Whitening

[netRAT]

Long time lurker, first time poster...
Firstly I'd like to express my deep thanks to this community for enriching my knowledge in so many ways.
Hours of reflection while reading through threads.
This place is a wonderful gift!

Now, my question relates to some cathinone powder I have lying around which has an off-white beige sort of tinge to it.
I became curious as to whether it would be possible to whiten it using some fairly simple process while not introducing any toxicity of course as well as not affecting potency.
Again, the simpler the process - the better, as my knowledge and access to professional equipment and chems is pretty much restricted to off the shelf stuff.
Ideas would be highly appreciated.
Cheers.

 

[Skorpio]

I would be wary of directly bleaching it with anything , as most whitening chemicals are oxidizers, and oxidation of the amine could give you a non functional drug.

You might be able to separate out the color components through some type of extraxtion/solvent wash if the color bits have sufficiently different chemical properties than the main chem. The caveat with this is that you only need extremely trace amounts of an impurity to make a white powder off white or even dark looking. There is a good chance of losing a decent amount of yield though.

Basicly you would find a solvent that your compound is insoluble in, and then chill that solvent to really make sure your compound doesn't dissolve. Then you would mix the compound and the solvent and filter it and what is left on the filter is undissolved compound. If you want to see how effective this process was, you could evaporate the solvent and see what was dissolved by that. You could then compare the mass of the two and see how much loss that procedure Gabe to tou, and how much you purified it by.

 

[MyExcuse]

You could always try dissolving it in alcohol and adding a pinch of finely powdered activated charcoal.

What I'd probably do is dissolve it in a minimal amount of 99% Isopropyl alcohol within a small mason jar, put in a pinch of activated charcoal, put the lid on and then place the jar into a hot water bath for 10 minutes then filter off the charcoal and evaporate the alcohol.

You may lose a minimal amount of product but this would be the safest way to remove any unwanted colors.

 

[sekio]

most of the time a slight coloration is not worth worrying about

 

[Gaffy]

most of the time a slight coloration is not worth worrying about

Spoken like a true RC chemist