Alternative Medicine

[Natalie S.]

I have recently used acetone as a solvent for the cranberries and I have done done an acetone precipitation and I would like someone's opinion on what I should as the next step.

[carolinethorn]

Hi Natalie,
You need to remind us what you are planning on doing with your cranberry extract so that we can help.
-Caroline

[deleted-71447]

I won't be much help with this, but here is Natalie's original post for those of you who will be able to give some specific suggestions:

http://www.sciencebuddies.com/mentoring ... ight=#6867

[carolinethorn]

Hi Natalie,

I re-read your old posts that Chris linked. I would suggest that you set up an experiment to test your newly prepared extract against an extract prepared exactly the way you did it before - when you left the cranberries in water then centrifuged it and put the pellet onto the filter (using controls as you did before but adding the new condition with the new extract and a new control for the new solvent).
This should show you if you have managed to enrich your extract with the componenets that were active in your crude pellet extract.
Things you should consider are if you are using a new batch of cranberries, they they may have differing amounts of the antibacterial component (always a difficulty with natural products), and if you use the same preparation from when you did the original experiment you should consider if it may have degraded (unless maybe you stored it in the freezer). If you have both options I would try both as well as the new extract and the other controls.
Post your procedure if it will help for you to talk through it. Its always good to double check you have covered all of your options before using precious resources like purified products.

Best of luck,
Caroline