Piper Aritum

[SomeDude]

I understand that this plant can be grown pretty easily with the presence of a lot of water and some sun (uv bulb should work right?) Does Simple vacuum distillation (piper aritum leaves boiling in water) work for getting the safrole out of this plant? or do any of the other 40 components boil over?

 

[Moriarty]

That's not a vacuum distillation. That is a steam distillation and, yes, that is how they do that. There are other chemicals in the distillate. It's not specific as to what gets distilled. In fact, the only thing I think that decideds what does and doesn't get distilled over in a steam distillation is the size/weight of the molecule. All things in between get over. In piper auritum I believe it's about 70% safrole, some eugenol and there are, of course, some other things. This is why it is important to develope some skills in the area of organic chemistry. Careful distillation skills and knowledge of how to remove some things like eugenol with an NaOH wash or two are key to learning how to isolate the chemicals you want.

Well, what can I say? This is the portion of the discussion where I feel obligated to tell you that you can learn all of this with a simple google search. In the old day they'd say "UTFSE", which stands for Use The Fucking Search Engine. That comes from the old hive. I was an old hive bee. I don't want to be that course with you but know that you need to search these things out on your own instead of asking questions in open forum. That allows us to focus on questions that can't be solved by a simple search within a site like this one or on google. That being said, I like it when people get interested in underground chemistry. I hope you get interested more and more and learn a lot. It is, in my mind, the most interesting thing in the World. There is a vast amount of knowledge available here. I hope you like it here and avail yourself of it.

 

[proteinhandshake]

I agree with you, Moriarty, on the UTFSE. I've been UTFSE and what I came up with that relates to somedude's query is to steam (azeotropic) distill , do a few 3-5% NaOH washes to take away any possible Eugenol and then just hope that nothing else is left behind that isn't saf because all of the purification procedures outlined on the FSES (fucking search engines) detail how to work with Sass . Not so much info on the Piper or the Brown Camphor. I nearly lost my mind trying to find info on how to do the Mercuric Acetate followed by acid hydrolysis purification. I can find the info that explains what to do with the Mercuric Acetate to "bind" the Saf, but not the step involving the "flicking off" of the Mercury. In my dreams (literally) I think the Mercuric Acetate method of extracting Saf should be used when dealing with an essential oil that has as many fractions as Piper or even the Brown Camphor. That's just what I think. I don't know for sure.

 

[Moriarty]

Well, I hate to be the one saying UTSFE. In truth, some newbees just don't know that lots of this is actually covered at this site already and sometimes they just get excited and want to talk about their new interest/hobbie. I can identify with this as I was once a "newbee" and really just wanted to know it all and right now and really was excited about the subject and wanted to talk to other bees. I mean not to embarrass anyone. Seriously, sometimes we just need to steer the board as a whole away from this habit. I hope no one is discouraged at this. I mean no disrespect and wasn't trying to hurt anyone's feelings.

Wow, it's 4AM here and I was just starting to read about purification of safrole using mercury acetate and subsequently was reading about amino mercuration. I was unfamiliar with purification of safrole via mercuty acetate adduct. I had intended to read about this because I was interested and this sort of caught my interest. How do you demercurate the adduct? I don't know for sure but I have my money on NaOH or even saodium carbonate. I guess we will have to read about it more tomorrow.

Moriarty

P.S. Oh yeah, I am not sure why anyone would use mercury acetate to purify safrole. If y'all are looking for advice on purifying brown camphor I'd be happy to share my experiences with the stuff and it's purification tomorrow.

 

[sneak]

Lay it all down brother! Experiences more so. I need some tea time reading.

 

[proteinhandshake]

Mr. Moriarty, if you are certainly willing to share your experience in purifying the brown camphor, then I am certainly willing to do just about anything you ask of me. Sign me up as one of your minions. Okay, now in relevance to the topic of this thread... the best way to grow anything that requires a lot of water would be to use a rubbermaid garbage pail with a 3/4" white polystyrene foam lid ( the kind of foam that's sold in home ***** under the brand name Polyshield) . Trace out the top of the pail to the underside of the foam ( the top side of the foam has the silver mylar face which you leave to reflect light, the bottom side of the foam has a plastic coating that you tear off after you're done cutting it to the shape of the lid) and cut it out with a steak knife. If you are planning a large grow of Piper, simply use a kiddie pool instead of the rubbermaid garbage pail. Now fill your pail or kiddie pool( fill to about 4 inches below the rim and if you want to you can rig up an evaporation top-off system ( a filtered water supply that is triggered by a float switch, or just put in the top-off water manually every few days with your own hands) so that the nutrient content of your hydroponic solution stays within a certain range of ppms. The evaporation top off water prevents the nutrient concentration from spiking too high and burning your Piper.Also, if you use a kiddie pool just remember to support the outer walls of the pool with 1/2" thick plywood that is bent to the contour of the pool and support that plywood the same way you would support a concrete form, with 2" x 4" braces formed like right triangles screwed down into a base of 3/4" exterior plywood. Here is where years of growing experience comes into play. Use a Danner brand Pondmaster pump ( the one that consumes 108 watts) to blow bubbles through your water column.You will diffuse the air from said diaphragm (not centrifugal, they suck ass for water applications) pump through 8" diameter aluminum oxide airstones. The pump costs about 120 bucks and is good for about 12 of these airstones. You will need one airstone for each 4 square feet of water surface. The airstones are about 28 bucks each and they are commonly used in fish farms and they cannot deteriorate. This is the only airstone on planet earth that does not deteriorate. Just remember to leave the silver sticker label affixed to the stone or else if you feed too much air through one stone, air will burst through the underside. So what you should have so far is a pail or pool covered by 3/4" foam board with the perfectly shiny side facing up, an air gap of 4 inches below and trillions of tiny bubbles bursting into this air gap between water interface and the underside of the foam board. Now for the lighting... If you can put this DWC system in a sunroom, that's great. You need not worry about artificial light. For anybody else make sure that your light fixtures are the same style as adjust-a-wings. Just do a keyword search of that brand name so you can see what I mean. The same company that makes the adjust-a-wing also sells the hammered "pebble finish" aluminum sheet that the fixture is made from. For the cost of one adjust-a-wing you can build six on your own with one 100 dollar pack of their sheet metal. Just look up the horticultural sources (HINT) online to find a source. Once you have the metal, just make a sheet metal bender from a piano hinge and two small sheets of plywood. I need not explain how to do that. Once you have the stuff in your hands you will figure it out. You will need to attach a single gang "handi box" (electrical construction trade term) to a mogul lamp base with some 8-32 screws, and then attach the handi box to the fixture with some 1" wide flat aluminum bar to get the lamp base attached to the "bat-wing style" reflector that you made out of the sheet metal. Splice in a three wire 16 gauge copper wire extension cord for the lamp to give voltage from main power or from a ballast ( depending on what kind of bulb you use). Drill 4 holes (one in each corner of the bat wing 1 inch way from each side) and put a length of stainless steel picture hanger wire (music wire) with one insulated #16 butt splice crimp on one side of the wire. Now manually bend the wing to the desired wing span, mark the other side of the wire to the span width and squeeze on the other butt splice while the wire is through the hole to permanently hold the span to your desired reflective width. Repeat this procedure on the other side . Now drill 4 more holes for the fixture hanging chain and hang up the light. Does Piper Aritum require intense light? If so, use 400 watt hortilux blue metal halide. You will need to buy a 400 watt metal halide ballast to power this. This bulb happens to have the best color spectrum( shown against the plant spectral sensitivity curve)known to man. Nothing comes remotely close. If you use a 400 watt bulb , you want it to be a minimum of 30 inches way from the plants. If you do not require intense (read fast) growth just use a 30 dollar 125watt 6500k(color temperature) compact flourescent bulb. You don't need a ballast for this. Plants like 72 degrees fahrenheit. This is the perfect temperature for optimal growth. You will need some air exhausted from this room even when the lights are off. You should keep the lights on for at least 18 hours per day if your doing Piper. You don't need this plant to flower so never change that light cycle. If you want a lot of leaf, keep the plant in the vegetative stage by keeping the lights on for 18 hrs per day or all the time. For proper heat removal, you will need a minimum of 1- 6" Vortex brand or Can Fan brand inline centrifugal fan to blow air outside for each 400 watts of light. Don't worry about using a charcoal filter unless you're growing something other than Piper. Although, a good carbon filter can be utilized for other things, just ask Moriarty. If you are using 600 watt lights, you will need to use one 8" or 10" fan per light (8 and 10 contain the same size motor, blow out the same amount of air, the 10 is simply a little quieter) . You could use a little less fan for the amount of light you have but heat will start to climb. My exhaust fan take off equations are not arbitrary. You will not get 1 degree of difference from the incoming air as long as you are measuring the temperature from 30 inches below the light. If you can afford a few degrees of heat to be added then you can use less fan for the amount of light you are using. For example, 3-10"fans can handle 3600watts in a 10' x 10' room but there is a 12 degree fahrenheit temperature climb even if all the ducts are ran level and straight with no bends if using carbon filters (they reduce the exhaust from the fans through static pressure). The same room , same fan set-up without carbon filters will give you a 4 degree jump. Double the amount of exhaust output by using larger fans to achieve nearly double the effective cfm output and you will have no heat buildup at all. Get it? Okay, last but not least, nutrients. You will need to put some nutrients in the water. I ask that you use my nutrient formula for 2 reasons. 1.) Any hydroponic nutrient that you buy in a ready to use liquid form will tend to have a free falling pH. You set it at 5.8 and tomorrow it goes to 4.7 even though you put in some pH up and used the instructions. Why is that? The nutrient companies are cheap bastards that don't use an adequate amount of monopotassium phosphate for their "Part A" liquid ( hydro nutes are usually 2 parts, sometimes 3, but 3 is not necessary). They will stop adding MKP when the minimum level of potassium is achieved, then making up for the lack of phosphorus with the much cheaper phosphoric acid (which is also used for pH down, but you will never need pH down if you use MY formula). They want you to use potassium carbonate as pH up, which is inferior to KOH (potassium hydroxide). 2.) My nutrient formula kills almost every bug including but not limited to, spider mites, whiteflies and aphids. How does it kill all these bugs? These bugs like to suck the sap out of plants by attaching their mouths to the same site for hours on end. Too bad my formula is high in Potassium (which is the active ingredient in Safer brand soap, a commercial organic insecticide) which kills any bug that is a threat. I still get a few thrips, just a few, so few that they don't do any damage. Here is the formula: Part A 997 grams Monopotassium Phosphate 668 grams Epsom Salt Top it up to 1 gallon with scalding hot water to get it all disssolved Part B 995 grams Calcium Nitrate (Yaraliva brand, solution grade) 30.86 grams of 10% DTPA Iron 14.54 grams of 13% EDTA Manganese (not to be confused with magnesium) 4.05 grams of 14% EDTA Zinc 2.70 grams of 14% EDTA Copper 2.22 grams of Boric Acid (Not Solubor) roach killer .09 grams of Cobalt Nitrate ACS (also known as cobaltous nitrate) .06 grams of Ammonium Molybdate Tetrahydrate Top up to 1 gallon with scalding hot water to get it all dissolved First add 8ml per gallon of reservoir water of Part B. Then add 16 ml per gallon of part A. You must do it in that order. Also, it is worth mentioning that your supply water should be relatively low in chlorine ( suitable for drinking) and should not be filtered if it measures less than 120 ppm with a hanna tds tester. With this dosage you will achieve about 950 ppm (lucas formula) and 5.3 pH. Now get that pH up to about 5.8-6.0 by adding roughly 1 mL per gallon of 10% KOH. Your pH will never need checking and bugs will never be a problem. Change the water once the ppm drops to 700. If you want to do infrequent water changes ( once a month), just provide a minimum of 4 gallons of reservoir water per plant. Now before you get the system up and running make sure you run one 100 watt oscillating fan for each 10' x 10' footprint of grow space and get that air blowing just at the top of the grow canopy, not so much that you give them plants wind burn but enough to refresh some ambient co2 for good growth. To get your Piper started, put the seeds in Jiffy cubes, not peat pellets. Get them rooted in a jiffy rooter and then when they are readycut out an appropriate hole in the foam lid of your DWC system so that the cube fits snug.

 

[SomeDude]

lol.... so i can't just put the seed in a plant pot with soil and epsom salt and then water?

 

[proteinhandshake]

You can do anything you want to. That's just the best way to do it if you want insane growth. You need a lot of Piper (many pounds) in order to have something substantial after distilling. My hydro systems usually cost around $40,000 (just for materials) and are self water changing and self maintaining for any amount of time. I will not tell you who I am but I happen to be one of the world leaders in hydro automation and it is extremely safe to say that I have the greenest thumb on this website (no offense to anybody it is simply the truth).For example, I plant certain high value crops in a room with 3600 watts and I don't come back to that room until it is time to reap. There is nobody else IN THE WORLD that can claim that (sorry for the caps, just needed to emphasize that). My nutrient formula kills bugs and that is absolutely essential or else all your piper will be covered with insects. My systems, even the aforementioned in the incredibly long post which is simply a non-automated "lite" version of how I would set-up a mother/veg room, employ the best possible methods. Nobody in the hydro world even knows what an 8" dia. aluminum oxide airstone is, but I guarantee that if you use my method to plant piper you will never long for the Saf ever again. If you plant piper in a pot it will not grow fast enough for it to be worth anything. You actually don't even have a choice but to use my DWC system if you want enough oil to do anything with.The growth of a plant is limited by the pot size ( when using soil). The growth of a plant is virtually unlimited when using a deep water culture system with zero media to inhibit oxygen uptake. Trust me on this. Guys like Moriarty and Spice are pioneers in the game of clandestine chem, but I am not only a pioneer in hydroponics, I am more like the world leader who travelled back in time from the year 2312 to teach the past the best possible way to grow indoors. My fully automated version of the system I described to you is so great it can't even be improved. It's the best there is. Use my advice and you'll have so much of the oil that you could even gift it to others. You simply won't have enough time to use it all in your lifespan.

 

[Moriarty]

Back home in Northern California we were growing piper auritum (hojo santa) plants. Mind you this was all for fun as my partner and I had 15 or more kilograms of safrole each ;-). Anyway, the leaves sure do smell like safrole but I surmise one would need a great deal of dried leaves to get any appreciable amount of safrole. It's not that the plants don't seem to have lots of safrole in them, they do, it's that each plant seem to grow not a great deal of leaves. Of course, I have seen pictures of larger plants and they were giant. Still, I imagine one might need lots of area to make a decent amount. If you had an acre to plant you'd do really well. Hell, in California we have camphor trees. I almost drove to the San Francisco Bay area one time to load up two full grow camphor trees I found on craigslist but I digress.

Anyway, anytime you find sassafras oil that originates in India the chances are that this oil is actually the brown camphor fraction of camphor oil. Camphor oil has ~20% safrole in it but they "rectify" it out by distillation. Simply, anything boiling below ~200C is considered the white camphor fraction and the brown camphor fraction is what is left over and generally not sold in aromatherapy as it is toxic due to all that nasty safrole in it. At this point the safrole in brown camphor is about 80%, similar in most regard to ocotea cymbarum oil (Brazilian Sassafras oil). However, one might make the mistake of distilling the brown camphor alone and call it good. This provides a crappy product upon distillation of the corresponding oxidation product (MDP-2-P). I once did this with a fraction that had a little higher concentration of this impurity (whatever it is) and wound up with MDMA.HCl that smell and looked just wrong. I certainly wasn't going to sell it nor did I want to spend the time to try to purify it further and opted to just throw that 28-30 grams away and go back to work. However, this lead me to conclude a few things. One, the other constituents in brown camphor had similar boiling points to safrole (indeed at atmosperic pressure I had a fraction coming over at ~226C that was not safrole). Two, that is was too difficult to purify by distillation alone or freeze crystalling alone. Three, that this fraction was most likely a terpene as it seemed to have oxidized in the wacker oxidation and further aminated due to the fact that it formed an HCl salt upon titration along with MDMA. Fourth, that the safrole came out remarkably pure if you vacuum distill the safrole from the brown camphor oil to liberate the safrole and then freeze crystallized it. With vacuum this left very little back in boiling flask. Remember, they get this fraction by keeping everything over 200C. So everything has pretty similar boiling points. After this initial distillation it was placed in the refrigerator where the temperature was ~6C and allowed to cool to ambiant temperature in the refrigerator. Once about the same temp a small amount was placed on dry ice and a seed crystal was born. This was added to the distillate and the whole thing crystallized very quickly. I then let it thaw until almost all the safrole crystals had turned back to liquid leaving just a little bit still crystallized (frozen) at the bottom. Then place it in the refrigerator and let it grow. These new, slowly formed safrole crystals are very pure. It takes about two to 3 days. Sometimes I let it go 5 just to get it all. Then repeat. This next time it grows very quickly. Like a day and a half. The third time it is less than a day. After that there is no residual liquid to pour off that is not safrole.

Anyway, the fraction we did not talk about (or did we ;-)) is the yellow camphor oil. I assume this is simply camphor oil that has not been rectified of it's safrole. I don't know but when you are looking for camphor oil just look at the density/specific gravity of the oil. Usually they will tell you right off the bat what it is so you don't need to request a sample (samples are generally free if you pay shipping). Look in places like China and India as they seldom see the point in rectifying this oil. Like I said, they don't use the yellow camphor in aromatherapy but leave it to people in industry to buy as a raw material. This is why they often report things like the linalool content and safrole content. White camphor has a densityof 0.90 or less. Yellow camphor oil generally has a range of 0.96 to 0.98. Brown camphor is marked by it's high safrole content and is also so called camphor oil 1.070 as it's density/specific gravity is ~1.07. That's almost identical to sassafras oil.

I don't know about growing piper auritum plants indoors. It sounds like a bad investment on electrical costs. Also, it sounds like someone has a lot of experience growing indoors ;-).

 

[proteinhandshake]

But not so much experience with the actual plant (Piper) so it's good you weighed in on this discussion. That was a very thorough explanation and for all I know this may very well be the first detail on how to use the brown camphor oil properly. When I run out of my ocotea cymbarum I will have a resource to fall back on thanks to you. I owe you one.

 

[Moriarty]

I was going to ask you a question but you don't receive private messagfes. maybe you should change that? I'd appreciate it anyway.

 

[proteinhandshake]

I think I need 20 posts before I can give or receive pm's...no?

 

[Moriarty]

Well send me a PM whenever that happens ;-).

 

[proteinhandshake]

Will do that. Three more to go!

 

[SomeDude]

fuck...... so apparently steam distilling 5 kgs of piper auritum can only yield me 50 ml of safrole oil at best, before purification, and isomeritization. Would it just be better to just buy brown camphor oil and or sassafras oil?

 

[Moriarty]

It's always better, er...more cost effective to buy it. Just be careful figuring out how to acquire it. That means looking into the laws where you live, how items are generally imported into your country through customs and all sorts of other things like how to spot a fake DEA site (yep, sometimes the folks at the DEA set up fake internet companies to get you newbee who don't know the ropes). I think I have told the stories several times someplace in this forum about importation problems I have had into the Unbited States and the sort of companies I have encountered that have asked me to do things like import 5KG of oil, which is illegal in the U.S. All this is stuff you need to learn about. In fact, I have spent more time learning how to import into my country than actually finding companies to import from.

 

[SomeDude]

I really want to get this piper auritum thing to work, its not expensive to make it or distill it rather it just takes a lot of time. It can pretty much be grown anywhere, in almost any climate. I think this would really the best way about going about this since the only stage that swim would see himself getting caught up in would be the safrole acquisition. Has anybody tried distilling this? how much safrole did you get for what plant weight?

(swim is thinking of growing an acre of this shit and distilling out with large essential oil distiller) really that way swim would be able to get as much safrole and swim would like at any time.

 

[NEWBEE22]

English is not my mother language so please i want to be excused for the mistakes in the use or building off my writing.
hope it helps

IMO the indoor cultivation is really a bad idea plant need heavy suport and only soil will give the help for a 30 kilo plant (average size after 9 months, well peted)

why grow it?
look in the real big produce markets in stores for latino ones already have stock fresh or dry, up to you

there are no seeds at all for this baby after 10 years of smelly life the plant will be able to breed seeds and will dye, so when you notice seeds is time for burn the plant before pull some other plants around to the same destiny for the few seed collectes only 3 in 1000 succed his way but not really a great lookig bush is observed for those seeds

plant propagation is the way to go, cloning the branches work great roots work but little expirience in my situation then i can really recomend that way.

destillation is easy as long you are not in a hurry
6L . pessure cooker modified for having a safety device for relief at 17 psi a reading device up to 20 psi, a valve the sacape for the steam directed to a 40 cm liebig, flow the water at least 16C on it, THE FLASK FOR RECEPTION IN A LITTLE ICE BED that way oil will sink faster
swing told me he build a 6 brick bed and place a propane burner over it four more bricks around the burner make the oven thing and support the pressure cooker, the propane line is long so the tank is far away,

inside the cooker there is a trap for the water bed place where your steam start his jouney striping on his way the mass of piper auritum that has to be seted in a pressed way leaving no spaces , swigs like to 2 kilos bathc really choped a blender works but he enjoy the smell when he uses his machete an a log
he uses dh20 enoguh to cover the plant material close the cooker taking care of the ruber sealing (AFTER 8 OR 10 BATCHES better change it)

propane time full troath valve closed until you get the pressure at 8 psi open it just a little by little till you go down to 7psi flow at the same time the propane burner also have to be closed a little, i guess this is the trick, haveing the hability of developing the touch for keeping those 7 psi all the time with the minimum propane flow. once you get to 7 psi land relax because will be a 4 hours trip swing uses a ruber conection betwen leibig and cooker so he does from time to timea round motion on the cooker for the plant material to compact this is bacause if the steam finds like grooves on the material travels on them instead of the piper thus not carring any goods.
for 2 kilos he told me is geting an average 40 mls oil but swing is not really worry abot his hobby because where he lives is legal to even buy it
there are about 7 big supliyers but because is not really comercial oil is selled for aromaterapy at 1500 us for a liter
in the other hand he can get a 50 kilo dry piper for 500
by now he is growing his own because the plant grow suth from here and is collected in the river streams where it propagates some times as a plage but because is not been selectet some stream or family i dont know how to explain it have almost no root beer on it only miristicin
he grows his own in a no hurry no fertilizer or ddts
once a year collect the best plants ad enjoy his aromaterapy sessions 4 or 5 times a year
Voir la pièce jointe 10064Voir la pièce jointe 10065
there is also a micowave asisted destilation work i like to add

EVALUACIÓN DEL RENDIMIENTO EN LA OBTENCIÓN DELACEITE​

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[FONT=Arial,Bold][FONT=Arial,Bold]“[/FONT][/FONT]PIPER AURITUM KUNTH[FONT=Arial,Bold][FONT=Arial,Bold]” [/FONT][/FONT]MEDIANTE LA​

HIDRODESTILACIÓN ASISTIDA POR MICROONDAS


pd this is the first time i post i hope helps in this isue

 

[sneak]

Great first post! Cheers lots of info there man!

 

[d1ssonance]

awesome looking plant!