Department of Energy Argonne National Laboratory Office of Science NEWTON's Homepage NEWTON's Homepage
NEWTON, Ask A Scientist!
NEWTON Home Page NEWTON Teachers Visit Our Archives Ask A Question How To Ask A Question Question of the Week Our Expert Scientists Volunteer at NEWTON! Frequently Asked Questions Referencing NEWTON About NEWTON About Ask A Scientist Education At Argonne Aspirin from Willow Bark 
Name: trevor ratcliff
Status: N/A
Age: N/A
Location: N/A
Country: N/A
Date: 1999
Question:
I am interested in extracting salicin from willow bark and preparing aspirin from the extract. I am looking for any "recipes" for the procedure. Please help me if you can.


Replies:
An interesting project!

I suggest boiling the bark in plain old hot water, i.e., making tea. Then one needs to isolate the aspirin... I'm no organic chemist but I'd reduce the volume by evaporation, then put it into a sep funnel with a relatively safe organic solvent, and try to isolate the acetic acid by crystallization/recrystallization. There are probably optimal solvent choices as well as steps to take in oprder to remove unwanted impurities... all this is guesswork.

I hope this helped somewhat.

Try finding an organic chemistry laboratory manual and see if you can find experiments in which this or similar extractions are carried out.

Good luck
prof topper


Click here to return to the Chemistry Archives

NEWTON is an electronic community for Science, Math, and Computer Science K-12 Educators, sponsored and operated by Argonne National Laboratory's Educational Programs, Andrew Skipor, Ph.D., Head of Educational Programs.

For assistance with NEWTON contact a System Operator (help@newton.dep.anl.gov), or at Argonne's Educational Programs

NEWTON AND ASK A SCIENTIST
Educational Programs
Building 360
9700 S. Cass Ave.
Argonne, Illinois
60439-4845, USA
Update: February 2012
Weclome To Newton

Argonne National Laboratory