opium purification

[AndyLandy420]

so a foaf was looking over the following and got curious...

The chemist starts by purifying the opium. This is done by first boiling the raw opium in water, causing the alkaloids to disolve so that solids and other impurities may be strained from the mixture. The remaining solution is then heated over a low flame to evaporate the water. The paste that remains may be ingested or processed further.

Isoloating Morphine

The chemsist then dissolves the proccessed opium in boiling water and adds about one-fifth as much slaked lime as opium. Adding the lime converts the morphine into a salt - calcium corphenate - without having much effect on the other alkaloids. This is done because morphine - like most other alkaloids in opium - is not soluable in cold water.
After this new solution is cooled, the other alkaloids are precipitated out by filtering the solution through a coarse fabric like burlap to remove all of the solids, leaving just the morphine salt solution.
This solution is heated with about one quarter as much ammonium chloride as the processed opium until the pH reaches 8 or 9. When this solution is cooled, the morphine will precipitate out. This solid morphine is filtered, pressed to remove excesive water, and then air dried. The results is a dark brown powder.
To further purify the morphine, it may be combined with dilute hydrochloric acid - making morphine hydrochloride - and activated charcoal and filtered repeatedly. This results in white powder.

he noticed some things seemed a little off,

- "calcium hydroxide pH=12.0-12.5(wiki)"
so first the lime is added and that forms a salt? (can a base form a salt, i thought it would have to be an acid)

- "The aqueous ammonium chloride solution is mildly acidic.(wiki)"
the ammonium chloride is added and precips morphine freebase? how can an acid precip out a freebase?

is morphine just special or something? how does this work?
thanks

[suckerfree]

Hi Andy,
keep in mind the tek i'm sure is meant for opium harvested from the pod, and not opium soaked from the pod... i'm not sure how large of a difference this actually makes... opium is opium afterall... maybe just not as potent...
anyways... that info i posted was from a book I had. I was searching the web to clarify your questions and I found this... I hope it helps.
The following is a step-by-step description of morphine extraction in a typical Mainland Southeast Asian laboratory
An empty 55-gallon oil drum is placed on bricks about a foot above the ground and a fire is built under the drum. Thirty gallons of water are added to the drum and brought to a boil. Ten to 15 kilograms of raw opium are added to the boiling water.
With stirring, the raw opium eventually dissolves in the boiling water, while soil, leaves, twigs, and other non-soluble materials float in the solution. Most of these materials are scooped out of the clear, dark brown “liquid opium” solution.
Slaked lime (calcium hydroxide) or, more often, a readily available chemical fertilizer with a high content of lime, is added to the solution. Lime will convert water- insoluble morphine alkaloid into water-soluble calcium morphenate. (Other opium alkaloids do not react with lime to form water-soluble calcium salts, as does morphine.) Codeine is an opium alkaloid that is slightly water-soluble and some codeine will be carried over with the calcium morphenate in the liquid. Otherwise, for the most part, the other alkaloids will become a part of the “sludge.”
As the solution cools, the morphine solution is scooped from the drum and poured through a filter. Cloth rice sacks are often used as filters and can then be squeezed in a press to remove most of the solution from the wet sacks. Liquid saponated cresol (“lysol”) is commonly added to the solution to facilitate filtering. The morphine-rich solution is then poured into large cooking pots and reheated but, this time, not boiled.
Ammonium chloride (a powder) is added to the heated calcium morphenate solution to adjust the alkalinity to a pH of 8 to 9, and the solution is then allowed to cool. Within 1 or 2 hours, morphine base precipitates (“crashes”) out of the solution and settles to the bottom of the cooking pot.
The solution is then poured off through cloth filters. Any solid morphine base chunks in the solution will remain on the cloth. The morphine base is removed from both the cooking pot and from the filter cloths, wrapped and squeezed in cloth, and then dried in the sun. When dry, the crude morphine base is a coffee-colored coarse powder. This form of morphine is commonly known by the Chinese term pi-tzu in Mainland Southeast Asia.
If morphine base is to be stored or transported to another location, it may be pressed into blocks. Crude morphine base is generally 50 percent to 70 percent morphine, and is an intermediate product in the heroin process. (This morphine base is generally not used by addicts.)
This crude morphine base may be further purified (and changed to morphine hydrochloride) by dissolution in hot water and hydrochloric acid, then adding activated charcoal, reheating, and filtering. The solution is filtered several times before being allowed to cool. As the solution cools, morphine hydrochloride precipitates out of the solution and settles to the bottom. The precipitate is trapped (or “captured”) by filtration.
If the morphine hydrochloride is to be stored or transported to another location, it may be pressed into bricks. Morphine hydrochloride (often tainted with codeine hydrochloride) is usually pressed into brick-sized blocks in a press and wrapped in paper or cloth. The most common block size is 2 inches by 4 inches by 5 inches, and weighs about 3 pounds (1.3 kilograms). It takes a full day to extract morphine from opium.
source
NOTE: Purifying opium or extracting morphine is NOT making heroin. To make heroin from morphine requires restricted chemicals and is not discussed in this tek.

[AndyLandy420]

crude opium was dissolved and filtered to get out any plant material

calcium hydroxide was added to boiling solution and stirred vigorously while boiling for 5 to 10 minutes

solution was sediment while hot. it cooled and a ton of sediment precipped out at room temp, sediment was filtered and solution was put in the fridge to see if anything else crashed out, nothing else crashed out of solution in the fridge.

the solution was slowly heated and left unattended for about 4 hours, a crapload more sediment came out of solution after it was really hot. what could this mean? the solution was cold with no sediment then once its heated it precips a sediment layer?

proceed with ammonium chloride step or what?

[suckerfree]

Originally Posted by AndyLandy420

the solution was slowly heated and left unattended for about 4 hours, a crapload more sediment came out of solution after it was really hot. what could this mean? the solution was cold with no sediment then once its heated it precips a sediment layer?
proceed with ammonium chloride step or what?

heh, asking questions... you are kinda on the path less traveled.
aren't you supposed to add the ammonium chloride while the solution is hot, then let it cool... ? whatever seditment crashes/or is filtered at this point would be the crude opium... (as I read it)...

[suckerfree]

so whatever happened?

[AndyLandy420]

well my foaf has no ph meter so he is heating, adding small ammounts of ammonium chloride and then cooling to see how much crashes out of solution, when max sediment is reached he will assume he is at the proper ph.

[EarlyKuyler]

SWIM thinks you will need a digital PH meter, SWIM tried this project and the 9.1 was tricky for him to acheive. He ended up with a solution of sodium hydroxide and sulfuric acid (and the goodies), because he accidentally bought the wrong kind of ammonia and was trying to get the M sulfate anyways. Once he got 9.1 white particles began to form throughout the solution. He let cool, and tried to filter with a coffee filter. It got trapped in the filter so he put them in cold water to dissolve the salt alkaloid and is letting it evap. I found his project interesting, could someone explain the carbon filtering process better? Would the M sulfate be dissolved in water, poured through activated charcoal in a filter, then evaped? It couldn't be precipitated because its a salt and changing the ph with chems would make the charcoal pointless. Where should SWIM go to find ammonium chloride? Safe online?

Btw. SWIM says that all of the chems. give off very strong fumes and should be kept under a decent hood, or outside with some wind away from people. Pour chems. slowly, Respirator highly recommended, his lungs didn't feel nice afterwards and he was quite lightheaded.
& latex gloves, gloves, gloves.

[hemifshr]

Can U just smoke the paste from the very first process after it dried? Isn't that called just opium? Forget all the chems and further isolation! I think u would get all the alkoloids out just smoking the O" HEMI