Simple 99.99% MDMA Purification

[Lanacloc]

So I read recently that MDMA is very slightly soluble in acetone, but the impurities are very soluble. This matched up with my experience of finding crystals in the bottom of flasks, so I started thinking of a way to leverage this.

I’d wanted an excuse to use my Soxhlet for a while now, so I made some anhydrous acetone and fired that baby up with a very small amount of M just in case everything went sideways.

I could scarcely believe it worked so well, but the saturation of the acetone caused the M to crash out the moment it hit the flask, creating little round popcorn-like pebbles of pure white crystal.

I’ll make a full write up on it at some point but a few key points:

Slow and steady, acetone boils easily and overloading your condenser won’t do any harm, but it also isn’t ideal. For a 500mL Soxhlet you should be able to work through about 2 grams per hour. More if you have a cellulose thimble rather than cotton buds, as positioning it directly under the drip speeds up the process massively.

Powder your M first, trust me. I didn’t and that’s what I’m basing the 2 grams figure on. If you did, I’m sure you’ll get a much higher throughput and maybe won’t even need to worry about a thimble.

Enjoy your pure M!

 

[vash445]

Enjoy your pure M!

This is false while "reasonably" pure, if it's a amine impurity which causes MEH MDMA it will NOT wash out...

 

[G_Chem]

Yea while this is a cool TEK and use of a Soxhlet, I have to begrudgingly agree with vash, it won’t be pure. The acetone really only grabs the precursor oils but any amine impurities will remain, and the likelihood some exist in the sample is high.

Still a cool purification technique, but to get truly pure product one likely needs to do an A/B followed by a careful vacuum distillation with a narrow temperature range.

-GC

 

[Phobos]

Yea while this is a cool TEK and use of a Soxhlet, I have to begrudgingly agree with vash, it won’t be pure. The acetone really only grabs the precursor oils but any amine impurities will remain, and the likelihood some exist in the sample is high.

Still a cool purification technique, but to get truly pure product one likely needs to do an A/B followed by a careful vacuum distillation with a narrow temperature range.

-GC

Basically this is just a standard acetone wash, but you need less acetone and more time due to the Soxhlet?

 

[G_Chem]

Basically this is just a standard acetone wash, but you need less acetone and more time due to the Soxhlet?

Yup pretty much! I think there may be a slight solubility of MDMA HCl in hot acetone as well so potential risk of losing a bit. I believe this is why minimal amount of ice cold is often the standard. I could be wrong on that, I’m sadly no molly cook

-GC