Wizzle said:
So, this friend of mine has a script for 10 mg methylphenidate. The brand name is Sandoz. I was wondering if you can extract these the same way as the brand name Ritalin? The ingriedients in the tablets are:
-Methylphenidate HCl
-Calciumphosphate
-Lactose
-Wheatstarch
-Gelatin
-Magnesium stearate
-Dutch:Talk (chalk???)
I've read in another thread that the goodies in Novartis Ritalin can easily be extracted by mixing the thouroughly crushed pills in some kind of cooled alcohol (IPA 70% or higher for example at refigerator temperature [5 degrees celcius]) and filtering it through a coffee filter. Then let the solution evaporate and tadaaa! Pure methylphenidate. I have read that this method also works on Concerta.
Since Sandoz is the generic chain of Novartis the ingredients are probably exactly the same. I couldn't find the info on the generics in English so I'm just checking with the experts here to make sure.
Please help me out here so my friend and me can use his script to party once in a while without sniffing chalk!
The purification is for sniffing, so minor amounts of inactive ingredients aren't a problem.
Sorry for the rant, i'm high as hell on this shit now 8) (actually like it better then cocaine). Goes well with a few mojito's too!
I gues Ya'll get the point. Will the alcohol extraction work on this generic? If not, What will? Also, if there is a better or more refined method I'd also like to know, as long as the solvents and such are easy to acquire.
Thanks!
UPDATE on the extraction, please read page 2!
According to my thirteenth edition of the Merck Index, which I have on my computer, the following solubilities are given:
- Methylphenidate freebase; soluble in alcohol, ethyl acetate, ether. Practically insoluble in water, petroleum ether.
- Methylphenidate HCl; soluble in water, alcohol, chloroform.
- Calciumphosphate; (the solubilities where given for calcium biphosphate instead, which is the same, but with an added hydrogen atom) practically insoluble in water, alcohol. Soluble in dilute HCl(hydrochloric acid) or HNO3(nitric acid). Slightly soluble in dilute acetic acid
- Lactose monohydrate; one gram dissolves in 5ml water, in 2.6ml boiling water. Very slightly soluble in alcohol. Insoluble in chloroform, ether.
- Wheat starch; not found
- Gelatin; swells up and absorbs 5-10 times its weight of water to foram a gel in solutions below 35-40C. Soluble in hot water, glycerol, acetic acid. Insoluble in organic solvents.
- Magnesium stearate; insoluble in water. Decomposed by dilute acids.
- Talc; insoluble in water, cold acids or in alkalies. Soluble in hot concentrate phosphoric acid.
The best way to extract the goodies would be to grind the pills up as fine as possible, dump the powdered pills in a clean, glass bottle, and let it soak in a layer of chloroform(aproximately 3ml per pill, so 60ml for 20 pills, or 90ml for the whole pack of 30 pills) overnight, and filter it the next day through a coffeefilter. Evaporate off the chloroform in a hot water bath, which goes fairly quick, as it has a boiling point of 61-62C. Open up all the windows when doing the evaporation, chloroform is a possible carcinogen in humans. And voila, once all the chloroform has evaporated off, your left with nearly to completely pure methylphenidate HCl. Isopropanol nearly always contains water when bought in a store or from an online chemist(de drogist), which will dissolve some crap as well. Also, the Merck Index isn't very clear about the solubility of different alcohols, it might be possible that the lower the number of carbon atoms in contains, the higher the solubility is, due to their higher polarity. That means that methylphenidate could be "soluble" in methanol, but only slightly soluble in isopropanol, and even barely soluble in, for example, n-pentanol(C5H11OH). That could be the reason why your yields where only 50%, because isopropanol isn't very polar in comparisson to lower order alcohols like methanol, and especially methanol.
Chloroform would clearly be the best solvent for your extraction, as it won't dissolve any of the binders and fillers, which a low order alcohol like methanol will possibly dissolve, due to it's pretty high polarity(which makes it act a lot like water) Chloroform appears to be a very selective solvent for methylphenidate, leaving the binders and fillers undissolved in it, and easilly removable by filtration. It also has the big advantage that it will evaporate pretty fast.