Did Dr. Vincent Lebot ever identify the orange substance in the acetone test?

[verticity]

Cian, the owner, used to post around here, but I haven't seen him in a while, and I noticed while going through our server logs that his personal email is bouncing. I wonder if he sold the business or something?

I recall a while back he made a decision to stop posting here for legal reasons. i.e. He sells kava "not for human consumption" so doesn't want to be seen around here giving advice about how to consume kava...

 

[Mr G]

@Mr G is usually well-informed when it comes to GKE and how to reach them.

Mr G gets tired of posting the address over and over, which I might add is in their FAQ

orders at globalkavaexports.com

 

[kavamedicine]

Mr G gets tired of posting the address over and over, which I might add is in their FAQ

orders at globalkavaexports.com

Thank you. Good news - the old price has been reinstated... Looks like it was an error after all. Looking forward to sampling the Marang Marang.

 

[Palmetto]

I think that finding out what the orange chemical in the acetone test might not be too hard with the right equipment.
1. Use acetone as one of the solvents in an HPLC system to isolate the orange constituent
2. Evaporate the acetone
3. Run a GC/MS and compare the results against GC/MS libraries by software

If the acetone orange constituent is unknown, then it would at least be information that it wasn't flavokawains giving the orange hue.

 

[HeadHodge]

I think that finding out what the orange chemical in the acetone test might not be too hard with the right equipment.
1. Use acetone as one of the solvents in an HPLC system to isolate the orange constituent
2. Evaporate the acetone
3. Run a GC/MS and compare the results against GC/MS libraries by software

If the acetone orange constituent is unknown, then it would at least be information that it wasn't flavokawains giving the orange hue.

Sounds great. When are you going to do it? I look forward to the results!!

 

[verticity]

I think that finding out what the orange chemical in the acetone test might not be too hard with the right equipment.
1. Use acetone as one of the solvents in an HPLC system to isolate the orange constituent
2. Evaporate the acetone
3. Run a GC/MS and compare the results against GC/MS libraries by software

If the acetone orange constituent is unknown, then it would at least be information that it wasn't flavokawains giving the orange hue.

Yup, pretty straightforward... if you happen to have a GC/MS at your disposal...

For the 1st step, you wouldn't even need an HPLC. You could just do old fashioned liquid chromatography manually with a column collecting the fractions. If you do that, though (or in the case of HPLC, too), the "orange" constituent might not actually appear orange when it is separated from the other constituents. You would have to check each fraction for absorption around 450 nm, which appears to be the approximate absorption maximum of the "orange stuff".

 

[kavadude]

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=m570.l1313&_nkw=gc/ms&_sacat=0

Sometimes I like to search eBay for expensive scientific equipment and wonder who the hell is buying it. Like there's one on there for $28k...with 20 people watching it. Are people doing GC/MS in their basements? Does South Dakota State University have to buy their lab equipment secondhand?

 

[verticity]

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=m570.l1313&_nkw=gc/ms&_sacat=0

Sometimes I like to search eBay for expensive scientific equipment and wonder who the hell is buying it. Like there's one on there for $28k...with 20 people watching it. Are people doing GC/MS in their basements? Does South Dakota State University have to buy their lab equipment secondhand?

Probably the latter case.
I used to work with lasers that were worth half a million dollars. It was kind of weird as a poor grad student working with stuff worth more than I would ever expect to make in a lifetime...
http://www.continuumlasers.com/inde...ent&view=article&id=644&Itemid=572#liintroTab
Let me know if you find one of those on ebay...

 

[verticity]

I think that finding out what the orange chemical in the acetone test might not be too hard with the right equipment.
1. Use acetone as one of the solvents in an HPLC system to isolate the orange constituent
2. Evaporate the acetone
3. Run a GC/MS and compare the results against GC/MS libraries by software

If the acetone orange constituent is unknown, then it would at least be information that it wasn't flavokawains giving the orange hue.

Also if the orange stuff isn't in a library, you could use 1H NMR to figure out the structure... If you happen to have one of these...

 

[HeadHodge]

...Are people doing GC/MS in their basements? Does South Dakota State University have to buy their lab equipment secondhand?

I buy this stuff all the time and sell it to some scientist in Iran for a healthy profit. He always pays in cash delivered in unmarked planes.
Unfortunately I haven't heard from my contact lately, so business is slow.

 

[verticity]

NMR spectroscopy is fun, because the apparatus uses a super conducting magnet so powerful, that you have to remove all magnetic objects from your person when you enter the room it is in to avoid flying shrapnel.

 

[verticity]

I buy this stuff all the time and sell it to some scientist in Iran for a healthy profit. He always pays in cash delivered in unmarked planes.
Unfortunately I haven't heard from my contact lately, so business is slow.

Yes, good point, actually. I bet many of the buyers are outside the United States. Maybe pharmceutical companies in China and India..

 

[Palmetto]

Yup, pretty straightforward... if you happen to have a GC/MS at your disposal...

For the 1st step, you wouldn't even need an HPLC. You could just do old fashioned liquid chromatography manually with a column collecting the fractions. If you do that, though (or in the case of HPLC, too), the "orange" constituent might not actually appear orange when it is separated from the other constituents. You would have to check each fraction for absorption around 450 nm, which appears to be the approximate absorption maximum of the "orange stuff".

@verticity I thought about old fashioned chromatography columns, but it brought back dreadfully boring memories of grad school. I used to run liposome encapsulated fluorescent samples through them day after day. Haven't done that in well over 10 years.

I wonder if the absorption peak broadens when going from a yellowish tinge to an orange color. I suspect it does broaden, rather than merely redshifting a peak of the same shape. The acetone orange test has about a 0.75 correlation with flavokawain levels. A good correlation, not a great correlation. I wonder what the absorbance peak of DHK in acetone is? From what I could tell at a quick glance, the orange might correlate well to higher DHK levels, moreso than higher DHM levels, although Borogoru doesn't seem to comply with that theory.

NMR spectroscopy is fun, because the apparatus uses a super conducting magnet so powerful, that you have to remove all magnetic objects from your person when you enter the room it is in to avoid flying shrapnel.

And keep all gas cylinders far away so you don't get crushed, like some people have near NMR systems.

 

[HeadHodge]

...From what I could tell at a quick glance, the orange might correlate well to higher DHK levels, moreso than higher DHM levels, although Borogoru doesn't seem to comply with that theory.

I've used statistical test results to argue that Dihydromethysticin is strongly correlated. But you're right some products high in Dihydromethysticin are testing noble. Only one (so far) that is not high in Dihydromethysticin has tested non-Noble. So I've argued that if a product tests for tudei, it should have a 5 in it's first two digits of it's chemotype. So if you want to avoid tudei just stay away from products with that chemotype (as a rule of thumb).

 

[verticity]

...I wonder if the absorption peak broadens when going from a yellowish tinge to an orange color. I suspect it does broaden, rather than merely redshifting a peak of the same shape. The acetone orange test has about a 0.75 correlation with flavokawain levels. A good correlation, not a great correlation. I wonder what the absorbance peak of DHK in acetone is?

The paper by Lebot and Legendre (2016) has spectra of all the FKs and KLs.
If you look at the visible spectra, there is a large peak that appears to broaden. But it is actually just the peak of something in tudei growing in and merging with the noble peak. There are pictures around here somewhere. Here is the paper for reference.
So actually, the correlation they give is at a single point at 400 nm. At 400 nm, the noble and tudei peaks overlap a lot. I think they just chose that wavelength because it has the smallest standard deviations, but I don't think it is actually the best wavelength to use. However, I bet a much better correlation would be obtained by actually comparing the full visible spectrum, or getting the dominant wavelength from the spectrum. If you took the spectra in the gas phase, you could probably actually see the individual noble and tudei peaks cleanly separated, but liquid solutions always broaden things out...

 

[verticity]

I've used statistical test results to argue that Dihydromethysticin is strongly correlated. But you're right some products high in Dihydromethysticin are testing noble. Only one (so far) that is not high in Dihydromethysticin has tested non-Noble. So I've argued that if a product tests for tudei, it should have a 5 in it's first two digits of it's chemotype. So if you want to avoid tudei just stay away from products with that chemotype (as a rule of thumb).

There are some 265--- tudeis, like Palisi.

 

[verticity]

Please see the 'Megathread':
http://kavaforums.com/forum/threads/acetone-test-results-megathread.8644/page-3#post-108229

 

[TheKavaSociety]

I've used statistical test results to argue that Dihydromethysticin is strongly correlated. But you're right some products high in Dihydromethysticin are testing noble. Only one (so far) that is not high in Dihydromethysticin has tested non-Noble. So I've argued that if a product tests for tudei, it should have a 5 in it's first two digits of it's chemotype. So if you want to avoid tudei just stay away from products with that chemotype (as a rule of thumb).

This theory could be sort of convincing if DHM was the only thing causing negative effects. However, if flavokavains (or other compounds) also contribute towards the hangovers, lethargy, etc, then this method isn't sufficient. I'd say though that if you know flavokavain % and chemotype and can confirm there is no chloro then you can make a good decision without any acetone test. However, I personally think it's easier with the test, don't you?

 

[verticity]

This theory could be sort of convincing if DHM was the only thing causing negative effects. However, if flavokavains (or other compounds) also contribute towards the hangovers, lethargy, etc, then this method isn't sufficient. I'd say though that if you know flavokavain % and chemotype and can confirm there is no chloro then you can make a good decision without any acetone test. However, I personally think it's easier with the test, don't you?

True, FK/KL ratio is the "gold standard" for testing whether a kava is tudei...but the acetone test correlates well with it, and is useful for people who can't afford to get FK's tested at a lab.

 

[TheKavaSociety]

True, FK/KL ratio is the "gold standard" for testing whether a kava is tudei...but the acetone test correlates well with it, and is useful for people who can't afford to get FK's tested at a lab.

Yep. That's why I wrote that I think it's easier to do the acetone test than to collect all info on chemotype, fk/kl, etc.