myristicin extraction from nutmeg recipe?

[nancy145]

looking for a safe and relatively easy way to extract myristicin from nutmeg. i looked online and could only find a video in which the guy boiled acetone in his kitchen without even wearing a mask, so i figured he didnt know what the hell he was doing. please explain whats happening in each step, i want to understand what im doing. thanks

 

[Lovermane808]

Have you ever tried plain nutmeg? If so what about it made it worthwhile for you to wanna extract the myristicin? Just curious because it only ever made me and my friends feel very sick and delirious, and i've never heard or read a positive experience with it.

What that guy was doing doesn't sound safe. However, you can extract myristicin (along with a bunch of other stuff) in a much safer way with a simple solvent extraction. Just mix your solvent (preferably ethanol) in a jar with the powder, let it sit a few days, strain the powder from the solvent, then let the solvent completely evaporate (very important). You'll be left with an oil containing the myristicin among other things.

 

[sekio]

solvent extraction of nutmeg will mostly extract the fats and is not selective for the essential oils. Don't even bother using acetone or ethanol, they will make a fatty oily mess at best,

You'd want to do a steam distillation on a few hundred grams of finely powdered whole nutmeg to isolate the essential oil, and then fractionally distill it to remove most of the inactive terpenes (pinene, camphene etc).

Or go find someone who sells the essential oil... it's sold online at places like Amazon.

 

[Dresden]

The essential oil route is definitely the way to go. Fractional distillation is still necessary to isolate the myristicin, which is usually about 9% of the essential oil of Nutmeg.