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Well, doing some back-of-envelope math without accounting for solvent
loss or energy input (just lack of ability to perfectly recover
solvents..), I found that cheap agarose is already pretty close to the
floor as far as price is concerned. So, unless you live somewhere
where currency exchanges make even market-floor prices unattainable,
it's simply not worth it.
Having said that, a good protocol is never unwelcome, and there *are*
people on this list and out there who could use an alternative to
currency exchanges to get their agarose, so I'll get the protocol
online in pretty form this week.
Also, it's worth noting that when doing the procedure myself and when
calculating the outcomes, I did *not* have access to a median/large
volume centrifuge, which would have significantly reduced waste and
the need for extra washing, so if you have a centrifuge, you can
probably do this more easily and more cheaply than I did.
Attached is the sketchy protocol I used, which lacks lots of nuance
but is essentially the process in full. If you have access to
pectinase (commonly available in brewshops), you can use this to
pre-treat raw agar to dissolve some of the agaropectin prior to glycol
separation, which will optimise the protocol a lot, but I couldn't
find a protocol for pectinase treatment of agar; the patent referenced
seems to be no longer online/available.
Please note that in the original protocols I pieced this from (found
in ugly patents), it was generally suggested to use ethylene glycol
rather than propylene glycol.. don't do that. Ethylene glycol is
pretty toxic, even without considering fractional distillation! Like
methanol, it gets metabolised to formaldehyde, and it's the reason
that propylene glycol is referred to as "non-toxic" by comparison.
Also, when choosing the alcohol/solvent to dilute the cooled liquor
with or to wash your agar, consider how explosive the results could be
if you get impatient and do something like trying to heat the wet agar
to remove solvent. Acetone is pretty happy to find an ignition source
and blow up, and IPA can form surface vapours that can self-ignite
from a little distance, too. Methylated spirits would be a good bet,
if you can get them locally without nauseating additions, or "biofuel"
ethanol for alcohol stoves, which I've found to be very pure and a
good stand-in for technical grade ethanol.
On 03/23/2013 04:29 PM, Nathan McCorkle wrote:
> I have access to a small soxhlet extractor. If I could clean up
> agar, I'd sell it to people here for enough to cover the basic
> costs. Where is that protocol? What's the reality of the cost in
> time, reagent loss cost (ethanol evaporating, etc), and
> electricity?
>
> On Mar 23, 2013 9:22 AM, "Cathal Garvey (Phone)"
> <
cathal...@cathalgarvey.me
> <mailto:
cathal...@cathalgarvey.me>> wrote:
>
> Oh purification for micro is pretty pointless, I was talking about
> agarose purification for gels.
>
> jarlemag <
jarle...@gmail.com <mailto:
jarle...@gmail.com>>
> wrote:
>
> According to a recent article
> (
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22809873), food-grade agar can
> be substituted for bacteriological agar with no apparent effects
> except colour of the medium.
>
> -J
>
> kl. 10:01:51 UTC+1 l�rdag 23. mars 2013 skrev Cathal Garvey (Phone)
> f�lgende:
>
> I really should add that to my biohacking protocols repo.. Suffice
> to say it's doable, and straightforward, but very messy and not
> cost effective unless you can fractionally distil an alcohol *and*
> propylene glycol (boils 200+C).
>
> Am pretty sure I shared the protocol on this list previously..
>
> Patrik D'haeseleer <
pat...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Monday, March 23, 2009 10:35:28 AM UTC-7, Aaron Hicks wrote:
>
>
> Some of the older texts (1960s and 1970s) discuss purification of
> agar to increase clarity. It's a pretty involved process, but if
> anybody would like the references so they can go read about it
> themselves, I can look them up.
>
>
> If I remember correctly, Cathal gave that a try. Don't remember if
> he ever gave a thorough summary of his experience with this, other
> than that it was very messy...
>
> Patrik
>
>
> -- Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my
> brevity.
>
>
> -- Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my
> brevity.
>
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