Codeine Phosphate Cold Water Extraction Results

So today, I had the chance (due to the extremely hot weather I stayed home) to try my codeine extraction for the first time.

General overall theory and procedure:
Tylenol 1 tablets contain 325mg Acetaminophen (analgesic), 8mg Codeine Phosphate (narcotic analgesic), and 15mg Caffeine (diuretic, mixed in for legality issues). The solubility according to a drug information page is 1g/20mL, 4g/mL, and 1g/1.5mL (in boiling, cold, and boiling water), respectively. Since we desire a larger amount of codeine without the liver problem causing acetaminophen, we can utilize the differences in solubility to extract the codeine.

1. Crush desired number of tablets.
2. Add an amount of hot water equivalent to 2 times the number of tablets.
3. Stir to dissolve
4. Place in refridgerator, cool.
5. Decant into a funnel with a filter paper wetted with cold water.
6. Let drip into extraction container of choice (I used a water bottle).
7. Repeat if desired with sludge.
8. (Optional) Chromic has designed a method to remove a large amount of the caffeine remaining in the solution by supersaturating the codeine/caffeine solution. As the solubilities of codeine and caffeine are nearly similar, by supersaturation, followed by cooling, the caffeine will precipitate out of solution faster than the codeine will. Gravity filtration can remove the caffeine crystals. This method is a bit time consuming. Another option will to find a way to use alcohol to remove the caffeine.
I know that pure ethanol IS obtainable, but only by licensed pharmacists. The question is whether or not 85% Bacardi 151 is useful. with the 15% water in it, I expect losses of codeine in doing a reverse extraction, but the initial codeine/caffeine filtrate would have to be reduced to a powder first. I don't know how isopropanol would work, but its 99%, which is better than 85% ethanol, but the dangers of not being able to rinse it entirely clean scares me.

Experimental Design:
1. Follow acetaminophen extraction as above.
2. Reduce codeine phosphate/caffeine solution to powder by gentle heating.
3. Dissolve into cold 85% ethanol. Swirl quickly to prevent losses. Ethanol should now contain a majority of the caffeine.
4. Gravity filter the solution.
5. Gentle heating the resulting filtrate should result in most of the ethanol evaporating and yielding codeine phosphate powder. Dissolve to water.

By calcuation, if we start with a 200 ct of tablets, 8mg codeine phosphate per tablet and 15mg caffeine, assuming perfect retention during the acetaminophen extraction into 400ml of water, we expect to have a solution of 1600mg codeine with 3000mg of caffeine into 400ml of water.
By reading the solubility above, the 1g/66ml solubility yields exactly 198ml of 100% ethanol for dissolution of caffeine. Factoring in the 85% ethanol solution, we get 233ml of 85% ethanol required for the dissolution of 3g caffeine. But we need to account for the 15%vw of water. In 233ml of 85% ethanol, there will be 35ml of water. The solubility of caffeine in water is 1g/46ml, so we expect roughly 0.76g of caffeine to dissolve into the water portion.
Codeine also has a slight solubility in alcohol, 30mg/10ml. But that's too small, so we have to consider the removal of codeine into the water portion. 4g/ml is the solubility of codeine in water, thusly 35ml of water will remove quite a bit of codeine, up to 140g. We must find a minimum amount of water in ethanol that will allow us to remove the caffeine while also removing the minimal amount of desired product.

At that moment, it appears that alcohol extraction of caffeine seems unpractical due to the unavailability of anhydrous alcohol. The procedure involving supersaturation is undoubtedly the most useful for caffeine reduction at the moment.

Hello to my new blog.

Hello all who may read this, this will be my personal blog whereby I record my thoughts, my dreams, my problems and so forth. Feel free to comment and to leave your name. No matter what the subject matter is, please note that this blog is personal in nature and nothing will be judgemental. There will be no hate racism, nothing illegal, and nothing that will personally offend anybody.

That being said, I feel inclined to explain my use of theme. I knew right away that this being a personal blog many of my posts would be those of not simply personal nature, but those written in a depressed state of mind. I felt it fitting to find a theme that was dark or blackened in its nature. However, I came to realize I would also be typing some of my activities and so-called "journal" entries which may or may not be of the same nature. Thusly I decided upon a monochrome theme. The use of bamboo forest seems to be haphazard choosing (seeing that they don't have something else of forest), but I came to think that not only is bamboo a symbol of my cultural heritage (myself being Chinese), but the fact that the bamboo is a rare plant symbolizes and reflects the rarity of my thoughts. The forest icon is symbolic of a maze or perhaps a difficult path to walk through, reflecting the harmony of the often concerned nature and the personal affliction of what I see and think about in our world.

Now this may seem as if I'm saying all my posts will be of that nature, and I can say that many of them will be, but many of them won't. Should you feel that you do not want to read them, then don't read them. However, it would be greatly appreciated that if you find something offensive, let me know as a comment and I shall kindly remove the offensive material. Between sensible people in insensible indecent times, I kindly ask that you do not post comments that are offensive in return or personally insulting my work or thoughts or others.

With that, I conclude the first post of my personal blog.