I was wondering about the potential use of propylene glycol and glycerin as food grade extraction solvents. Has anyone used these before for this purpose?

Glycerin and propylene glycol have high boiling points and don't evaporate easily, similar to d-limonene. They are both highly polar though, more so than water, according to their XlogP.

Does anyone use these solvents for extraction and does anyone have any recommendations on how to best use them?

Interesting I will have to do some research on the contents of some automotive anti freeze. Any other easy sources of propylene glycol?

I know you can find glycerin at the drug store in the US.



Peace
MV

SWIM has never seen propylene glycol, but he has worked a lot with glycerol (or glycerin). It is funny "solvent" to work with, let alone that SWIM doubts whether anyone uses it as a solvent on its own. It is very viscous (like honey and maybe thicker) and it is miscible with water.

some antifreeze has propylene glycol as a base.
glycerol/glycerine is a sugar and an alcohol if i remember correctly.
my only experience with glycerine has been extracting (or seperating it out) of vegetable oil with ethanol/methanol and KOH to give--ethyl esters--biodiesel. and of course, soap.
it has a million uses from cosmetics to explosives, but i never thought of it as a solvent.
the food grade stuff is nice to work with, i wonder where it would fit into an extraction.

since glycerol has three hydroxyl groups, it'll readily undergo hydrogen bonding with any proton acceptors.
it will make a mess, and probably not behave the way you would like it to.

in the presence of a base, you'll end up with a fine soapy mess.

I have used vegetable glycerine for cannabis extraction. The process is excruciatingly slow. I'd imagine if you could reflux the glycerine it would occur a lot faster, but my cannabis extraction took a month with frequent agitation I believe. I'm sure you know the dangers of heating glycerine however, it's certainly flammable!

I am not sure how good of a solvent it would be for the spice, but I have been surprised many times before.

yup, and keep the nitric acid well away, too

if burned under 1000f it produces all sorts of nasty biproducts.

Propylene glycol can be found in food grade form, not just as anti-freeze.

Glycerin has it’s problems. It is thick. It’s water soluble, and so is propylene glycol.

You can’t use either as a non-polar solvent. They are both very polar.

Glycerin can be used in an A/B as a water substitute. It’s insoluble in chloroform, ether, heptane, etc.

Propylene glycol is soluble in acetone, chloroform, ethanol, ether, and water. So I’m not sure it it’s useful in A/B applications.

Also DMSO can be purchased in food grade form. I forgot to add that to this thread. It’s soluble in everything pretty much except heptane, ether, and xylene. So it could be used in an A/B as the water layer.

Using DMSO or glycerin in an A/B doesn’t make much sense when you could just use water, so I don’t see any utility there.

Does anyone have any idea of the solubility of things like DMT, mescaline, and bufotenine in any of these solvents?

Be aware that a lot of anti-freeze (at least where I am) is ethylene glycol, which is poisonous and will kill you! Propylene glycol is non-toxic. I have seen it in farm co-op stores.

Good point FlyingFaders - The Propylene Glycol antifreeze that I think people are referring to called "Engine Ice", it's blue, and not green like E. Glycol antifreeze. It is completely food safe and non toxic, but it's really expensive.

I've never heard of Propylene Glycol being used as a solvent either however. Not saying it can't be, just never heard of it.

Peace,
-idt

If the label on my Calcium Hydroxide is correct, lime is soluble in glycerin. So my question is, could a certain ratio of glycerin and water be used to make a solution which can dissolve a greater amount of lime than just plain water? If so, could this be used to achieve higher pH levels and possibly freebase bark material in solution using lime? Just been pondering this, but figured I'd run it past you guys to see if it's even feasible before attempting this sorta thing.

That sounds like a deal breaker.

Doesn't work, not sure if lime is even soluble in glycerol, doesn't really seem to be, it just clouds up.

It's "soluble" in glycerin, about as “soluble” as it is in water. Meaning you won't get much to dissolve in either solvent.

brean storm

can swim not pull the mhrb with acidfit propylene glycol for like 2 hours and than add fumaric acid to crash out the alks or is this not usefull

or maby base the mhrb with ammonia let it evap and pull with propylene glycol and crash alks out with fumaric acid.

its just a breanstorm. dont know if is posbble

Would that work?? they're not gonna precipitate very well if its so thick!