C. Gathering and drying

I chose to store wrap up the coffee filters containing the wet acetylsalicylic acid in a large plastic container until I was ready to process it.

I placed the filled filter papers on a super absorbent rag 5 times to get out most of the water. Afterwards I gently squeezed another rag on top of the papers absorbing even more liquid.

I then used a plastic board, opened the seaming on the coffee filters and flattened them out like a pancake scraping off the content using a rubber scraper (the item used to evenly distribute cream on cakes is optimal).

After I had scraped out all the acid from the filter papers I spread the substance out evenly on the plastic board and placed the board in a room with an oven set to max. The temperature rose to around 30 degrees in the room. The day after much of the water had evaporated. I then semi grinded the acid clumps and again spread it out evenly. After three to four days the acid was completely dry. Note: I'm not sure whether this is optimal way of drying as it takes several days for the acid to dry this way.

It would probably be a better idea to dry the acid in a large glass Pyrex dish in the oven at around 50-70C. 1,6kg would be too much for one dish so you would in this case have to divide it into 400g batches. However; I do not know for sure how this will impact acid, which is why I chose the hard way. It is definitely worth testing though as you will save several days drying it in the oven versus my other method.

You now have 1,6kg of acetylsalicylic acid and you have just completed the second most tedious task of PA manufacturing.

Sodium nitrate

Sodium nitrate can be purchased from specialty chem stores, online or at an apothecary. It is commonly used to prevent bacteria growth in meat so many hunters buy it to prepare meat before freezing. Half a teaspoon is mixed with salt and other herbs and rubbed into 25kg of moose meat f example.

Alternatively; you may synthesize sodium nitrate relatively easily. However, I will not add the guide for this manufacturing method here.

Distilled water

Always use distilled water when preparing and manufacturing acetylsalicylic acid and picric acid. You may buy it in car-stores as it is used as battery water. I ended up buying a total of 170L for creating 1,5kg of picric acid.

Practical tips - preparing large quantities of ice cubes: acquire a big freezer where you can store a lot of distilled ice (you fill the plastic "pocket sheets" with distilled water and squeeze the frozen cubes out of the plastic as your need arises). I converted 40-50L of distilled water into ice cubes this way (took me about 10 hours) and I filled up a large freezer for this purpose. You can only prepare smaller batches of ice cubes at a time though as you can only stack 2 layers of plastic ice-cube sheets at a time. Then you will need to wait 30-60 mins for it to freeze or the weight of the water will cause leakage in the lower levels of ice cube sheets. I also prepared ice cubes made from spring water. Just mark the plastic sheets of mineralized water with a large black X, from a permanent marker, on each side, prior to filling, so you know which sheet contains distilled and which contains mineralized water.

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 603