Charlie80 - 28-4-2015 at 05:44
I'm trying to extract the antipsychotic alstonine from the plant Alstonei Boonei native to Western Africa. As I don't know natural healers, I have to
get it done myself. If I complete the following procedure, will it work?
Extraction of plant material: The fresh stem bark was cleaned, cut into pieces and air dried under shade in the laboratory for 2 weeks and reduced to
powder. The dry stem bark was ground to coarse powder in a mortar. Extraction was carried out by dispersing 500 g of the ground plant material in 2.5
L of 70% alcohol and shaking was done with a GFL shaker (No. 3017 MBH, Germany) for 72 h. This was followed by vacuum filtration and extract
concentration using a rotary evaporator at a temperature not exceeding 400°C. The concentrate was heated over a water bath to obtain a solvent free
extract, which was stored in a refrigerator, at 40°C.
Tsjerk - 28-4-2015 at 06:13
Could it be that the last two temperatures are a factor 10 too high?
Pasrules - 28-4-2015 at 14:47
I would assume you precipitate pectins from the alcohol (ethanol?) extraction. So you may need to perform a purification. The rotorvap should only
need to evaporate the alcohol so check your temperatures as mentioned by Tsjerk. I am not familiar with this compound's solubilities but being organic
you should test the melting point once complete to a literature value.
Also look into using a soxhlet extractor as this is common for the extraction of plant based compounds. You should also keep in mind the chirality you
want with plant based extracts.