Quote: Originally posted by Random  | | I thought it was one of easier to obtain solvents for amateur chemists. But as you can see, methanol can be used too, maybe even more efficient
because of it's water miscibility. |
Please stop spreading misinformation. The article you cited never mentions the isolation of solanine solely by using methanol or any other solvent or
extraction based methodology. They used centrifugal partition chromatography, because they found solanine could not be isolated in any easy way, not
even preparative HPLC (at least not pure). I doubt PickledPackratParalysis has access to this kind of equipment. The methanol and acetic acid was only
used to remove the soluble glycosidal components from the complex organic matter. What they obtained at this stage was barely any closer to solanine
that potatoes themselves. The hard part only comes later.
Any simple extraction of solanine is more likely to be found in the older literature. I would guess it is less than efficient as old chemists only had
recrystallizations and similar techniques to separate similar compounds. Anyway, some literature review is given in that J. Chromatogr. B
article. But why would a beginner want to isolate a secondary metabolite that is commonly present only at ppm levels in some plant species? Even one
such that is a pain to separate from its analogues. As if there are no other more reasonable practicing targets. |
