How to use Soxhlet's Extractor II?

Dear Mr. Peter,

Optical physicists say it's either very easy or very hard. The same can be said in extraction chemistry. The practice of enzymology at the Faculty of Science is the most difficult and expensive practitioner of the whole study, and is largely devoted to extraction. Many scientists have spent their life trying to extract and crystallize substances from plant and animal materials. On the other hand, simple extraction can be done easily by simply inserting the plant material into the solvent container. Such a procedure would be called batch extraction. If we are dealing with the quantitative extraction of 100% of the content of the substance, it is possible to use counter-current or charge-counter extraction, such as used in skin tanning. Its description is indicated here .

From a practical point of view, the Soxhlet extractor stands somewhere between the batch and column extractions. It is characterized by recycling of the solvent, which takes place by distillation and re-condensation on the cooler over the charcoal cartridge. Some qualitative factors influencing extraction on the soxleth I have described qualitatively in another answer , but I do not pay attention to the half-time mode in which the right Soxhlet works. The right Soxhlet has a tube that ensures that the cartridge is gradually filled with a condensing solvent and when it is completely filled, the drain tube is overheated and the contents of the cartridge are emptied into the warming flask. I would now refer you to the resources you would have been able to study the extraction length and its parameters. On these resources you can get an idea of this for the practice of useless syllable "Chemical Engineering, Chapter Extraction" (see ), freely available on the Internet. However, you would have to test the constants for the calculation.

So you do not avoid attempts (and mistakes), whether math or without it. If you want to extract the Americas, ie without mathematics, this is done as follows: Let's say you have Soxhlet with a five-liter volume of the extraction vessel. Sprinkle into a patron about a kilo of grain material of a maximum of 5mm (the seeds must be crushed even if they are like poppy seeds) or slices with a thickness of up to 3mm. Pour as much solvent as possible so that the material is overlapped, but do not spill the solvent into the bottom soxle bottle (you will need about four liters of solvent). Close Soxhlet and allow for a few hours to swell at room temperature. Then add a little more solvent so that the bottling tube is overflowed and the solution flows into the lower container. The plant material should now be rocked and its volume should increase. Drugs swell in different ways - wood only a few percent, about three times, some fruits even more than five times. It is in your interest to use that amount so the packed drug will fill the cartridge about 90%. The drug usually absorbs a considerable amount of solvent, and so much less than 4 liters is rolled into the lower container. Now take a fresh dose of fresh solvent and pour the cartridge one more time just below the edge (now there is a drug in it, so the solvents will fit less). Allow two more hours to leach at room temperature, then turn on the extractor for low power (ie heating and cooler). When boiling in the bottom vessel, the condensing extract soon overflows the bottling tube so that the remainder of the solvent runs into the bottom vessel. Increase the extractor performance to the working value (ie, the highest one at which it works without any problems), stay with it, watch the filling of the distillate and count the number of times it turns. When the extractor turns four times, extraction should be done roughly. This is the point where most of the people do not pay to waste energy and to harass the drug by further heating to conquer the remaining 3% of the soluble substances remaining in the cake. You should now own something between 2-7 liters of extract, to which more than 90% of the substances that can be obtained from the herbal drug by the solvent are transferred to the extraction.

Of course, gasoline can not be used amateurally for extraction for food purposes. When extracting, be careful that the cooler has condensed all the solvent in a quantitative way, and alcohol or even petrol vapor has not escaped. Take personal care of the extraction and always use a sufficient amount of solvent to avoid the drying of the heating container. Always work with gasoline only outside in fresh air. Do not eat, drink alcohol or alcohol extract in excess of a small amount, do not smoke and do not handle with open fire. Legal Addition: I hereby waive any liability for damage to property and property caused by explosion of alcohol or petrol.

-boris-