Me, fubar? whyever did you suspect me? was it something I said or did?
Yes, both morphine and codeine are highly water soluble as salts (excluding some of those salts formed by reaction with a base, yes, forming a salt by adding a base is possible in certain circumstances, specifically, from phenols, because a phenolic hydroxyl (-OH) group (a phenol is a benzene {phenyl} ring with a hydroxyl group on it, as an alcohol is formed from a non-aromatic carbon chain or ring), they can form salts with bases, as long as the base is strong enough to deprotonate the parent phenol, since the phenolic -OH moiety is much, much MUCH more acidic than an alcohol, the parent compound phenol itself, I.e hydroxybenzene, is acidic enough to cause physical burns to skin and flesh)/
This can be put to advantage, by using a calcium base, to form the insoluble calcium morphinate, the phenoxide/phenolate salt of morphine, and to precipitate it out of solution (you know what they say, if you're not part of the solution...you're part of the precipitate
) once one has first leached the ground up pods with dilute acid, doesn't need to be strong, you want a non-oxidizing acid, hydrochloric being ideal for the purpose, since it will facilitate stripping the inorganic fraction from the calcium morphinate, plus the phenolates of the rest of the phenolic alkaloids to be found in poppy pods.
After its been extracted, and the codeine removed (and saved, obviously, for say, catalytic hydrogenation to dihydrocodeine then demethylation with 30% hydrogen bromide (anhydrous) in glacial acetic acid, 2 hours, 90-100 'C, about 95% yield of 6-monoacetyldihydromorphine (reaction performed on codeine on the other hand IIRC gives a thebaine derivative), or either the codeine itself used for demethylation using pyridine (stinks to high fuck, a real gutwrenching filthy stink, is also what you'll get from pyridine, it smells absolutely foul, think the nasty smell in methylated spirit, magnified a million-fold and then some more just for the fuck of being a sickening olfactory sledgehammer to the testicles, yields are at best around 30%, and thats if done well.
And whilst I've never tried it, apparently near quantitative yields can be had by using sodium or potassium dodecanethiolate in combination with potassium tert-butoxide, thiols are also known for being real awful stinkers, but dodecanethiol is somewhat less nasally abusive than the lower weight thiols (which stink like rotting flesh mixed with shit and putrefying onions/garlic/leeks and carry like an outbreak of ebola in a crowded, sanitation-less african slum, one hell of a potent stench, they use either methane/ethane or propanethiol, I forget which, might vary country to country, in tiny amounts to stink up natural gas so it has warning properties in case of a leak, not so objectionable in the very, very small quantities in house gas supplies, but concentrated, the lower and mid-weight alkanethiols are truly disgusting)
I've read papers that give very high yields, but others have tried, and failed, I believe the trick is in choosing the right solvent. DMF (dimethyl formamide) might do it, possibly acetonitrile, or hexamethylphosphoramide (the latter is carcinogenic, so be aware, and one will need a good vacuum pump to strip either DMF or HMPA), I've yet to experiment with that route personally though.
And as far as OTC opioid precursors go, dihydrocodeine is my current 'thing', if you get my drift.
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