We were recently given some aspirin as a gift and we have been dreaming up some ideas of what to do with it.

First though we wanted to do a simple video showing you how to quantitatively extract the acetylsalicylic acid in a pure form from the tablets.

First open the packaging and get the tablets into a large beaker.

Here we go. We're using 48 tablets each containing 500 mg of acetylsalicylic acid.

Now measure out 50 ml of acetone.

You can also use isopropanol if you want.

If you have this, but make sure it's free from water.

Add the solvent to the tablets in the beaker.

You can immediately see the tablets softening and starting to disintegrate.

You can heat the beaker but it's faster and easier just to use a domestic microwave.

Heat on 400 watt power until the acetone in the beaker boils.

This won't take long.

You can see there are still some.

Some tablet-like shapes in the bottom of the beaker.

So break these up using a glass rod.

Now return the beaker to the microwave and boil again.

Don't allow the resulting solution to cool otherwise the product will crystallize out.

We first need to filter off the insoluble tablet binders and we need a hot solution to do this.

So while the mixture is still boiling hot, set up for filtration preferably using a vacuum pump.

You should be able to easily filter the hot acetone solution through before it crystallizes.

Now scrape the insoluble filter contents back into the beaker.

Measure out the further 25 ml of acetone and add this to the beaker.

This will dissolve any remaining acetylsalicylic acid present.

You can see a lot of the remaining white solids have now dissolved.

Place back in the microwave and heat until boiling again just to be sure we're extracted everything.

And filter the hot liquid once again.

There's still a little bit of product left.

The product remaining in the beaker and in the filter.

So use the final 25 ml of acetone to dissolve this and wash through the filter.

The filtrate has now cooled and you can already see a lot of crystals forming.

You could filter these.

But you would lose a lot of product still dissolved in the acetone.

The crystals are easy to break up in the flask with gently swirling.

Prepare a clean dry Pyrex dish.

And pour in the acetone and the crystals.

Now leave this in the warm and ventilated place to evaporate and dry.

Do know that acetone is extremely inflammable so be careful about where you do this.

Within a few hours the acetone will evaporate leaving our pure crystalline acetylsalicylic acid.

You'll need to scrape this carefully off the dish.

And here it island 24 grams of acetylsalicylic acid crystals.

This is a quantitative recovery from the tablets.

Which means that we've recovered close to 100%.

This is a simple video but why not set yourself a challenge?

How efficiently can you recover the product using as little solvent as possible?

Developing and improving your technique is just as important as learning theory.

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