Turning batteries into medicine

this video is sponsored by the great courses plus an excellent online learning service that offers high quality courses in a wide range of topics today I'll be making lithium carbonate which is commonly used to treat bipolar disorder bipolar disorder is a mental condition that is characterized by unusual changes in mood someone who suffers from it will have periods where they feel overly excited happy and energized followed by periods of depression the energized period is referred to as mania so bipolar disorder is also called manic depression there are three major forms of the disorder and they're all classified by the severity type 1 bipolar disorder is the most severe form the manic episodes lasts at least 7 days or the mania is so severe that it requires immediate care or hospitalization this is followed by depressive episodes and suicidal tendencies that lasts at least two weeks some people also experience psychotic symptoms like hallucinations and delusions the psychosis can happen in both the manic and the depressive period for example manic psychosis can lead someone to thinking that they're rich famous untouchable super important etc whereas depressive psychosis might make the person think they have no money they are worthless or even that they've committed a crime type 2 bipolar disorder is a cycle between depression and hypomania which is a less of your form of mania the last and most mild form is called cyclothymic disorder or cyclothymia people suffering from cyclothymia will move between hypomania and mild depression an added complication is that some people suffer from mixed bipolar disorder this means that features that are unique to either just mania or depression can occur at the same time or in rapid cycles bipolar disorder is treatable through a combination of therapy and medication it's typically treated using three main classes of drugs mood stabilizers antipsychotics and anticonvulsants it can sometimes be controlled with just a single mood stable but it often requires a combination of drugs it's not curable but with proper treatment the symptoms can be controlled and it can go into remission in the mid 1900s it was found that lithium compounds could help treat this disorder I've included the story about its discovery from Wikipedia and you can read it if you're interested to this day lithium carbonate is one of the most effective and most commonly prescribed mood stabilizer used to treat bipolar disorder however new and more effective drugs are slowly being developed once lithium is ingested it spreads throughout the central nervous system and affects a whole bunch of different processes however it's still not known exactly how lithium works to treat the disorder so as I said earlier I'm going to be making lithium carbonate the route to lithium carbonate is quite easy and it starts with lithium metal the lithium metal is first reacted with water to produce lithium hydroxide and then carbon dioxide is pumped through the water to make lithium carbonate the lithium metal can be extracted from batteries but it's really not cost effective I wanted to do this on a larger scale so I split this video into two major parts in the first part I'll make the lithium carbonate directly from lithium hydroxide and in the second part I'll do a small-scale prep starting from batteries okay so for the first part where I make it from lithium hydroxide I need three main things Villa theme hydroxide itself hydrochloric acid and sodium bicarbonate I made lithium hydroxide in a previous video but I ended up using almost all of it to make lithium peroxide instead of making it again myself I just bought some lithium hydroxide from eBay one important thing to point out is that the lithium hydroxide I'm using here is the monohydrate and not the in hydrous form both forms can be used but the amount of each will be different the hydrochloric acid also known as muriatic acid was purchased from the hardware store the sodium bicarbonate is just regular baking soda that I got from the grocery store the amount of sodium bicarbonate and hydrochloric acid that's used depends on a lot of factors and I can't give an exact amount just to be safe I would have at least 500 grams of sodium bicarbonate and around 500 milliliters of the hydrochloric acid okay so to start things off I added 40 grams of the lithium hydroxide the small dish was rinsed with about 10 milliliters of water and then I added another 290 the amount of water that I'm adding here is just enough to dissolve all of the lithium hydroxide I turn on the stirring and I wait for everything to dissolve the lithium hydroxide doesn't dissolve super quickly so I left it for about an hour when I came back to it almost everything had dissolved but it was still a little cloudy these are impurities that were present in the lithium hydroxide and I'm going to have to filter it off what's kind of funny is that the impurity is probably just lithium carbonate which forms when lithium hydroxide is exposed to co2 in the air however I'm not a hundred percent sure that this is lithium carbonate so I have to filter it off anyway just to probably make it again in any case I do a vacuum filtration and everything passes through very quickly one important thing to point out is that paper filters can't be used for this step let's see em hydroxide is a strong base and a concentrated solution will disintegrate paper the filter is removed and I'm left with a relatively clear solution of lithium hydroxide the slight cloudiness is just due to the presence of air the solution is transferred back into a beaker and the round bottom flask is washed with a little bit of distilled water the beaker is covered with a little bit of plastic wrap and I move to setting up my co2 generator into the same run bottom flask as before I start to add sodium bicarbonate the flask is filled up to about halfway and then I add some water I'm going to be adding hydrochloric acid to generate the co2 and if I don't wet the sodium bicarbonate first it tends to clump up and become quite hard I make sure to wet most of the sodium bicarbonate and I stir things around occasionally using a glass stir rod I attach a vacuum adapter to the flask and then I add an addition funnel the addition funnel is preloaded with some diluted hydrochloric acid of housing is attached to the vacuum adapter and the other end is placed in the lithium hydroxide solution before we start I test the pH using a little bit of universal pH paper based on the color we can see that the solution is strongly basic with a pH of around 14 to get things started I open the addition funnel and a drop in some of the hydrochloric acid when the hydrochloric acid comes in contact with the sodium bicarbonate it reacts to form sodium chloride water and co2 gas the gas that is generated goes out of the vacuum adapter and is bubbled through the solution the apparatus is initially filled with air so this is what bubbles through first once the air is cleared and we start pumping co2 through the solution it should start to become cloudy as the co2 is pumped through some of it reacts with the lithium hydroxide to form lithium carbonate and water lithium carbonate is not very soluble in water so it precipitates out as it forms also the reaction between the lithium hydroxide and the carbon dioxide is exothermic so the solution is going to heat up as it heats up the solubility of carbon dioxide decreases and I think this actually reduces the efficiency of the reaction I found that the rate of co2 bubbling was actually pretty hard to control most of the time it was either way too fast or just way too slow I let it go a little bit faster but because of this I had to empty and replenish the apparatus a few times I didn't have any on me but the most efficient way to generate co2 is to just use dry ice lithium hydroxide a strongly basic but as it's consumed the pH should decrease by the time I'm done I should have little to no lithium hydroxide left and the pH should be between 8 and 9 I continue bubbling the co2 for about 30 minutes and I check the pH again the color is hard to tell exactly where it lies but it looks to be around 10 I continued bubbling it for another 30 minutes and this time when I check it it looks to be between 8 and 9 so we're pretty much done I let it bubble for about 30 seconds more and then I took things apart the plastic wrap is removed and there's a bunch of lithium carbonate that I need to recover from the hosing this is very easily done by just cracking it off using my fingers it's a little bit messy but it gets the job done I don't completely clean the tubing and there's still a little bit of stubborn lithium carbonate left over but it's really not a big loss there's a lot that stuck to the side of the beaker so using a metal spatula I break it off the lithium carbonate at the bottom has also solidified so I chop it up as well I let most of the solids settle and the liquid portion is decanted into another beaker the solids are temporarily placed on the side and I bring this liquid to a boil boiling the solution has a two-fold benefit firstly in the presence of co2 lithium carbonate can form the more soluble lithium bicarbonate by boiling the solution the co2 gas is driven off and all of the lithium bicarbonate should revert back to lithium carbonate the second reason is that lithium carbonate is one of those compounds where it's solubility decreases as the temperature increases so by boiling the solution we're destroying any lithium bicarbonate that might be present and decreasing the overall solubility of the lithium carbonate after boiling it for a few minutes the solution is taken off the hot plate the hot solution is then transferred back to the other beaker to complete the transfer the beaker is washed with a little bit of boiling water I mix it using a glass stir rod and I wash the lithium carbonate as thoroughly as possible while still hot the lithium carbonate is separated using a coffee filter once everything passed through I washed it a few times using boiling distilled water the filter was removed and I let it dry on some paper towel for a few days when I came back I was left with some very nice lithium carbonate powder the final yield was 30 grams which represents a percent yield of 85 percent considering this is such a straightforward preparation the yield should be much closer to a hundred and eighty-five is actually quite low I think the reason for this is actually because of the way I decided to generate my co2 hydrochloric acid is volatile and I think some of it passed over with the co2 and reacted either with my lithium carbonate or the lithium hydroxide I knew this would happen to a certain degree but I didn't think it would be a huge impact on my yield this problem can be avoided by either using dry ice or an intermediate gas bubbler a gas bubbler filled with water would probably be able to take out most of the hydrochloric acid okay now for the second and more exciting part where I make the lithium carbonate starting with a battery let me just preface this by saying that this method is not only a lot more expensive but a lot more dangerous with that being said I think we can get started there's a few ways to do this and all of them are a pretty big pain I personally found that using a pipe cutter like this was the easiest method brand new pipe cutters seem to do a pretty good job but the one I'm using is kind of old and dull it eventually cuts through the casing and we can pull it apart unfortunately the one I'm using is kind of dull and it pushed some of the casing into the lithium not only is this dangerous and can cause a short but it also makes it a huge pain to get out if the battery does short out it's going to heat up and although unlikely it could burst into flames using a small clipper I peel away a lot of the casing and I can pull everything out it's then unrolled and the lithium foil is separated from the other part of the battery small pieces can be broken off and thrown into the beaker on the left which has around 40 milliliters of water in it it's really important to add the lithium slowly because if too much is added at one time it can burst into flames and literally explode flaming lithium will be shot everywhere and it can lead to a massive fire even though lithium is the least reactive of the alkali metals it should still be treated with respect and used with caution even if it's added in small portions it can still light on fire at least it doesn't explode though anyway the reaction that we're doing here is pretty simple when the lithium is added it reacts with water to form lithium hydroxide and hydrogen gas the hydrogen gas bubbles away out of the beaker and the lithium hydroxide just dissolves into the water between shots some of the lithium caught on fire again and stuck to the wall of the beaker which caused it to crack anyway once I'm done adding all of the lithium the procedure is pretty much the same as the first part there was a little bit of insoluble white stuff so I quickly filtered this off the lithium hydroxide is poured into a beaker and I set up my co2 generator co2 is pumped through the solution and I keep going until a pH of around nine or ten the co2 generator is taken away and the lithium carbonate is scraped off the walls of the beaker the water portion is poured into a beaker and it's brought to a boil unlike last time there was a lot of lithium carbonate that came out of solution this was been transferred to the other lithium carbonate to give it a good wash was separated using a coffee filter and I washed it with a little bit of water I let it dry overnight and then I transferred the powder to a watch glass the yield of lithium carbonate was 2.8 5 grams or about 71% this is significantly less than the last run and I'm not exactly sure what happened I even diluted the hydrochloric acid a lot more to see if that would affect anything anyway regardless of yield it did work and I now have some medication that I made from a battery on the left I combined all of my lithium carbonate and on the right I weighed out about 300 milligrams 300 milligrams is the typical dose of lithium carbonate and it's taken three or four times a day it's taken as a pill but like with most drugs it's not just packed into a pill capsule and taking pure additives that are included with the pill are known as excipient although the excipient SAR commonly known as just fillers they do have a purpose depending on what's included it can change the properties of the pill and I've listed some of the major ways here just for fun I mixed in two common binders silicon dioxide and cellulose once it was all mixed together I very sloppily packed it into a pill I snapped on the other end and I now have the first finished product of Nile red pharmaceuticals all jokes aside this is a really low quality product with dirty lithium carbonate in it and nobody should ever even think of ingesting this anyway now for just one final test to see if we actually have lithium carbonate it's a very easy test to do and I just need to add some lithium carbonate to some acidified water lithium carbonate is a base and when it's added it will react to form co2 gas when I added it it led to a lot of bubbling so I can confirm that I do in fact have lithium carbonate a big thanks goes out to the great courses plus for sponsoring this video the great courses plus is an online service that offers unlimited access to high-quality lectures and courses from top educators around the world their educators include professors from Ivy League schools and other major universities from around the world as well as experts from places like National Geographic and the Smithsonian they have a huge library of over 7,000 video lectures and more are added each month they cover a wide range of topics including science math history and literature or even how to cook play chess or become a better photographer they have some really good chemistry courses that I highly recommend if you're beginner the chemistry second edition course covers pretty much all of the major topics of high school chemistry and some from first year University if you're a little bit more advanced you can check out their organic chemistry course it gives a good overview of the major organic chemistry reactions and I think it complements my channel especially the courses on recruit ization distillation and extraction which is 90% of what I do the great cruises plus offers a free trial and plans starting as low as $14.99 a month if you guys want to support my channel you can get your free trial by going to the great courses plus comm slash Nile red or by clicking on the link in the description so as usual I'd like to thank everyone who's supporting me on patreon everyone who supports me will see my videos 24 hours before I release them to YouTube on top of this all of my supporters can directly message me on patreon with any questions or comments that they have and I do my best to respond within about a day or so to all of my patreon messages if you support me with five dollars or more you'll get your name at the end of the video like you see here you

Channel: NileRed

Views: 1,204,907

Rating: 4.9246101 out of 5

Keywords: nile, red, medication, bipolar, disorder, lithium, battery, preparation, science, chemistry, hydroxide, carbon, dioxide, nilered, medicine, pill

Id: U2UQ4-NOP9E

Length: 20min 3sec (1203 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 01 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/redwhiskeredbubul]

Skip to 3:00 to get the prep