If you are provided with chemistry lab and plant material it would be easier for you to isolate rather than getting the standard which is very difficult to obtain. Since it is an alkaloid a simple acid-base extraction would give you 90% pure compound in a short period of time. It is worth a try if you are desperate and provided with the resources for extracting the same.
Thank you. Can you please gives me details of the acid base extraction, if possible? I will surely try.
Take atleast 50-100 g dried and powdered plant material for extraction. Add 250-500 ml of 2% HCl (in water) and let it stir at slow speed for 4 hours over magnetic stirrer. In this step the alkaloids are converterd to their salts and are in dissolved state in the aqueous phase. Filter and partition the Aq. phase with equal volume of diethyl ether or chloroform which will remove other polar & non-polar compounds. (Keep this organic phase separately or discard it after the experiment.) After 2-3 washes, use base ( 25% ammonia) to adjust the the pH of aqueous phase to 12. In this step all the alkaloid salts are converted into their free bases which can be separated out by partitioning with equal volumes of diethyl ether or chloroform. Now evaporate the organic solvent phase by reduced pressure and you will get the crude alkaloid fraction. For purifiaction this crude fraction is dissolved in diethyl ether or chloroform (50 ml) and partitioned with 2% HCl or 1% H2SO4 or 2% Acetic acid (in water). Now here the alkaloids are again converted to their salts and moved to aq. phase. This step again removes few more impurities or other class of compounds in the organic phase. Do this partition 2-3 times till the organic phase is free of alkaloid base. Using crystallization with mixture of solvents it may be possible to obtain the pure crystals of alkaloid from the Aq. phase.
Do a TLC (during each of the purification steps to know about the presence of alkaloids)and spray with dragendorff reagent to visalize the no of alkaloid spots. If this plant is happened to contain more alkaloids you may need to do a simple column chromatography to separate the alkaloids. But from the reference paper of this plant, which i attached herwith, it shows only two alkaloids which are also isomers.
This procedure normally applies to most classes of alkaloids. So give it a try. If not you can follow what the reference paper suggested which is little difficult to perform if you are a beginner of these sorts. But possible too.
Please do share your experience and results here. If any questions feel free to discuss them with me.
Good luck..
- Badges
- Science topic