Chemical Forums
Chemistry Forums for Students => Organic Chemistry Forum => Organic Chemistry Forum for Graduate Students and Professionals => Topic started by: ckshatter@gmail.com on December 04, 2019, 03:25:31 AM
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Hi!
I was wondering if anyone wanted to correct my methods or suggest any ideas to try. I took pictures of the process but I will just see if anyone responds and requests them.
Everything I learned about creating phytosomes came from the National Library of Medicine and I’m not 100% sure if I’m understanding everything, as certain info was hard if not impossible to come by. Thanks!
The following were my methods:
1)created extract of frankincense and myrrh through boiling, straining, rinsing out the water soluble gum and then repeating the rinse and sieve process and evaporated the water in the oven at 220F.
2)added Everclear alcohol as a solvent to the extract and then lecithin as the phospholipid and rice flour as the excipient vehicle. (I’m not sure if I created the rice flour properly as it may be mostly bran, not sure, but I put it in a food processor and pulsed until I got enough powder. It would not blend all the way no matter what. Thinking of freezing the rice first next time.)
The stoichiometric ratio I used was 1 part extract:1 lecithin:1/2 alcohol 1/2 rice flour, weighed on a digital scale (not 100% confident my weighing concepts are correct?) Casperome used a similar stoichiometric ratio if I’m understanding correctly but I couldn’t find any info about their solvent (1:1:1/2)
3)heated and stirred in a small Pyrex bowl (for lack of a round beaker or any chemistry supplies for that matter lol poor man’s chemistry for now) on the stove electric burner for an hour. Optimally I was shooting for 104F (40C) for an hour as demonstrated in a study I read but I could only manage to keep the temperature of the mixture at about 110-120. It took me some experimenting to get the temps close but I erred on the low side until the “Pyrex on the burner” method was started. Thus, the cooking time actually totalled more than an hour.
4)evaporation?! I poured/spread it as thin as possible on a sheet of parchment paper within a baking sheet and put it in the common American kitchen conductor oven preheated to 200F. Pulled it out every 15 minutes or so to tip it and let it run around as I did very shortly with the extract evap. After about 4 hours total of this I didn’t really see any noticeable evap. Even after letting it cool a few times to check if that was just all melted oil, it wasn’t firm even after cooling.
Finally, I decided to try 220F just like the extract evap. I accidentally let the oven overheat to about 250F for a very short time which turned the brown mixture black. I called it finished at that point (after about 10 minutes of evaporating at that temp of 220-250). It’s basically a pile of pretty runny tar now. There was liquid black stuff along with thicker portions i scraped together in a pile. I was expecting it to become hard and crushable like the extract of frankincense and myrrh? One study mentioned sieving the final product in a #100 sieve. I imagine their expensive machine turned it back into powder though.
I’m also suspecting that I ruined the phyto-phospholipid complexes with my evaporating process (too hot?) as other studies vacuumed it off at 104F (40C).
I will appreciate any attempts to help. I don’t discriminate 😊 💗
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Update: I compared the actual product ingredients to mine and realized that I didn’t use a flow agent which is necessary when using rice flour as an excipient. Microcrystalline cellulose getting delivered today. A little bit goes a really long way anyway. Functions as a flow agent and an excipient in one if I understand correctly