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Solvent Question

Soma24

Soma24

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Joined
Oct 5, 2007
Messages
105
Location
Adelaide, South Australia
I've read many horror stories of people using Diethyl ether to make crack and blowing themselves up, and I was just wondering is there a safer solvent that could be used??

I've extracted DXM a few times using Naphtha (which, I assume anyway, is safer) and I was just wondering if it could be used the make freebase coke??

Thanks for any help :)
 
Sorry, my bad, I was using the terms "Crack" and "Freebase Coke" interchangeably... So I checked out wiki and I now understand that Crack Cocaine omits the ether step altogether, is this right??

So then what I really meant to ask in my original question is - Can you use something other than ether to make freebase cocaine?? Could you use any solvent, something like naphtha, or does it have to be ether??

Sorry if I've still got it all wrong
 
I think what f&b is saying is that the weak base used to convert cocaine to crack is sodium bicarbonate (baking soda).
The reaction equation would look like this:
Cocaine-HCl + NaHCO3 --> Cocaine + H2CO3 + NaCl
H2CO3 --> H2O + CO2
Basically, sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO3) acts as a weak base, stripping the acidic proton off of cocaine HCl. This generates carbonic acid (H2CO3, the same stuff that is the carbonation in soda-pop), which spontaneously rearranges to a molecule of water (H2O) and a molecule of carbon dioxide (CO2). The NaCl is just table salt, and is generated as a relatively harmless side product of the reaction when using baking soda.
The general case of creating freebase cocaine can be performed with any base. Often ammonia is used. I don't intend to start some kind of pedantic war here, like would happen on Other Drugs, but crack and freebase are really the same thing. The former has the reputation of being more diluted and ghetto, the latter has the reputation of being explosive.
Freebase cocaine, in whatever form, is less polar than regular Cocaine HCl. This accounts for its lower boiling point, which makes it smokable. It also explains why it is far more soluble in nonpolar solvents, like ether. Certain individuals in the past (I hear John Belushi was one of them), used to use diethyl ether to dissolve the freebase cocaine. Ether happens to be extremely volatile, and considering most freebasers do this over the stove, while already high, you can see how explosions would happen.
Now to your original question. Pretty much any non-polar solvent will work for dissolving the freebase. A good option, which is recommended by David Lee, author of the Cocaine Handbook, is petroleum either. It has similar physical and solubility properties to regular diethyl ether, but is chemically unrelated. It is slightly safer. But really, the biggest thing is, don't do it over a stove while high. I'm not sure why certain people prefer to freebase with a solvent, as the product will drop out of an aqueous solution anyway. Does it aid in purity? Maybe someone can answer this. Freebasing has never been my thing. I do know that putting the cocaine HCl in ammonia works reasonably well, and allows you to completely avoid any risk of fire.
 
hussness said:
I'm not sure why certain people prefer to freebase with a solvent, as the product will drop out of an aqueous solution anyway. Does it aid in purity? Maybe someone can answer this. Freebasing has never been my thing. I do know that putting the cocaine HCl in ammonia works reasonably well, and allows you to completely avoid any risk of fire.
Click to expand...

The way I understand it now is, if you omit the solvent step and just let water evaporate then you are left with cocaine freebase, plus what ever the original cocaine salt may have been cut with, plus NaCl (table salt)... or if you used ammonia you would be left with NH4Cl, which probably isn't too good for you if you smoke it. This impure mix is what's referred to as "crack"

If you use a solvent to dissolve the cocaine freebase, then you can keep the solvent and just toss the water, which contains the cut and the table salt, and evaporate off the solvent, leaving you with pure cocaine freebase.

Please correct me if I got anything wrong.
 
Correct.
Keep in mind though that some of what the coke was cut with may also turn into a free-base form. If that happens to be an oil, instead of a solid, then you'll be left with a final product that'll be kinda difficult to use, but thems the breaks...
I believe Le Junk has a coke purification thread in ODD that allows you to remove some other impurities though, i'm not familiar with the process.
 
Soma24 said:
The way I understand it now is, if you omit the solvent step and just let water evaporate then you are left with cocaine freebase, plus what ever the original cocaine salt may have been cut with, plus NaCl (table salt)... or if you used ammonia you would be left with NH4Cl, which probably isn't too good for you if you smoke it. This impure mix is what's referred to as "crack"

If you use a solvent to dissolve the cocaine freebase, then you can keep the solvent and just toss the water, which contains the cut and the table salt, and evaporate off the solvent, leaving you with pure cocaine freebase.

Please correct me if I got anything wrong.
Click to expand...

Why would you have to evaporate the water? Couldn't you just filter the insoluble freebase, and solve the solvent problem and the smoking NH4Cl potential toxicity problem all at once?
 
Yeah, that sounds like it would work to me, good thinking... though I think dealers actually prefer that there is some salt left in the final product, because it makes their coke go further, therefore more profit

Your method sounds like a safer way of making freebase cocaine for yourself though
 
The base should be dissolved in a non-polar solvent and then the solvent is washed with water
Evaporate the solvent, discard water. Dissolve base in Acetone, add HCL acid to precipitate HCL salts, filter them out and discard acetone.:p
 
A few miligrams of freebase dissolve in water... that is why it's better to recover it using a nonpolar solvent... like Hexane. Then you evaporate it.

Question: can turpentine be used?
 
Not really. Turpentine can be any number of things. Vegetable turpentine is a mixture of monoterpenes, mostly alpha-pinene. It has a very pungent smell, takes forever to evaporate and leaves an oily residue of less volatile terpenes. Mineral turpentine is similar to VM&P naphtha, fairly high boiling mineral spirits low in aromatics. I guess it could be used in a pinch, but it's not very clean and the boiling point is too high unless you're very patient.

Congrats by the way on bringing another borderline thread back from the dead.
 
wash

good thing is coke solubility in water or hot ethanol is really high,, you can saturate 1 ml of water with more than 2 grams. Any undissolved particle is not cocaine...
 
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