How to extract capsaicinoids from chili peppers

capsaicinoids extract is extremely unpleasant to get on your skin in your eyes however luckily capsaicinoids are not particularly toxic proper safety equipment such as gloves and goggles are absolutely required highly concentrated capsaicinoids on your skin can burn as much as acid and the burn can last for more than a day washing the affected area with water will not do much to relieve the burning capsaicinoids are the chemicals and chili peppers that give them their spiciness the major and most potent capsaicin oil and chili peppers is called capsaicin capsaicinoids trigger burning feeling by stimulating neurons that normally detect heat the most common use of capsaicinoids is to make food spicy however capsaicin does have some other uses such as its use in pepper spray or as a pain reliever extracting and concentrating the capsaicinoids from Hot Chili Peppers can be a fun exercise the extracted capsaicin a--let's can have many uses such as for homemade hot sauce animal deterrence or even homemade pepper spray for the extraction you only really need two things a solvent and the peppers you want to extract the capsaicinoids from in terms of solvents there's a lot of solvents you can use such as ethanol acetone methanol etc however there's only one thing you have to look out for you have to make sure that the solvent you choose is anhydrous this means that the solvent must contain little to no water including water in the solvent reduces the solubility of the capsaicin but moreover it just makes it more difficult to purify your extract I carried out the extraction using a socket extractor so I only use about 250 milliliters of solvent I go over in the video and explain exactly what a soxhlet extractor does and how it works I bought mine online for about $60 including shipping if you do not have access to a soxhlet extractor you will need about 1 liter of solvent instead in both cases the amount of solvent used is in extreme excess and probably less can be used for the Chili Peppers I use 14 grams of dried ghost chili peppers in theory you can use any chili pepper that you like but it's best to get the most potent one it is extremely important that the peppers that you use are dried if you buy fresh peppers simply cut them up and dry them in an oven thoroughly before using them for the extraction I use pre dried ghost Chili Peppers first with my hands I crushed up the ghost Chili Peppers to break them up into as many pieces as possible it is important that the peppers are as dry as possible otherwise along with the capsaicinoids you'll be extracting a lot of water excess water will make drying the extract a much lengthier process I then poured the crushed chili peppers into a clean food grade mortar it is important this mortar has never come into contact with chemicals if you plan to taste the extracted capsaicin the peppers were then ground as finely as possible in the lab I only had a mortar and pestle but it is much easier to actually use a coffee grinder or blender to powder eyes the peppers if you choose to use a coffee grinder or a blender be very careful with the powdered pepper dust that is created for this extraction I decided to use a sock slit extractor because I thought it would be an interesting demonstration the sock said extractor is an interesting apparatus which will allow me to speed up the extraction process as well as use less solvent without a sock slit extractor another perfectly viable route would be to simply grind up the peppers and let them soak in about a liter of ethanol for a week after a week the pepper particulate can be filtered off and the solution can be dried to leave the capsaicinoids extract the clear advantage of the soxhlet extractor is that the entire extraction process only took about three hours instead of a week first a piece of cotton is placed in the bottom to block the siphon tube next the powdered pepper is poured in on top of the cotton and finally another piece of cotton is added in and the pepper powder is packed down above the soxhlet extractor an Allen condenser is set up note however in this shot I have not yet attached the water feed and exit tubes below I've affixed the 500 milliliter round bottom flask containing about 250 milliliters of anhydrous ethanol after the ethanol has been boiling for a while you can see the vapours climbing up the right arm of the SoCs lid extractor eventually the vapors will reach the Allen condenser and now in liquid form the ethanol will drip down onto the powdered pepper you might have noticed that there is only a thin glass wall between the solvent pepper mixture and the vapors traveling up from the round bottom flask this allows the solvent pepper mixture to be heated up by the vapors as they travel up to the right arm of the soxhlet extractor the heating of the solvent increases the efficiency of the extraction unfortunately the angle that I chose to film this on makes this quite difficult to see so to make the function of the soxhlet extractor more clear I've taken a diagram from Wikipedia to help it is difficult to see but the siphon arm to the left of the Sox and extractor X's at the bottom goes up a little bit and then takes a sharp 180 degree turn and then leads back down into the round bottom flask the pressure created by the solvent in the main chamber of the sock said extractor pushes some of the solvent down into the siphon tube the height of the solvent in the ascending portion of the siphon tube matches the height of the solvent in the main chamber eventually the height of the solvent in the main chamber will reach the height of the 180 degree bend in the siphon tube as some of the solvent passes the 180 degree Bend the solvent will enter the descending portion of the siphon tube the solvent in the descending portion will fall due to gravity and behind it create a suction this will lead to the emptying of almost all of the solvent from the main chamber this is one complete cycle of the soxhlet extractor eventually the extraction solvent will run clear which signifies the end of the extraction process let the solution cool and then vacuum or gravity filter it the filtering process is needed even with the socks of the extractor sometimes because sometimes the small powdered parts of the pepper make it through the cotton and get into the solution if you did the extraction at home and you did not use a sock set extractor this is going to be your final step simply gravity filter your solution into an open top container then leave your solution in a well ventilated area to allow for the solvent to evaporate I opted to use a rotary evaporator because is much quicker I then washed the round bottom flask twice with 25 milliliter portions of ethanol I then transferred the solution back to a round bottom flask from the filtration flask I transferred it back to a round bottom flask because I plan to use the rotary evaporator to pull off all the solvent I then also washed the filtration flask twice with 25 milliliter portions of ethanol at this point I'll just take a second to explain what a rotary evaporator is it is more commonly referred to as a rotovap and basically it allows for the quick evaporation of solvent as well as the recovery of the solvent the rate of solvent evaporation is increased by pulling a vacuum on the solvent the gaseous solvent is recovered by cooled condenser coils because there's very little extract compared to the volume of ethanol I wrote a vapid off most of the solvent and then transferred the more concentrated extract to a smaller round bottom flask to continue the evaporation in the 500 milliliter round bottom I was left with a lot of ethanol insoluble impurities I'm actually not sure what this is and if you any suggestions please let me know I continued roto vaping the extract in a small 10 milliliter round bottom flask I was left with a red viscous goop the extract is red due to the presence of an abundant amount of beta-carotene this is an extremely strong capsaicin extract and should be handled with care if you completed the extraction using food grade solvents and materials then you can test it if you are brave enough take a toothpick and scoop up a small microscopic drop with the tip of it if you touch it on your tongue I can guarantee you that the potency is enough to make most people extremely uncomfortable further extraction of the capsaicin will be extremely intensive and the yield will not be worth your time from what I've read most feasible methods will only have a yield of about 1% much more feasible method to get pure capsaicin is to synthesize it from the ground up using vanilla and 6 bromo hexanoic acid this is actually synthesis I'm working on right now but I'm not sure how far I'll get with it you

Channel: NileRed

Views: 1,049,827

Rating: 4.9330158 out of 5

Keywords: extract, capsaicin, capsaicinoid, chili, pepper, bhut, jolokia, ghost, soxhlet, extractor, nile, red, chemistry, science

Id: cQIMLEwQWL0

Length: 9min 14sec (554 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 14 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/optional22]

So I use benzene to get anhydrous ethanol, then give myself in 20 years cancer when I try to use the capsaicin in my food.

[u/Pickle_Inspecto]

This guy's videos are awesome! It really makes me miss undergrad o-chem lab.

[u/[deleted]]

This gave me an idea: the best way to enforce no idle zones is to replace the ethanol in our gas with capsaicin infused ethanol. Sure engine gunk would ensue but no one would want to idle.

[u/jernerthern]

Nice video mate! Soxhlet extractors are wonderful things!

[u/Rapturelover]

Interesting but would not use it for consumption.

[u/carbonnanotube]

I am going to do this.

I am going to eat it too.

I have purchased extracts before at great expense so doing it myself will be fun.

[u/senatorpjt]

Need to run a column now. I did this once, ended up with a white solid. I tasted it.. it didn't even taste hot, it was just like I drove a nail into the tip of my tongue.

[u/KrunoS]

I'm gonna show this to my dad, he's been wanting to get into making fruit extracts for a while now, he wants his house to smell of nature. Maybe this'll motivate him enough to get start making them.

[u/[deleted]]

This will be useful.