From what I recall, a non polar solvent such as kerosene is used in the crude extraction of cocaine. However, it's very very unlikely that "cocaine is then reco

From what I recall, a non polar solvent such as kerosene is used in the crude extraction of cocaine. However, it's very very unlikely that "cocaine is then recovered by evaporation" since kerosene is obtained by the fractional distillation of crude oil starting at 150C. Even if it were possible to evaporate off the kerosene to obtain freebase cocaine it would be amazingly dangerous. The actual cocaine refining process, I believe, is a fairly typical polar/non-polar acid/base extraction.