Note : not all of the tablet will dissolve, there are water-insoluble fillers in the tablet and not all of the A/A will dissolve either(which is what we want).
3. Place the solution in a cold bath, I just use some ice cubes in a container of water. Stir the mixture occasionally until the solution drops to about 15C or lower. You won’t need a thermometer to measure the temperature, just make sure it’s ”cold”. This will take about 30 min. If you wish to speed this up, you can use less water to dissolve the tablets, and add ice chips to cool the mixture faster. Just make sure you don’t add so much ice that you drastically increase the volume of the mixture.
4. Filter the solution using whatever you have. Coffee filters work well, but lab filters work the best. Just make sure you don’t end up with obvious solids in the filtered solution. This will take about 1 hr. You may also want to rinse the solids left over in the filter with some ice-water to extract any remaining codeine.
