monosodium glutamate

Quote: Originally posted by kristofvagyok

If someone if allergic to it, than you can get him serious health problems.

That would be like finding someone allergic to any of the other amino acids, as the free glutamic acid will surely form in the acidic environment of the gut.

Most consensus online is that MSG allergy or Chinese restaurant syndrome is still unconfirmed and studies show no effect while other show very faint inconclusive effects of this compound.

Either way, free amino acids do effect our brain and as such glutamic acid may do so to.

My suggestion to OP is to powder your food with it if it is food grade, and don't worry about any side effect except obesity..

It can make tough meat tender, I personally use it in stews, makes the meat really nice and tender

Quote: Originally posted by KonkreteRocketry

any thing u can do with it ? i bought 100 grams of it cause it was only 5 dollars.

Quote: Originally posted by AndersHoveland

Quote: Originally posted by KonkreteRocketry   any thing u can do with it ? i bought 100 grams of it cause it was only 5 dollars. I had an idea. See the seventh post down (on page 3) in the "Nitro Nitroalkane syntheses ?" thread: http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=2995&a... [Edited on 19-3-2013 by AndersHoveland]

Quote: Originally posted by KonkreteRocketry

any way to transform MSG to glutamic acid ?

Quote: Originally posted by AndersHoveland

Quote: Originally posted by KonkreteRocketry   any way to transform MSG to glutamic acid ? You do realize that MSG is just the salt of glutamic acid? I would think you could just add a strong acid to displace the glutamic acid from its salt.

Quote: Originally posted by bahamuth

Quote: Originally posted by kristofvagyok   If someone if allergic to it, than you can get him serious health problems. That would be like finding someone allergic to any of the other amino acids, as the free glutamic acid will surely form in the acidic environment of the gut. Most consensus online is that MSG allergy or Chinese restaurant syndrome is still unconfirmed and studies show no effect while other show very faint inconclusive effects of this compound. Either way, free amino acids do effect our brain and as such glutamic acid may do so to. My suggestion to OP is to powder your food with it if it is food grade, and don't worry about any side effect except obesity..

Quote: Originally posted by woelen

I can imagine that glutamate is capable of forming nicely colored complexes with transition metals. Try adding a solution of your Na-glutamate to a solution of a copper salt, a cobalt salt, a nickel salt, an iron salt, a chromium(III) salt and see what colors you obtain. Iḿ not sure about which colors you get, but I would be surprised if none of these metals shows interesting reactions with the ion.

Quote: Originally posted by KonkreteRocketry

Quote: Originally posted by woelen   I can imagine that glutamate is capable of forming nicely colored complexes with transition metals. Try adding a solution of your Na-glutamate to a solution of a copper salt, a cobalt salt, a nickel salt, an iron salt, a chromium(III) salt and see what colors you obtain. Iḿ not sure about which colors you get, but I would be surprised if none of these metals shows interesting reactions with the ion. Yeah ok I will try after my exams, have you ever tried any experiments on it ? which ones u think i shall try ? i don't have a lot copper stuff, copper acetate/oxide/nitrate/carbonate/copper metal alone - sodium glutamate ? i think carbonate might not work, and i dont think copper will also as its less reactive than sodium [Edited on 19-3-2013 by KonkreteRocketry]

Quote: Originally posted by woelen

For a copper salt I would not try the acetate. The acetate ion itself also forms a complex with copper. Try with copper sulfate or copper nitrate. The sulfate is the most common salt of copper and it contains copper, coordinated to water only.

Quote: Originally posted by ScienceSquirrel

Copper glutamate http://scripts.iucr.org/cgi-bin/paper?a05298

Quote: Originally posted by ElectroWin

presumably, your copper glutamate is less soluble than either ingredient, since something has to drive the reaction forward. so i assume that sodium glutamate will work as well. 2 C5H8NO4Na + Cu(NO3)2 --> (C5H8NO4)2Cu + 2 NaNO3

Quote: Originally posted by woelen

I would not expect any fizzling. No gas will be involved in a reaction (if any occurs at all). A possible reaction could be formation of a complex and in that case you would observe a change of color. Apparently no reaction occurs, or the complex has the same color as the aqua-complex of copper, but I do not think that the latter is the case. Is your copper nitrate true copper nitrate, or does it still contain quite some acid? If this is the case, then your glutaminate may react to glutamic acid. The acid most likely does not form complexes. It is the anionic species which usually coordinate to transition metal ions and not the free acids.

determine the concentration of HNO3 by titrating it or by determining the m/V.and add it to the MSG. it should become glutamic acid and NaNO3 if i'm not mistaken.
C5H8NO4Na+HNO3->C5H9NO4+NaNO3
169,111g C5H8NO4Na + 61,01g HNO3 * ->147,13g C5H9NO4 + 84,9947g NaNO3

* ( you will need to calculate how much of your stuff you need because it won't be 100%, more likely it's around 20-30% if you have made it from NO2 without distilling)

If you have accurate scales, weigh a 20ml measuring cylinder and write down the mass. then fill it with exactly 10ml of your HNO3 and weigh it again. subtract the mass of the empty cylinder from the mass of the filled cylinder and divide by 10. that's how much 1ml weighs.
then compare to this table that I took from: ''Industrial nitrogen compounds and explosives''
will be added later, my pc won't open the PDF
Ok, My PC is still playing up, it's on the SM library, look it up yourself it's on one of the first few pages.

[Edited on 29-3-2013 by Pyro]

Quote: Originally posted by Pyro

determine the concentration of HNO3 by titrating it or by determining the m/V.and add it to the MSG. it should become glutamic acid and NaNO3 if i'm not mistaken. C5H8NO4Na+HNO3->C5H9NO4+NaNO3 169,111g C5H8NO4Na + 61,01g HNO3 * ->147,13g C5H9NO4 + 84,9947g NaNO3 * ( you will need to calculate how much of your stuff you need because it won't be 100%, more likely it's around 20-30% if you have made it from NO2 without distilling) If you have accurate scales, weigh a 20ml measuring cylinder and write down the mass. then fill it with exactly 10ml of your HNO3 and weigh it again. subtract the mass of the empty cylinder from the mass of the filled cylinder and divide by 10. that's how much 1ml weighs. then compare to this table that I took from: ''Industrial nitrogen compounds and explosives'' will be added later, my pc won't open the PDF

Quote: Originally posted by KonkreteRocketry

Quote: Originally posted by AndersHoveland   Quote: Originally posted by KonkreteRocketry   any thing u can do with it ? i bought 100 grams of it cause it was only 5 dollars. I had an idea. See the seventh post down (on page 3) in the "Nitro Nitroalkane syntheses ?" thread: http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=2995&a... [Edited on 19-3-2013 by AndersHoveland] any way to transform MSG to glutamic acid ?

Not even a strong acid is necessary! I did it with a stoichiometrical ammount of glacial acetic acid and allowing the mixture to repose under -7C°. glutamic acid will eventually precipitate out!

Seems that MSG DOES make a complex with copper.

I purchased a bag of food flavouring that says it is 99% plus pure MSG. Cost was around AUD 3.50.


The plan was to react a solution of MSG with a solution of copper nitrate and see if there is a colour change, and if yes then try to extract the salt. I was not sure which of these 2 reactions will happen (if at all):
Cu(NO3)2 + 2 C5H8NO4Na = Cu(C5H8NO4)2 + 2 NaNO3
or
Cu(NO3)2 + C5H8NO4Na = CuC5H7NO4 + NaNO3 + HNO3
and the stoichiometry is quite different between them. I decided to try and do the experiment with quite concentrated solutions, and if there is a colour change but no ppt try to crystalize out something by gradual volume reduction (but this was not necessary).
- 60g msg was dissolved on 85g water, with slight heating this quickly gave a clear solution.
- 35g copper nitrate solution was dissolved into 45g water, giving a blue solution.


- The solutions were mixed and immediately turned very dark blue-purple. I'll try to post a video as a separate post.
- After a few minutes stirring a suspension formed.


- After a few more minutes it became a firm jelly!


- I scooped out some and stirred it with excess methanol. This gave a fine light purple suspension which was filtered off and placed in the sun to dry. Below shows this remainder, but with the iphone it looks much less purple than with the eye.


- I added excess water to the bulk and stirred it for an hour. This broke it up and it became a fine suspension.


- This was then vacuum filtered. The wash water remained blue so I suspect it is slightly soluble in water.
- The remainder was dried on a steam bath for 3 hours. It was then bottled. The product is predominantly blue, but various shades. It may well be a mix of a few things.


- I took a bit of the product and put it in a small crucible and on my hotplate at maximum heat which should be > 250C. It melted, bubbled a bit, and I was left with a black solid substance.
- I wondered whether there was traces of copper in the charred remains and added 70% nitric acid. The acid bubbled a bit and released NO2. I don't know if the release of NO2 confirms copper was present or whether there was another reaction.


Cleaning up all the beakers and dishes was quite easy as the product dissolves readily in concentrated HCl.

I'll try a few more metal salts over the coming weeks.

Further to my initial post, the ppt that I stirred with methanol and the ppt that was stirred with water were both out on the bench for a week. The methanol ppt now appears completely dry but the water ppt is still a tad tacky. The interesting observation is the colour difference between the 3 products as shown below:




I can report that I also tried a double displacement reaction between MSG and chromium nitrate. Initially it seemed nothing happened, the solutionn stayed dark without a suspension forming. After 24 hours I saw there was a red-purple color, and boiling down the solution gave a sticky mess with this red-purple color. For now I did not manage to extract any dry product from it.

I managed to get a lovely coloured salt from the chromium - msg reaction.

- 50g MSG was dissolved in 90g water, this easily dissolved into a clear solution, no heating required.
- 21g Cr(NO3)3.9H2O was dissolved in 30g water. This did need some heating to fully dissolve into a dark solution.
- Add the Cr solution to the MSG solution while stirring. It seemed that nothing happened and it was left overnight.
- Next day it was observed that the solution was now a deep mauve colour, but with no ppt.
- Steam down the solution from 170 to 70 ml and leave overnight.
- Next day - a sticky thick mess! Try to stir bits in warm methanol, DCM, and acetone but no effect. It neither dissolved nor broke up.
- Next day add water to 250ml mark and heated a bit to re-dissolve. Then add 250ml methanol and stirred for 30 minutes, this caused a mauve coloured suspension to appear. Leave overnight.
- Next day: Filter. Copious amount of mauve coloured remainder, 300ml of mauve coloured filtrate. Leave remainder out on stacks of paper towel to dry.
- After 48 hours: Remainder now quite dry and much reduced in volume. Still a lovely dark mauve colour:


- Note there is no sign of any white bits in the product. So where did any excess MSG or any sodium nitrate (if any formed) go? If there was a significant amount of a white product mixed in with the remainder one can usually see signs of it. Is it still in the filtrate, did the methanol preferentially precipitated out only the mauve compound (which is what I was hoping and why I did not add a huge excess of methanol).
- Pour 100ml of the filtrate into a plate and leave to slowly evaporate, to see what appears. This is still ongoing.


- 27g of mauve product bottled. Is it chromium glutamate? Is it a chromium sodium double salt? Is this an usual color for a chromium salt?


Any feedback as to what I made welcomed.

I still have cobalt, nickel, iron, and manganese to react with MSG over the next weeks, as time allows!

Cobalt:
- 35g MSG dissolved in 70g water
- 35g cobalt nitrate dissolved in 35g water
- The cobalt solution was poured into the MSG solution while stirring, this resulted in a very dark solution but no obvious suspension or ppt.
- Decant 100ml for test. Add 50ml methanol. This gave a pink, sticky suspension:


- The suspension re-dissolved when stirred. It stayed the same when heated to near-boiling.
- Add sample back into main beaker and stop for the night.
Next day:
- Transfer to large beaker, add water to make up to 500ml volume. Heat to near boil.
- Slowly start adding more methanol while stirring. A pink suspension started to form again.
- Add a total of 300ml methanol and stirred for 10 minutes. This resulted in a magenta coloured solution with lots of suspension swirling around (not so easy to see the solids on the photo):


- Vacuum filter. The filtrate and remainder were both dark magenta coloured. The remainder was quite dry straight from the filter.


- Leave on bench to dry 36 hours.
- Result was 12.9g of a soft magenta coloured product:


The product, which I assume is a cobalt glutamate complex, dissolved easily in concentrated hydrochloric acid giving a blue solution which turns red-pink when water is added. If anyone has info on metal glutamates and can confirm the colours I get it will be appreciated. Iron will be next.

Something interesting happened when I cleaned a beaker that had a layer of the Chromium product described in an earlier post in this tread. I added concentrated HCl but this did not dissolve the layer of "chromium glutamate". I then heated the beaker. This caused the layer to dissolve into a black solution. But then copious amounts of white fumes started to appear. I took the beaker off the heat but even when it could be touched it was still giving off a lot of white fumes with a slightly irritating taste. I had to leave the shed for a while until it cleared. What could this have been? To me it looked just like the effect when one mixes ammonia with hydrochloric acid and get clouds of ammonium chloride. I did not see this when using HCl to clean after making the copper, cobalt, or iron glutamates (but they all dissolved more readily in HCl).

Iron:
As often Iron yielded confusing results.
- 26g MSG dissolved in 300ml water, giving a clear solution.
- 20g Fe(NO3)3.9H2O dissolved in 75mm water, giving an orange-ish solution.
- Mix hot - the solution went dark, and there appeared to be some ppt but almost nothing.
- Add 300ml methanol. A brown-orange suspension formed. Stir 10 minutes.
- Vacuum filter. Filtering was slow as the brown remainder was very fine. The filtrate was wine red.
- The remainder when scratched off the filter paper was surprisingly dry:


- Leave out on bench to dry.
- Next day: The product was seemed to have attracted moisture from the air and was now dark and wet:


- In desiccator, vacuum over NaOH for 48 hours.
- Result was hard, dry black crystals:


- 3.6g was recovered and bottled:


This was the first of the glutamate reactions that gave a product that was more difficult to filter out, and that seems hygroscopic. It dissolved in concentrated HCl giving a green-yellow solution presumably of FeCl3; the wet brown remainder dissolving much easier in the acid than the dry black remainder. But it is a iron glutamate complex or something else. Any ideas? What also surprised me is the fact that it was filtered out from the solution that was at least 50% water quite "dry" but then became more wet on the bench. Was it dry in the solution because of the methanol in the water, or because it was filtered when hot?

Next and probably the last of the MSG experiments will be nickel.

Triflic Acid thanks for the link but I think beyond my skills

The final "MSG" salt I tried was nickel. But it was a failure. I added a solution of nickel nitrate to a solution of monosodium glutamate. There was not apparent reaction. I left it overnight but it looked the same the next day: a dark green solution. At this point the total solution volume was some 200ml. While stirring it I slowly added an equal amount of methanol. A suspension formed:


When soon condensed into a very sticky ball:


The sticky ball became like soft putty when the solution was heated but it did not break up. At this point I left the solution to sit overnight.

The next day the solution was clear again; the goop obviously dissolved again. I stopped the experiment at this point as I am now short on methanol. I don't know whether the solids that appeared after adding methanol was a nickel glutamate salt or whether it was just the nickel nitrate that was temporary kicked out of solution.

To finish this thread for now, here is a group photo.

Because Lion850 didn't tryed Fe2+ so I tryed this. I used 5.5g MSG and 4.0g FeSO4 7H2O(2:1 mole ratio). I dissolved MSG and add FeSO4 7H2O solid. the solution becomed deep brown(1st photo). And then I added isopropyl alcohol to try remove some water. solution becomed 2 layers(2nd photo). lower layer like soy sauce(laugh). upper layer almost clear, have little brwon, maybe have little product? More isopropyl alcohol also didn't make solid presipitate out, so I didn't tryed crystalise. 2nd time I used 3:1 mole ratio. this time the solution becomed lighter brown, didn't like last time so deep. also this time the solution have solid presipitate out(3rd photo). If I use plastic spoon to scoop/ladle the solution the solution surface becomed deeper colour. I think the reason is Fe2+ oxidised to Fe3+. Now I understand why Lion850 didn't tryed Fe2+.