Chemistry Discussion Thread

MrEDuck

MrEDuck

Well-Known Member
Hey everyone!
I've been wanting to make a thread like this for awhile but I didn't have time or decent home internet access. Now that things are calming down from moving I have those things.
I want this thread to cover any topic in chemistry that people want to learn about, from drug synthesis to why the structure of the HOMO requires a backside addition in an Sn2 reaction, or even quantum mechanics. I'm on a train using my phone right now so I can't post pics and start talking synths. Give me 24 hours and we'll get started with the synth of PEAs and amphetamines via a Knoevengal condensation.
Anything in open literature is fair game. If anyone has any chem questions please feel free to ask even if it's not related to the current topic. Also suggestions for discussion topics are most welcome.
 
Ndanger I read your pm and I do agree about that issue. I'll pm you with more details.
lim glad there's a positive response. I have the first post almost finished. I ran into a few delays. I changed the topic to safety first. Canndo I will do recrystallization next.
 
Safety is paramount. Glad you took the proper initiative! :D

Even the smallest of acids and solvents in a test tube of all things, can cause a small abruption. Especially, when working with calibrated pipettes!

Looking forward to your Chemical Discourse! ​;)
 
morfin56 said:
Looked into quualude synths recently and they are very simple.
I love this topic, will be watching.
Click to expand...

On paper.

Everything looks simple. The thing about chemistry is that its not always predictable. Everyone expects that the reactions will play out like the recipe they read. However, what if something went wrong. Would you be able to counteract the problem with a fast solution. Say for instance in the case of the notorious Hydrochloric Gas. If large amounts of this would evade your work space would you know how to remedy the situation?

BTW, I'm glad to see you back on the RIU pavement Morfin. How you been! :D
 
ndangerspecimen101 said:
On paper.

Everything looks simple. The thing about chemistry is that its not always predictable. Everyone expects that the reactions will play out like the recipe they read. However, what if something went wrong. Would you be able to counteract the problem with a fast solution. Say for instance in the case of the notorious Hydrochloric Gas. If large amounts of this would evade your work space would you know how to remedy the situation?

BTW, I'm glad to see you back on the RIU pavement Morfin. How you been! :D
Click to expand...
There wouldn't be a need for a remedy for something like that in my case as all reactions would take place in an exhaust chamber.
Haha I've been good, lurking here and there, always learning something new.
 
morfin56 said:
There wouldn't be a need for a remedy for something like that in my case as all reactions would take place in an exhaust chamber.
Haha I've been good, lurking here and there, always learning something new.
Click to expand...

Ah. Someones being doing there homework. Did you graduate from the class of Higher learning? ;)

Well. What if for some reason your Exhaust Chamber (properly known as a Fume Hood) malfunction which is usually the case with clandestine setups. What would you do? You can't simply rely on a fume hood for the first line of defense!

Unless your baking cookies... :lol:
 
Not just a fume hood.
An area about 3 X 3 X 5 feet completely, with a front plexi glass window and arm gloves and shit you know what they use for messing with radioactive elements.
Completely secluded from the rest of the room and exhausted outside, even if the exhaust failed it wouldn't matter until next time I need to put in/take out something from it.
The access area to it is outside to, i would just have to open it and run back inside.
Could bake cookies to though. :rolleyes:
 
Whoa. You exceeded my expectations good buddy! ;)

But, a Fume Hood is much more accessible when working with chemicals. The thing you're explaining would work wonders for inoculating mushrooms.

You want the front end to be free of any glass.
 
First, love the thread. I'm a soon-to-be organic chemist myself so of course drug extraction/synthesis comes naturally to my curiosity. :D

I have most of my physical research from extraction of essential oils and alkaloids through A/B and STB reactions. I've successfully extracted N,N- dimethytriptamine, 5-MeO dimethyltryptamine, 3,4,5- trimethoxyphenethylamine (cacti alkaloid extraction), Lysergic Acid Amide, 4-HO dimethyltryptamine, ect. I've also been extracting essential oils like frankincense, lavender, orange, ect. I have also been growing cannabis for about a year now and psilocybe cubensis for going on 4 months now.

I love chemistry so much and will, to the best of my ability, share my knowledge with you guys! :D
 
Right on.

You'll feel right at home.

I'll pull up a chair. As I want to be the person in first row! :lol:

I'm particularly interested in your cacti alkaloidal isolations. As, extracting mescaline or its full spectrum alkaloidal identity definitely takes some chemistry background compared to other basic extractions like DMT and psilocin. Anyone can come up with a gunky end product that produces less than satisfactory effects. But accumulating crystals of white luminescence, one must think, that it took some thought to gassing or titrating mescaline to get rid of any impurities within the lattice. ;)
 
Sorry for running late. My wife decided that she had different plans for me tonight. So here is stuff about safety and recrystallization and using a combo of A/B and then recrystallizing MDMA to get it as pure as possible.

Safety First
That goes for everything, but especially chemistry.
I made this thread for educational and entertainment purposes. Actually performing any of the syntheses is illegal pretty much everywhere in the world. And many of the precursors are really nasty. Some like to explode violently for no good reason (well having adjacent nitrogen atoms is a good reason for making the boom). Others can have terrible effects on your health, both long and short term. Making a proper lab is a lot of work and costs a lot of money. And you need a number of things that will raise eyebrows when you purchase them if you don't have a good cover story. So please don't try this at home.
On the topic of safety let's talk personal protection equipment (PPE from here on). The most important piece of PPE is eye protection, and there are several types ranging from disposable single use safety glasses to full face blast masks used by people who do research with explosive compounds. I've never needed more than my regular polycarbonate glasses. They're a good reusable pair. I like being able to see. I know a guy who got hit in the eye with acetone. He's lucky he can see with it, he said its the most painful thing he's ever experienced. If you're in a lab keep your glasses on at all times.
Next is the lab coat. Chemicals can burn you, or stain your clothes, or destroy your clothes, etc. a lab coat protects you and your clothes. Next up we have gloves. Good thick gloves that the chemicals can't eat through. Generally 8mil nitrile gloves are very good for organic chemistry. I like the ones that cover the wrist with a long cuff. Always check before working with something new that it won't eat your gloves. The next thing is minimizing exposed skin. No open shoes, shorts stuff like that. I don't remember which it was but either Dow or DuPont came up with the slogan "Take 2 for safety." Meaning take two minutes before you start something to make sure it's safe. Apparently they had a major drop in accidents and injuries. There's always 2 minutes for safety.


Recrystallization


Recrystallization is a way of purifying a substance by taking advantage of it's solubility. Solids generally get more soluble in a given solvent as it heats up. The general procedure is to find a solvent that your product is sparingly soluble in when it is cold, but fully soluble in when it's hot.
Place the sample of the product in need of purification in the cold recrystallization solvent. Heat until the product has dissolved. If there is any undissolved impurities when the recrystallization solvent is boiling quickly filter it out to remove the impurity, then slowly cool the solution (the slower the better) until the product has completely fallen out of solution. Collect the crystals by filtration, and wash with a small amount of your recrystallization solvent. Then dry them. These should be very pure now. The idea is that the soluble impurities stay in solution because there isn't enough of them to saturate the solution and the insoluble impurities have been removed by filtration when the product is fully in solution.
The trick is to find a solvent that dissolves the product only at elevated temperatures. A good way to find a suitable recrystallization solvent is to google product recrystallization and see what has worked for others. And start from there. For example heptane is a good solvent for recrystallizing DMT freebase. So say you do an STB extraction on some MHRB. No matter how good your extraction technique is you'll have some impurities like waxes or fats which are fully soluble in heptane, and a small amount of other alkaloids. The waxes stay in the heptane because they're very soluble in it no matter what temp it is and and the non DMT alkaloids are present in such small quantities that they'll still stay in solution even if they aren't very soluble in the recrystallization solvent.
Anhydrous isopropyl alcohol is the best recrystallization solvent for MDMA in my experience. You can make it from 91% IPA by baking some Epsom salts at 250°F/120°C for an hour. The dried Epsom salts should be immediately placed in a decicator after being removed from the oven to prevent it from absorbing moisture from the air. For every 200mL of 91% IPA use ~25-30g of freshly dried Epsom salts. The IPA will start absorbing moisture from the air very quickly so do these steps as fast as possible. If you really want to make sure you've cleaned your MDMA as much as possible you can start with an A/B extraction. MDMA has a pKa of somewhere between 9.9 and 10.4. Here's how I would do it.
Dissolve the MDMA powder in water with a pH of 7.5 or less. Filter any insolubles (right now all the MDMA is MDMA HCl which is fully soluble in water, so any insolubles are impurities). Now begin slowly raising the pH to 12.5, you will see a white oily precipitate begin to form. This is freebase MDMA. Collect it by washing the aqueous layer with a nonpolar solvent of your choice, then separate them and wash the aqueous layer 3x with a small amount of nonpolar solvent and pool the nonpolar layers. Evaporate about half of the nonpolar solvent and use an acid to crystallize (dry HCl if you know how to use it, HCl in IPA will work but there is some water you need to get rid of to get the MDMA HCl at the end). Now you may recrystallize the MDMA HCl to make it even cleaner. Start by baking the Epsom salts to dry them out, after the salts have been baking for an hour or more take them out of the oven and put them in a desicator to cool. After about 20-30mins the Epsom salts should be cool enough that they can be added to the IPA to dry it out without boiling it or having some other problem. Seal the container holding the MgSO4 and IPA to keep it from absorbing water from the air. Now use this to recrystallize your MDMA that you just A/B'd to get very clean Molly.
 
[FONT=Tahoma, Calibri, Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif]Morfin what you are talking about is called a glovebox. Are you sure all the walls are resistant to chemicals (organics, acids, and bases)?
Tmac, nice to see an aspiring organic chemist. I'm a med chemist by training but I've worked in other specialties more at this point. How far along are you in your studies?

And now to try to catch up with the questions asked this evening. You guys are fast!
The synthesis of methaqualone is pretty straight forward. The reason it's not being made clandestinely is the profit margins wouldn't be very good. You need a minimum of about 300mg of methaqualone to get fucked up, and it's tough to make at a very large scale. So if someone is going to the trouble of making it it's going to be for personals, not sale.
I had to reschedule home internet setup to tomorrow. Once that's done I will write out the Knoevengal condensation post. It's a great reaction for making PEAs and amphetamine derivatives out of benzaldehydes with nitromethane/nitroethane and reducing the nitrostyrene to the appropriate PEA.
keep the questions coming. [/FONT]
 
Fun at RIU tonight. You're stimulating my mind good buddy! :lol:

Time to cook me up a good protein filled steak and devour your chemical words. ;)
 
MrEDuck said:
Morfin what you are talking about is called a glovebox. Are you sure all the walls are resistant to chemicals (organics, acids, and bases)?
Tmac, nice to see an aspiring organic chemist. I'm a med chemist by training but I've worked in other specialties more at this point. How far along are you in your studies?

And now to try to catch up with the questions asked this evening. You guys are fast!
The synthesis of methaqualone is pretty straight forward. The reason it's not being made clandestinely is the profit margins wouldn't be very good. You need a minimum of about 300mg of methaqualone to get fucked up, and it's tough to make at a very large scale. So if someone is going to the trouble of making it it's going to be for personals, not sale.
I had to reschedule home internet setup to tomorrow. Once that's done I will write out the Knoevengal condensation post. It's a great reaction for making PEAs and amphetamine derivatives out of benzaldehydes with nitromethane/nitroethane and reducing the nitrostyrene to the appropriate PEA.
keep the questions coming.
Click to expand...

I'm about 3 years into my BS in Chemistry at my university. I've been interning at local lab's here in the midwest for the past 2 years though. I have about another year for my BS and another 2 or 3 years for my graduate research.
 
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