static_mind, I appreciate the amount of thought you've put into making a different extraction method. It uses some solid logic and appears to be working effectively in the picture. I don't want to sound cynical but I did notice a couple of issues. The first thing that stood out was the amount of water used in that picture. You didn't mention how many pills you were extracting, and although it appears to me like there are probably many doses in there, I wanted to be sure it wasn't a single, because that much water (~300ml) for a single dose is way too much, and will result in far more paracetemol (around 4.5g or 9 pills by my estimates) than should be consumed in one go.
From my experience with the extractions, the more filter paper or paper towels used, the less codeine results in the end solution. For example the only difference I noticed between using 2 coffee filters and 6 is that the end product was of less strength. I tested out paper towels on a few occasions, and although they (for some but not all pills) seemed to produce a slightly clearer liquid, the strength was never as strong as with coffee filters. The only way I could get it to an almost comparable strength was by using a very small amount of paper towel (1/10th a sheet) folded up and wedged in the bottom of the funnel. There was a major flaw with this however, in that unless the paper was wedged in perfectly, sometimes small particles could still manage to get around it. Ultimately I thought that coffee filters worked better (and compared to my "wedging" method, more safely) since they were designed to filter something, whereas a paper towel is designed to absorb.
From extractions using large amounts of paper towel, I found that if I "wrung" the towels out into a separate container and filtered it through 2 coffee filters, I'd get something almost as strong as the initial extraction, which also suggested to me there was quite abit of loss. However I should mention that I always also used to either wring out the coffee filters and re-filter the results, or let it filter thoroughly and then put some additional water through the filter paper, which would usually result in a brew of between 10-40% the strength of the original extraction, depending on the brand.
In terms of how clear it appeared, the only determining factor (assuming you are only using coffee filters) I could note was the brand of the codeine. Some brands produced crystal clear results with 2 filter papers, while others would always have a slight cloudy appearance, regardless of how much filtering was done (with coffee filters or paper towels at any rate). I've had brands that contained dyes, but still produced what appeared to be a clear liquid (apart from obviously having a color in it) I'm not sure what causes the cloudiness, but it should be noted that the most enjoyable (and strongest) feeling doses of codeine I consumed were from tablets that filtered clear.
Initially you posted saying that you tried an extraction with normal methods but the liquid crept up the filter and dripped over the top of the funnel (or similar) device. I've also seen this happen, generally when preparing a larger amount for extraction, but there is a fairly simple solution. The only reason why the liquid is able to get above the funnel is because the filter paper is larger than the funnel it is sitting in. The solution is to either get a larger funnel or to trim the filter paper down so that even if it does reach the top, it won't be able to drip over.
Tortoise said:
Conclusion: there's no way even 500mg of para will dissolve in 100ml of water, and any para precipitates will be very, very obvious.
The solubility of paracetemol in water is undeniably low enough when compared to codeine to make it almost a trivial factor, but from the information I've read, between 0.7 and 1.5 grams of paracetemol
should dissolve into 100ml's of water (depending on temperature). It could be possible that the paracetemol caps you used also contained some filler - I was under the impression that paracetemol took on a crystalline form (as opposed to powdery) when it was pure. That said, having never tried the said procedure you could be entirely right about it not working.
Many have pointed out the chemists own pain tablets as being the best for extraction. There are many positives about using them - they are in a bottle of 100 (so you don't need to spend ages breaking blister packs), they are 10mg and not 8, and they filter rather quickly. However, out of the many chemists I visisted in SA (atleast 30), only one stocked the chemists own pain tablets. Instead it was far more common for them to have the chemists own pain tabsules, which others in this thread have criticised for their slow filtering speed.
I'm actually a fan of them, because in my experience they always produce a very strong dose, probably stronger than the pain tablets. The only problem is that it takes a very long time to filter, so its best to do it overnight or at a time when you won't be checking it every 5 minutes to see if its done yet
Codapane is fairly common here, and IMO is probably the best brand (only just, with chemists own pain tablets being second) in terms of how quickly it extracts and the strength of the effects. The only negative to it is that it is 8mg and only comes in a max of 48 tablets.
There are a large variety of generic brands which are associated to a certain chemist, and generally I found these types of brand names to produce fairly effective results. There are atleast a few of these that are as good as the chemists own brand. Some others aren't quite as effective - such as chemmart, but will still do the job (and with the chemmart brand in particular, a wash of the filter paper would be wise since I've found it seems to clog up a reasonable amount of codeine).
If you can't (or don't want to) obtain generic brands, the regular "panadeine" will always do the trick, though maybe not quite as well as chemists own or codapane.
For reasons I've explained in another thread, Codalgin 100's never extracted very well for me and so I generally avoided the brand altogether (tho I've had success with the 20 and 50 boxes).