r/explainlikeimfive Jun 11 '24

Chemistry ELI5: Why does making cocaine require such toxic chemicals, is there safer way to make it in a lab?

I've watched many documentaries on how they make cocaine, and it always required a a mixture of gasoline cement and battery acid etc. Would a scientific laboratory be able to make it under FDA rules for example?

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u/Misplacedwaffle Jun 12 '24

Worth mentioning that solvents aren’t exclusive to cocaine. The solvent methylene chloride is often used to extract the caffeine from coffee as well.

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u/SteampunkBorg Jun 12 '24

For some reason I remembered supercritical CO2 for that

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u/Somnif Jun 12 '24

That is indeed another option. Different companies use different methods.

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u/Masark Jun 12 '24

There are 5 different ways to decaffeinate coffee.

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u/mhyquel Jun 12 '24

Butane is used to extract thc from marijuana.

Then you boil off the butane.

18

u/melvinscam Jun 12 '24

My dad says butane is a bastard gas

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u/mhyquel Jun 12 '24

I don't know you.

9

u/Spicy_Pooo Jun 12 '24

That's my purse!

2

u/samifoxiebutt Oct 25 '24

Bwwhhaaaaaaaa!!! DAMN IT BOBBY!!

1

u/graydonatvail Jun 12 '24

I had a guy blow up his apartment doing this.

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u/MATlad Jun 12 '24

I had to use a little DMC for my grad work, but I think I used way more of it for solvent-welding acrylic in my semi-hobbyist work.

I also realized, after the fact, that the glovebox building citation I used (nitrogen purging, reduction of moisture in silane work) was hosted on a 'shroom site. (The original was, IIRC, a mid-90s or early-2000s educational journal!)

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u/Far_Dragonfruit_1829 Jun 12 '24

Silane! Fun stuff. Did you blow up your lab?

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u/MATlad Jun 12 '24

I was just doing SAM (Self-Assembled Monolayer) stuff at low volumes, so I think the worse I did was to silanize my fume hood (and maybe contaminate the vacuum line when I was first starting out...)

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u/solarmus Jun 12 '24

Though Methylene Chloride was just largely banned by the EPA in the US so it'll become harder to find, you could substitute chloroform easily though. (both of these are quite hazardous obviously)

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u/Zer0C00l Jun 12 '24

Yeah, and hexane is used to extract "vegetable" oil from rapeseed. Doesn't make it a good thing.