Chemical Forums
Specialty Chemistry Forums => Citizen Chemist => Topic started by: Jiro on April 25, 2005, 04:12:03 PM
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Is it safe, is it legal? I know i can get about a kilogram of salicylic acid and a kilogram of acetic anhydride for about 30 dollars. I did some calculations and i can make about 4009 tablets Asprin(325mg/tab) with that. So thats about under 1 cent per tablet! With chromatography found that it is as pure compared to drugstores version. Theoretically it should act the same way as "real" asprin. Intially i was stunned, i can synthesis asprin for real cheap, but then i feel like im doing something illegal -is it too good to be true?
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There's nothing illegal about it. It would only be illegal if you tried to sell it to other people, or if you even gave it to other people. In order to do that, you need FDA approval and close scrutinization of the manufacturing process. If you plan on just using it yourself and only yourself, then there is nothing illegal about it. (You just have to be extra careful that the salicylic acid and acetic anhydride you use is at the very LEAST 5 9's pure. (I.E. 99.999% pure at the very least). You don't want any contamination and you need to be certain that everything reacts and your aspirin is free of contamination).
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How could you determine the purity that amount of precision?! I just tried one method, which uses the physical property of melting point of the compound to help determine the purity of it. After several filtrations using a pump and crystallization from ethyl alcohol, I put the asprin sample into a melting point apparatus. The apparatus read intial melting temperature of 135 degrees and finally at 136. From literature the melting point is 135. I did the same with crude samples and found the difference in degrees was about 5 degrees. This is how i determined the purity of my tablets. How would you figure out with 99.999%?!
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Hello Jiro,
The concentration of 99.99% aspirin could be determined with a Gas Chromatograph (G.C.).
The cost of a G.C., maintenance, standards, qualified personel, certifications, mixing vessels, etc..., that are required for Pure Aspirin can quickly increase the selling price of an 'inexpensive' product.
I hope this helps,
Eugene