Freebase cocaine with ether instead of ammonia!?

[MisterAnonymous]

Hello,

I bought coca Leaves in Peru and i am going to synthesize cocaine but i wanted to freebase my cocaine with ether giving me a much purer product does anybody know how to perform it correct normally we use a 10% ammonia solution!?
Please help me..

 

[SoldadoDeDrogas]

You would still need ammonia unless you plan to use sodium or potassium hydroxide, which I don't think I've heard of in this context.
Anyway, dissolve cocaine in water. Add ether. Add ammonia until pH 9. Stir, shake, whatever, agitate mixture for a moment. Seperate ether layer and let evaporate. The result is freebase cocaine.

 

[MisterAnonymous]

You would still need ammonia unless you plan to use sodium or potassium hydroxide, which I don't think I've heard of in this context.
Anyway, dissolve cocaine in water. Add ether. Add ammonia until pH 9. Stir, shake, whatever, agitate mixture for a moment. Seperate ether layer and let evaporate. The result is freebase cocaine.

SoldadoDeDrogas@SoldadoDeDrogas Thanks maestro how much ether and ammonia do i need to freebase 10g?

 

[SoldadoDeDrogas]

That's a good question. There is probably an exact stoichiometric amount in exact proportion. I'm too lazy and stupid to figure out at the moment. The ammonia is only used to base, so just add slowly and keep checking pH not to go over 9.5 or so. The ether is just to draw in the base cocaine. You can probably get away with two portions of 50ml ether I am going to guess.

Add ether first, then slowly add ammonia until you hit pH 9 and seperate ether phase (give it some time to base the coke and transfer). Adding ether first will ensure you don't over alkalize your coke. It will migrate before it is compromised. Add another 50ml of ether, Check pH of aqueous phase and make sure 9, maybe go up a few more points, wait again for any remaining salt to base and transfer, then add ether phase to the first extraction. Let evaporate. You should end up with slightly less weight in base coke rather than HCl salt, because we are removing that group from the molecule. In other words, this is a reduction so the product will naturally lose weight. So maybe ~8.5-9g freebase coke.

Dont toss your aq. phase, let that evaporate also just in case. Probably some trace coke left in any event.

 

[MisterAnonymous]

The only thing is that i don't start from Cocaiane Hydroclhoride because i just made it i have a Vacuum filtered H2SO4\cocaine solution.

And normally i only add ammonnia and it gets cloudier everything i add ammonnia till the freebase fell out:

Do i add the ether also first here or how do i do it and how much do i use?

 

[SoldadoDeDrogas]

Ok so it is suspended sulfate salt? Are you using potassium permanganate solution? If you are starting from leaves/tea I think this is the next step if you haven't.

 

[SoldadoDeDrogas]

If you have not oxidized with permanganate solution... I will read it to you ...
Chill your solution to ~5c add slowly in small portions %6 KMnO4 and wait a few moments and repeat ...
33ml of KMnO4 solution for every kg of leaves/tea used is the 'sweet spot' - wait 30 minutes after last addition.
10g of coke is about 2kg or 2.5 I believe? So about 66 or 80ml total.
Filter MnO2 out of solution.
Coke solution should lose alot of the red/brown color and be pale/clear yellowish.

 

[Frit Buchner]

I guess I'll jump in here with some technical data. The Pka of cocaine is 8.61. normally if you're cocaine solution has a pH of 8.61, it is a salt. If you have a cocaine solution that has a pH of 5.59 ( the PKb of cocaine) you have base cocaine, which would not dissolve in water of course, so if you add your ether. Chloroform or other nonpolar solvent to a solution of cocaine in water and adjust the ph to 5.59 and agitate it for a couple of minutes and separate the nonpolar solvent in a seperatory funnel, added more nonpolar solvent and adjusted the ph to 5.59 again and agitated again and separated again into another container AND THEN repeated a 3rd time with the addition of non polar, ph adjustment and agitation and separation, this 3rd faction should be evaporated separately, preferably under vacuum. If there is cocaine left after the evaporation you have discovered the saturation point of the nonpolar solvent you are using. If it is less than the result of your second pull you have gotten it all and if it's the same as your second pull a 4th pull is in order. Here's how they say it's done;
the first step, coca leaves are agitated with a little base (e.g. lime) - to ensure that neutral cocaine molecules are present - kerosene can then extract the cocaine from the leaves. On adding dilute sulfuric acid to the kerosene, protonated cocaine transfers to the aqueous layer (a “back-extraction”) as cocaine sulfate.

Extraction of cocaine

This layer is separated off and treated with an alkali such as lime, which precipitates neutral cocaine; this is the crude “coca paste”, anything between 30% and 80% pure.

coca-paste

Cocaine hydrochloride powderThe crude paste is then shipped to another lab, to remove impurities, both inorganic and alkaloid impurities. The crude paste is dissolved in dilute sulphuric acid, and aqueous KMnO4 added until the purple solution just turns colourless (an unusual “permanganate titration”), this oxidises the alkaloid impurities and leaves a brown precipitate of insoluble MnO2, which is filtered off. The aqueous layer, which contains protonated cocaine, is treated with alkali (normally ammonia solution), which neutralises the cocaine sulfate; the precipitated cocaine is filtered off and dried. This is “coke base”.

 

[Frit Buchner]

So looking at what you have there, what you should have done is monitor the pH and when you got to about 6, stopped and filtered the precipitate out and then started again with the liquid faction and ammonia and added ammonia and went to pH 5.5, filtered out the precipitate and set it aside ( most of your base cocaine is here) and then continued to pH 5 and set that precipitate aside as probably containing a little based cocaine. Knowing that the leaves contained between 0.3 and 0.7% cocaine 100g of leaves should yeild 0.3-0.7g of base cocaine. So a kg of leaves has about 1/8-1/4 oz of base cocaine and If you made it hcl, it would be 10% more because the HCL weighs 10% as much (306g/m vs 339g/m base vs HCL, m=mole) roughly