How to extract codeine from pills
The idea behind the following extraction is that
acetaminophen and aspirin (I'll use A/A from now on) are very
_insoluble_ in cold water. Codeine phosphate (the most common
salt of codeine) is very _soluble_ in water including cold water.
The following table explains:
Solubility (31C water) Solubility (21C water)
Aspirin 1g / 100 ml 1g / 300ml
Acetaminophen 1g / 70 ml 1g / 150 ml
Codeine 1g / 2.3 ml 1g / 0.7 ml
Phosphate
So as you can see, both A/A aren't very soluble in 21C
water, so if you cool the water to around 10C, the solubility will
drop even further. That way you can dissolve 20 tablets in 50ml
of hot water, cool the water down to 10C, filter the solution and
end up with the same amount of codeine as the tablets contained
but only a fraction of the original amount of A/A.
[...]
1. Obtain a quantity of tablets containing codeine, check to
see if they contain anything other than codeine, caffeine,
acetaminophen or aspirin. If they do, and you don't know whether
or not it will be a problem, your best bet is not to use them.
Measure out your desired amount of codeine (ex. 64 mg = 8 tablets
* 8mg/tablet). You may want to add 2 extra tablets as it is quite
likely you will lose some codeine in the procedure. As you get
more experience with the procedure you will be able to get
approx. 95% of the codeine extracted.
2. Measure out some nice hot water, use approx. 40ml / 20 tablets
or more if needed. I would suggest you don't go over 50ml for 20
tablets. I don't know if the use of boiling water would destroy
any of the codeine but your best bet is not to use it. Use hot
water but not boiling. Make sure the tablets dissolve completely.
Some dissolve on contact with water while others need some help
dissolving by crushing them. Note : not all of the tablet will
dissolve, there are water-insoluble fillers in the tablet and not
all of the A/A will dissolve either(which is what we want).
3. Place the solution in a cold bath, I just use some ice cubes
in a container of water. Stir the mixture occasionally until the
solution drops to about 15C or lower. You won't need a
thermometer to measure the temperature, just make sure it's
"cold". This will take about 30 min. If you wish to speed this
up, you can use less water to dissolve the tablets, and add ice
chips to cool the mixture faster. Just make sure you don't add
so much ice that you drastically increase the volume of the mixture.
4. Filter the solution using whatever you have. Coffee filters
work well, but lab filters work the best. Just make sure you
don't end up with obvious solids in the filtered solution. This
will take about 1 hr. You may also want to rinse the solids left
over in the filter with some ice-water to extract any remaining
codeine.
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