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Beautiful info Sedit. I really absorbed it.

Dont thank me, thank Klute and Bio the credit is all theres, Im just a good samaritan passing along Klutes wishes that someone else explore this futher.


Base-catalyzed?
Do you mean the part where Klute added the NaOH to begin the smell of MeNH3?

The reason that he didn't smell it before was because his copper sulfate was acidic hence the MeNH3 was locked away as a salt. The addition of NaOH was to freebase the MeNH3 into a gas IIRC.

Im a little low on funds and have no copper sulfate handy so Im going to see if I can work with what I have. Many differnt CuOx, a couple liters of sulfuric, and some MeNO2 so I should be able to generate so small quantites to do some test tube runs ect...
I want to feed any MeNH3 formed into HCl in an attempt to find out any yeild differences and give a definitive conclusion other then just a funny smell. When I did this quick and dirty surely the CuSO4 was highly acidic with left over sulfuric so I really want to test this with purer material and dry the penta hydrate if able also to determine effects of H2O concentration.

Right now I got a few different things that im concentrating on and one I really want to study and complete so in an efforts to not stretch myself to thing and start fucking things up Im going to have to make space for anything additional and possibly terminate a project.
Pb+NaNO3 -->PbO+NaNO2 worked out  nicely for me last night and was rewarded with a nice cloud of NOx fumes and a bottle of light blue Nitros acid, but also my lest favorite of all I got out of it was a metal taste in my mouth. . Definitly time to start cleaning out the closet.

Give me a few more days of reseaching into this before attempting it poison so it can be sure that your substance doesn't get destroyed in the process by some complex or some kind of improper work up since it is a different reaction. He had some concerns about that happening with imines and the need to form the imine prior to the reduction.

Keep on keepin on good citizens,

~Sedit

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I got out of it was a metal taste in my mouth. Shocked
Isn't that one of the symptoms of lead poisoning?

You betch. Dont know how I contacted it unless there where some organic lead compounds that vaporized off on the initia heating. Im trying to find the detection limits but in the mean time Iv been drinking alot of milk(Which hasnt set with me since the day i was born so you can imagine how fun this is and egg whites because the albium in eggwhites helps trape the lead). Im going to find some EDTA to trap and expeal heavy metal ions just to be on the safe side.

The problem with just testing this on typical nitro's instead of ones with a double bond, is that the nitro can be easily reduced to an amine even with an acid and iron, zinc or tin. it wouldn't surprise me to much if you could reduce to nitromethane

Iv woundered about this also since Im pretty sure Zn/HCl can reduce Nitro to methylamine. Thats one of the reasons I was woundering if someone can test this on a harder to reduce compound.

A little off topic but since the threed is dealing with mercury may as well lay out some ways of eliminating heavy metals in the body right.

Just be careful with the EDTA because it chelates needed metals and stuff also and can lead to problems. Take alot of calcium  and iron supplements and multivitamines when performing EDTA therapy to stop from making your self sicker then the heavy metals would have.

In my experience with Hg salts and mercury in general, it's best to do everything outside when possible with goggles, good gloves, long sleeves, long pants, a mask of some kind, ect...at least that's what I do.

Only use a dash of Hg salt unless you're scaling up pretty big and always pour it right into the rxn flask so it doesn't blow everywhere, especially when doing it outside. Be extremely careful pouring it. It likes to blow about.

Also HgCl2 is more of a cumulative toxin and most of the time you're using so little odds are it isn't going to make contact with you especially if you're taking all the precautions. LD50 is about a gram or so.

I'm a hypochondriac so I tend to memorize MSDS's. Just don't take shortcuts and you should be fine. HgCl2 specifically doesn't cause neurological symptoms like mercury metal if anyone was wondering if you ever suspect overexposure. However, the Hg salt is reduced to elemental mercury post-reduction.


 

I think so but as far as I understand mercuric compounds in general leave fairly quickly unless you're exposed to extremely high concentrations in a short time or repeated exposure.

The LD50 thing was just a lil FYI btw.

Vesp- Yeah, I think you could use a bag corner in most cases but I just don't want to take the chance that it will be more reactive than borosilicate glass, especially since I'm working with HgCl2 and I feel like it'd be messy.

I'll just wait.

That pic looks awefully familiar of mimosa in pet. ether.

I should also add to this reduction writeup that basifying with a strong NaOH/KOH solution up to 50% is fine. It's important to basify completely just to make sure most of the aluminum hydroxide precipitates and the amine is a freebase.

Optionally, you can throw in a stir bar to the amalgam and spin for a bit. When done, put a magnet of some kind on the bottom of the rxn flask to prevent your bar from being lost forever in the sludge.

Can other metals be used? I've never seen it done with anything else, but I've never really understood why.

I am unable to find a decent reference for this, other then a few journals that I am unable to view, and have other substances involved, do you have any? I'm interested. Seems like most people would be using zinc instead of Al considering how easy it is to get, and that you wouldn't need to mess with mercury- or would you still need to use mercury compounds? Any articles on how they work exactly?

Edit: I found this about Zn/Hg reductions but it doesn't explain its mechanism. http://designer-drugs.com/pte/12.162.180.114/dcd/chemistry/znhg.alhg.reductions.txt

I think it is needed, but I can't find why it would be, or what it does exactly. I always thought it took away the oxides for aluminium, but sine they use it with zinc, it doesn't really make much sense to me. Reading a bit about the clemmensen reduction doesn't give me any clues.