Extracting Morphine from pills

[Pervitin]

Hello, I want to extract Morphine from pills. I read a lot in this forum and watched the video for cold water extraction that should suit for morphine to. But I am not sure if it's the best way, if you lost 20 percent of your product. Has anyone a better way to do it? How works it when I recrystallize it with ethanole or polyethylenglycole?

 

[m924]

Never expect a 100% extraction, i wouldn't say that 80% yield is that bad.

Sadly can't help you with solvent choice as I don't know much about them, but good luck!

 

[blueballedbilliy]

This is from my personal experience.

It depends greatly on the manufacturer of the pill , you need to look up the ndc # and find out exactly what the ingredients are.

Water is the best solvent for morphine, followed by alcohol. You have to check with each ingredient in the pill if it will be dissolved with whatever solvent you choose.

Pretty much every pill will have fillers binders and excipients which will be dissolved with the morphine salt. The common are Hypromellose, Microcrystalline Cellulose, and lactose that will be extracted with the morphine.

The best extraction route is the cold water extraction, but it only works with certain brands. Others will gel up excessively due to the hpmc content and won't filter. These types require excessive preparation and require complete dissolution in aqueous acidic conditions for 12-24hr before attempting to isolate the morphine.

Isolation of morphine is as simple as raising the ph to 9-11 to precipitate the base, and then extraction by decanting, filtration, and washing the precipitate.

As for purifying the crude extract, the textbook method is recrystallization in anhydrous ethanol. I have not tried this personally.

I must admit it's not really worth the effort unless you have a lot of pills and patience. However the method of simply cold water extraction will get rid of a lot of the inert ingredients and then passing the solution through a .22um wheel filter, for the injection of morphine sulfate is useful for harm reduction purposes

 

[blueballedbilliy]

Also for filtering it greatly helps to have a good vacuum, not a rotary vane pump (unless you have a cold trap), but a membrane pump, as it will be sucking a lot of water vapor.

 

[blueballedbilliy]

NH4OH should be used as 1 drop will immediately precipitate morphine base without having to monitor ph, otherwise use sodium carbonate or dilute sodium hydroxide solutions and monitor with litmus paper the ph, it will start turning milky white when it begins to precipitate and it crashes out and is best if stirring when doing this for say 15 min, let sit covered in a fridge for the rest of the morphine to crash out for 30mins and then freezer for a bit without letting it freeze. A cheap centrifuge will also help in this step.

Also wanted to mention while the easiest purification way would be re-crystallization , and then you could test weight and melting point for purity.

Another way would be using liquid liquid chromatography and verification with tlc.
This would give you the highest purity but requires a bit of knowledge in analytical chemistry. I believe the eluent for morphine base is an 1% acetic acid solution. Maybe someone could elucidate further on the chromatography part.

The best information for this stuff is publicly available in analytical chemistry, forensic chemistry, toxicology, and law enforcement chemist papers online.

Another note,. I use ice cold water for extraction. I crush up the pills into as finely as possible with mortar and pestle, and put them into a container like an empty prescription bottle. I then add minimal amount of water say 20ml for 5 pills worth, and shake it vigorously for 10secs and then rapidly filter under vacuum with a standard Buchner funnel and filter paper. I then wash twice with 10ml of ice water. This minimizes the amount of gel-ing . This will give you a liquid clear extract which you should be able to precipitate morphine base from immediately.