mycotheologist
Hazard to Others
Posts: 154
Registered: 16-3-2012
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Mood: No Mood
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Isolating carbocisteine from syrup
I noticed that half of the products in my medicine drawer are past their expiration date so the drawer needs cleaning out. I'm gonna use this as an
opportunity to practice my extraction skills, first product I want to experiment with is a 100mL bottle of Exputex which is a cough syrup
(expectorant) containing 250mg of carboncisteine per 5mL of syrup. Thats a total of 5g of carbocisteine in this bottle. Firstly, heres the structure
of carbocisteine:
and heres the list of excipients:
- Ethanol
- Saccharin sodium
- Sodium hydroxide
- Carmellose sodium
- E110, E215, E217 and E219
I really need a copy of the Merck Index for this, only solubility info I can find is here:
http://www.lookchem.com/CARBOCISTEINE/
which says its soluble in cold water. The syrup is perfectly clear so I take that as an indication that it is a solution, rather than a suspension. So
from that, I know that the API is pretty soluble in ethanol. I'd say the NaOH is added to keep the API in its sodium salt form. So heres my plan: I do
a liquid liquid extraction with water and pet. ether in order to get rid of as many non polar excipients as possible. I discard the organic phase then
acidify the aq. phase in hopes that the free acid form of the carbocisteine will precipitate out. Not a very solid extraction plan but I would have
thrown this product out anyway so I've nothing to lose here.
I won't try this until later today though so if anyone has a better extraction approach or can see a problem with my method, I'll change my method.
[Edited on 26-4-2012 by mycotheologist]
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GreenD
National Hazard
Posts: 623
Registered: 30-3-2011
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Mood: Not really high anymore
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My noob .02 cents, but I wonder if this could cyclize??
You're also going to get sacchrin coming out with any acid, and probably whatever carmellose is.
ʃ Ψ*Ψ
Keepin' it real.
Check out my new collaborated site: MNMLimpact.com
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