decomposing phenylalanine to phenethylamine

stooge · Sun Jun 05, 2005 3:30 pm

Hm ... how about Xylene? Petroleum?
Anyway, then i'm at least glad that i didn't get it all completely wrong - the pa should dissolve ...

thanks!

stooge · Mon Jun 13, 2005 11:56 pm

Hey again - still on that phenylalanine decarbox thing ...
i think this might not be the right forum for this but as there is no beginner forum i will ask it anyway as the direction fits the thread, somehow:

Can anyone explain again the mechanism of this? especially of the work up of the PEA?
What i don't get is (besides almost everything else): When does one have to basifiy and when does one have to acidifiy? Depending on used solvent? Or ... ?
When following the write up from rhodium on Decarboxylation of Phenylalanine to Phenetylamin says: ... after about half an hour cool mix and extract w/ dilute HCl. Basify HCl extract to isolate the pretty pure phenethylamine as a light yellow fishy smelling liquid.
how do i have to understand this practical? Adding dilute (how dilute?) HCL, decanting, basifying the decanted solution and, voila, the pea swims on top??
Or like with ----, more or less? extract into NP? Or shouldn't it be otherway round?? Arrr ... Sad

Err, or can someone maybe please(!) explain it more step by step?
Swim's tinkering around for weaks now in alll variants he can think - basifying the reacted fluid, acidifying it, putting it from fluid in np, acidifying from np into h2o, and so on and so on and so on ... in fact he simply isn't knowing what he's doing ...

it wasn't that much of a problem for him i think if cyclohexanone was at hand, but without???
maybe one of these days, hopefully.

Oh, just one more - if one left away the solvent and was only heating the PA with an excess of the catalyst - cyclohexanone or what ever? And how could one get the product of this out of the c.hexanone? just curious - swim simply gave way to his playing instinct ... now he got stuck again.

I'd really like to know more on this stuff, what's going on there and so on ...

thanks for every thought/hint!

lurker4711 · Tue Jun 14, 2005 4:51 am

stooge · Wed Jun 15, 2005 11:27 pm

err ... now that i definitely outed myself as completely ignorant, just one more question:

was my last question too dumb, too clever (ho ho), too weird or just out of all reason?

*sigh*