Hi, I am trying to recrystallize salt from methanol. This is to make "mother of pearl" cocaine flakes. I am having trouble. This is exactly what I did:
I dissolved a gram of coke into 20 ml of methanol (the bottle I have says methyl hydrate but I read online that it's the same thing as methanol). Then I made a hot water bath. SWIM put a pyrex dish into a pot of boiling water. Using an eye dropper, SWIM dropped a few drops into the pyrex beaker. I expected the methanol to evaporate almost immediately, leaving me with a thin flakey crystal that can easily be scraped off. But at best, I is left with a small piece of crust, that isn't shiny at all, that is impossible to scrape off the pyrex dish. What is wrong?
I am following a recipe I found in the book, "the pleasures of cocaine". Word for word, the recipe goes:
"Dissolve cocaine hydrochloride in methanol, using 20 ml of solvent for each gram of cocaine. Place a pyrex casserole in a water bath and deposite drops of the solution - one at a time - on different portions of the bottom of the casserole. The methanol will evaporate almost immediately, leaving a thin, flaky crust on the glass. When the entire bottom has been covered, this is scraped up with a single-edged razor blade and collected. This process is repeated until all of the solution has been evaporated and all of the flakes collected"
I dissolved a gram of coke into 20 ml of methanol (the bottle I have says methyl hydrate but I read online that it's the same thing as methanol). Then I made a hot water bath. SWIM put a pyrex dish into a pot of boiling water. Using an eye dropper, SWIM dropped a few drops into the pyrex beaker. I expected the methanol to evaporate almost immediately, leaving me with a thin flakey crystal that can easily be scraped off. But at best, I is left with a small piece of crust, that isn't shiny at all, that is impossible to scrape off the pyrex dish. What is wrong?
I am following a recipe I found in the book, "the pleasures of cocaine". Word for word, the recipe goes:
"Dissolve cocaine hydrochloride in methanol, using 20 ml of solvent for each gram of cocaine. Place a pyrex casserole in a water bath and deposite drops of the solution - one at a time - on different portions of the bottom of the casserole. The methanol will evaporate almost immediately, leaving a thin, flaky crust on the glass. When the entire bottom has been covered, this is scraped up with a single-edged razor blade and collected. This process is repeated until all of the solution has been evaporated and all of the flakes collected"
Last edited by a moderator: