new crystal formations... opium?

[opiatoker]

hey everyone. just made an accidental discovery...
remember the extract from the dried poppies?? link to the topic is right here (dried poppies, opium truth very nice)
anyway, i was at the store getting lightbulbs and walked past the mini auto section, and as usual i look at the gas treatments and carb treatments, years ago i used to use "heet" for a different kind of extraction.

so i look just out of curiousity.

and one of them was methanol, and isopropanol. i bought it.

was playing with some of the still very sticky extract at the end of a plastic scraper, and just to see what happens i poured some of the fuel treatment onto it, and the run off went into the little teflon coated pan i used to boil it in.

it was only a very small amount of yum yum. and when i poured it onto the yum yum, it lightened in color slightly, and went from being pliable and sticky, to rock solid.

the reason it was on the scraper is because i just didn't want to make a mess peeling it off, because it would have been all over my hands. and now, i just snapped it off.

definitely more curious now, i poured some more liquid into the pan, and dropped the rock into it, and started poking at it with the scraper, it started to come apart. i kept at it until it was completely broken up.

once i was sure it was broken up as much as possible, i carefully poured the dark amber liquid into another container.

what was left was a materiel that had the texture and color of sand. and the actual volume of it was about 3 x that of the original yum yum that i broke down.

the sand stuff when picked up with my fingers quickly reverted to a thick black tar substance. the taste is almost the exact same as the opium but with a very subtle salt flavor added in, and is extremely more water soluble than before, it just dissolves on my tongue. where as before it took a good few minutes for it to dissolve on my tongue.

crazy huh?

(4 days ago)
.....ok i forgot to mention that a couple days ago i added some of the yum yum to some acidic acid and boiled it down and evaporated it to what it is / was just now. i heard that makes it stronger.

(back to present)
the liquid i poured off the sand material i put onto a small plate and evaporated it. looks very nice. but i held my flashlight beneath the plate, and noticed what looks like stretched diamond shaped glitter.

i'm into macro photography so figured i'd take a closer look. what i found is amazing (to me) if anyone is familiar with crystal structures and or what this formation actually is, please do share.

the very close ups are magnified at 40x (10x eyepiece, and 4x camera on top of eyepiece)

[opiatoker]

here is a page that describes the different types of crystalline structures found in opium and its derrivatives. there are several tables with the name and description half way down... i don't know their terminology, (whats a rosette structure?) can anyone tell by the descriptions what these match up with?

i know its not M or H, but almost appears halfway between, but there are soo damn many alkaloids found in opium it could be any of them, or combination of them.

http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-a...1_page005.html

[wendal]

You used acetic acid to bring the pH down?


Chances are that those crystals are your acetic acid.

Methanol is a great solvent for cleaning up your initial water/alcohol extract.

There is a write up around here that details extraction of morphine from opium latex and basic pH methanol is the initial solvent used.........forget where it goes from there. (although, note once again, your not working with latex, so plant oils and such will probably follow over in the methanol.

[opiatoker]

yeah i think you're right. i think the crystals are from a tiny bit of the solids getting through.

i did the methanol thing with the rest of the product, and carefully filtered it off, and no formations.

now, today, it should all be drier than it was yesterday, which its opposite, not very dray at all. makes me think the ph is too low, and is still more acidic than it would be in order to become solid. i my be completely wrong in thinking that, but i swear i read somewhere something along those lines. can't place it though. next time, i'll use a method i discovered of obtaining pure alcaloids from the dried poppies. its a hungarian method that apparently made some major breakthroughs in opiate extraction from the (discarded) used poppies...

it is something everyone interested in poppies should read... very good info in this write up.

heres the process at popies.org

http://www.poppies.org/2001/07/13/hu...m-poppy-straw/

[Diacetyl-M]

Just out of curiosity, doesn't acetic acid turn into acetic anhydried with the right amount of heat/drying? And if so, wouldn't opium be converted to a crude heroin if treated with said product? I may be WAY off there though, anyone with knowledge know about this? I'm pretty sure I've read that this can be done. Tell us how the extraction from the "poppy straw" goes. I'd be curious to know if there is a viable use for the materials left over from scored pods. Interesting thread.

[EmmisonJ]

Originally Posted by Diacetyl-M

Just out of curiosity, doesn't acetic acid turn into acetic anhydried with the right amount of heat/drying? And if so, wouldn't opium be converted to a crude heroin if treated with said product? I may be WAY off there though, anyone with knowledge know about this? I'm pretty sure I've read that this can be done. Tell us how the extraction from the "poppy straw" goes. I'd be curious to know if there is a viable use for the materials left over from scored pods. Interesting thread.

good question, there's a couple ways i've read of to go about getting acetic anhydride. the practical ways incorporate different reactions involving paths using sodium acetate and glacial acetic acid as starting points. i never read heavily on it though so i can't say for sure what works and what doesn't nor can i comment on the yields/dangers of the process (swim has only used GAA for an unrelated purpose) but i can tell you this.... there are some seriously corrosive acid vapors that are produced through some of the procedures.

sodium acetate can be purchased easily or obtained by neutralizing OTC dilute acetic acid (vinegar) with sodium bicarbonate making the sodium acetate salt. you cannot separate acetic acid from the water with heating or freezing. it looks like you can on paper (diff mp, diff bp, azeotrope is fairly high) but it's not a practical way to go about it. it is not an azeotrope but it behaves almost like one. maybe it's water's vapor pressure that carries over most of the acetic acid as the first fraction, i can't recall. but either way it would take many many distillation or a lot of freezing to slowly/incrementally get the acetic acid separated from the h2o. so you take a different approach.

dilute acetic acid (vinegar) to sodium acetate:
need tons of vinegar and add sodium bicarbonate to the vinegar until it stops foaming (until it is neutralized). then boil the solution until the sodium acetate begins to crystallize. then filter off the wet crystals and dry under high heat until TOTALLY DRY. you now have your sodium acetate.

sodium acetate to glacial acetic acid:
combine the sodium acetate with concentrated h2so4, nasty so2 and corrosive acetic acid fumes will evolve. once that is complete then attach the flask to a distillation apparatus and distill at 110C for a clear liquid, this is a slightly wet GAA. there will be charred sodium sulfate and unreacted sodium acetate in the distilling flask and a slightly wet GAA in the receiving flask. now add dehydrated mgso4 to the slightly wet GAA and heat to high heat for a couple hours then distill the flask to dryness. the receiving flask will contain your glacial acetic acid! be careful it smells harmless like vinegar but it is a VERY corrosive nasty acid. just smelling it in concentration can lead to sore, dry throat, nasal passages, etc.

i gave a brief overview and did not give any amounts because anyone who really wants to try this needs to go read up on it first because these are strong acids with nasty acid vapors. this is not to be taken lightly. the most difficult step is probably going from sodium acetate/gaa to acetic anhydride but i will refer you to rhodium or sciencemadness for that. i believe you use the gaa to make acetyl chloride (good luck with that one) then use acetyl chloride + sodium acetate = acetic anhydride + hcl (be careful of those fumes)

as for going from poppies to heroin, i'm going to have to refer you to rhodium for that as i believe it goes beyond what this site's purpose is of course. you will first need to extract, isolate, and purify the morphine from the poppy product before even thinking of reacting it with anything. garbage in, garbage out.

h**p://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=9
h**p://www.erowid.org/archive/rhodium/chemistry/anhydrides.html

[opiatoker]

very interesting. it is way over my head, but SWIM may or may not dabble in some new experimenting... thanks

[Ras Asad]

wow, way over my head...
but the pics are great man!!

[opiatoker]

Originally Posted by Diacetyl-M

Just out of curiosity, doesn't acetic acid turn into acetic anhydried with the right amount of heat/drying? And if so, wouldn't opium be converted to a crude heroin if treated with said product? I may be WAY off there though, anyone with knowledge know about this? I'm pretty sure I've read that this can be done. Tell us how the extraction from the "poppy straw" goes. I'd be curious to know if there is a viable use for the materials left over from scored pods. Interesting thread.

oh there definitely is. there was a hungarian scientist who had the same thoughts. he figureed out how to extract the alkaloids from the wasted pods, which revolutionized the way morphine was / is produced in many countries. (i believe he was hungarian)

yessir... heres the link to a very interesting writeup.

http://www.poppies.org/2001/07/13/hu...m-poppy-straw/

[SharkieJones]

Awesome pics