A study of the thermal decomposition of adulterated cocaine samples under optimized aerobic pyrolytic conditions

The pyrolysis behaviour of pure cocaine base as well as the influence of various additives was studied using conditions that are relevant to the smoking of illicit cocaine by humans. For this purpose an aerobic pyrolysis device was developed and the experimental conditions were optimized. In the first part of our study the optimization of some basic experimental parameters of the pyrolysis was performed, i.e., the furnace temperature, the sampling start time, the heating period, the sampling time, and the air-flow rate through the system. The second part of the investigation focused on the volatile products formed during the pyrolysis of a pure cocaine free base and mixtures of cocaine base and adulterants. The anaesthetics lidocaine, benzocaine, procaine, the analgesics phenacetine and paracetamol, and the stimulant caffeine were used as the adulterants. Under the applied experimental conditions complete volatilization of the samples was achieved, i.e., the residuals of the studied compounds were not detected in the pyrolysis cell. Volatilization of the pure cocaine base showed that the cocaine recovery available for inhalation (adsorbed on traps) was approximately 76%. GC-MS and NMR analyses of the smoke condensate revealed the presence of some additional cocaine pyrolytic products, such as anhydroecgonine methyl ester (AEME), benzoic acid (BA) and carbomethoxycycloheptatrienes (CMCHTs). Experiments with different cocaine-adulterant mixtures showed that the addition of the adulterants changed the thermal behaviour of the cocaine. The most significant of these was the effect of paracetamol. The total recovery of the cocaine (adsorbed on traps and in a glass tube) from the 1:1 cocaine-paracetamol mixture was found to be only 3.0+/-0.8%, versus 81.4+/-2.9% for the pure cocaine base. The other adulterants showed less-extensive effects on the recovery of cocaine, but the pyrolysis of the cocaine-procaine mixture led to the formation of some unique pyrolytic products. Two of them were identified as para-aminobenzoic acid (p-ABA) and 2-(diethylamino)ethylbenzoate (DEAEB).