Technique Series: Recrystallization (urea as an example)

This is a technique video that I have been asked to do for a while. I wanted to go over the basics. I might explore it a bit more in the future.

I hope you guys like it. The introduction video is mostly from my video of converting sodium benzoate to benzoic acid. That is filmed in 4K and will be uploaded later.

I plan to do an Q and A video, so if you have any questions you'd like me to address in the video, leave them in the comments.

Music by Kevin Macleod - Music for Manatees

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[oscillocelot]

I'd be okay with a thousand-minute chemistry video...

[LENA.HA]

watched his videos for entertainment 3 years ago. now watching him to learn the procedures for my orgo lab. love it here

[BrentKruegerZapperz]

Great demonstration, actually all your videos are well done, seeing all the correct glassware function so efficiently makes a little investment much easier to justify. 👍

[EthicalAllele]

I wish I could give this video 10 likes. I’ve been struggling with this technique for so long, and after watching this video, I finally got a decently pure product! Thank you so, so much.

(Specifically, I was hung up on why adding water until the solution was cloudy was done, and you addressed that very clearly. Also, I had not been washing my crystals with extra solvent during vacuum filtration. I usually don’t have as much powder as shown in this demonstration, and thought it wouldn’t do much. I was dead wrong. I had less than 100mg of product, and washing it still helped a lot. I could see the color of my powder brighten as I washed it, and I got a decent melting point range for my product. After so many previous failures, it made me so happy :’))

[agent]

In my organic chem. lab, we practiced recrystallization by recrystallizing benzoic acid contaminated with charcoal using water. When left to crystallize, the stir rod was left in the solution for a surface for the crystals to form. That's maybe better than damaging the beaker. Well not really damaging it, just a little scraping.

[vladimirrienas]

I recently started working at a cannabis extraction lab doing hydrocarbon extractions these videos are great to help me under stand certain chemical processes going on at work and lab stuff in general this is a lot of good info that will carry over to crashing diamonds

[bigge]

Dude, not only do you make Hella entertaining videos but you also make great educational videos especially for us trying to do homebrews.

[caseypfost]

i love watching these videos even if ive never taken a chemistry class

[comradegarrett]

are you ever going to do more of this series because watching your videos makes me feel not totally lost in organic chem

[origamigek]

Those urea crystals look incredibly tasty~

[danielaustin]

my favourite technique is to heat up the solvent on a hot plate and add it slowly to my product when it is about 50% dissolved. (and it dependswhat solvent you are using) with solvent i put it on the hotplate as well to prevent it from cooling too early, when the solid has dissolved i take it of and let it cool really slowly, when it is at room temp i put it on ice to get the last crystals to form. it works really well but you must be careful that your product doesn't burn or melt.

[danielaustin]

i think one of the biggest problems is having impurities that does not dissolve in the solvent and no knowing that they are not product which means you can add far too much solvent to try to get them dissolved, this can badly effect yield or may mean you have to add a second solent to get the crystals to crash out of solution.

[lightvsdark]

Really good info. Very well planned out! Thanks!

[chemicalaffair.]

i only use gravity filtration with hot solutions - that's way less work than heating up a buchner and do a vacuum filtration

[Blu]

Do a video on column chromatography! You're the man BTW, thanks for all your videos!

[combustiblelemons]

Could it be possible to separate racemic methamphetamine from subisomer cuts that have say 10-15 C lower boiling point for the subisomer cuts (160 C) and then 170-175 C for racemic methamphetamine?

The presumed cut is isopropylbenzylamine. An adulterant of methamphetamine added to give the appearance of large fake crystaline methamphetamine hcl. I doubt you know or if these subisomers cuts are possible or can even be removed this way since the boiling point is so similar but it's always something I've wondered about since users of the drug claim it is being cut this way and that a drop in potency occured in 2015-2017. DEA says they see it occasionally at their dedicated methamphetamine analysis only sees it occasionally. In 2008 the agency moved to not control it and decided it was just visually similar to methamphetamine Crystals. The full report requested in the "NFLIS 2007 annual report" on page 25 in paragraph one and two. I believe this was before the agency had a analysis lab dedicated to the stuff.

[Dlorn]

Hey Nile, i've been watching through your backlog of videos in a somewhat random fassion and just stumbled upon your technique series. I love your content and it's as calming as it's interesting and very well presented. It makes me marvel at our universe while watching you perform "magic tricks" as you combine and extract stuff in various ways. I even started reading up on some things as i got really interested in chemistry, little did i know you made this series all those years ago. Since it doesn't seem to be a dedicated playlist either, would you consider a short series about the very basics and goals of chemistry in general? I think you old videos hold up pretty well, but there also is much improvement over the years for sure. So an updated series would also fit. I take it you are not that kind of educational channel, explaining everything for complete laymen, but if you threw an old fart like myself a bone to spread knowledge about chemisty i would really dig it. I was so very concerned when you tasted things which went through multiple steps getting dissolved in nasty stuff and to my uneducated eyes barely "cleaned", but as i start to make more sense of these processes it's fascinating to unterstand more about whats happening and why it's pretty much guaranteed to be pure at that point. If you read this, thank you for your inspiring work on this channel. You deserve every praise you receive and more.

[SamTornado]

These are the most comprehensive Chemistry videos on YouTube.

[WhyPhi]

Hi, I really enjoy your videos. Very good explanation/ overviews of your experiments, and I like how you show the mechanisms. Would it be possible to make albuterol? lol I'm just curious about how it's made because I have asthma.

[fireandcopper]

seriously, I loved this. do you have the capacity to shoot in 60FPS?