Points made.

On the subject of explosions, i may be incorrect Mr. Roid, but i remember reading about pressure buildup inside the round bottom or flask used for amalgamation when the reflux condenser becomes choked up when it cant handle the amount of methanol or solvent being refluxed. In this case, i would be careful. I dont know how much pressure it creates or if its enough to create any sort of explosion but i just thought itd be a relevant point to touch on.

ImA

That's probably wrong to be honest. I don't think there is much pressure created from condenser choking, since like d1ssonance said, the reaction mixture will ''geyser'' out of the condenser if the reaction runaway  .

As for methylamine al/hg reduction needing heat to kick off, it's not true from my personal experiences. The reduction is actually exothermic enough than I had it runaway when I added all the ketone at once (stupid I know) on a 75g batch. Luckily, wet towels were available and the reaction was controlled 

Someone I know usually sticks with nitro, and after the addiction has started it usually takes about 10 minutes for the reflux to start. This guy, in the early days got lazy and instead of a drip, turned it into a stream which resulted in an old faithful like occurrence. Cleaning up mercury and metal is no bueno.

Hey Everyone,

Are there any bad things that could happen if one were to use Ethyl Acetate in place of  (C₂H₅)₂O for doing acid / base extractions?

Heat is most certainly not the issue here. The addition of everything is all hot, just below the  BP of methanol. 9 out of 10 times this works like a charm.
The reaction in question started as it should, gained velocity and then just slowed down . No to little evolution of gas.  Temperature dropping sharply. More than adequate stirring throughout. An extra addition of hot methanolic hgcl2 made little difference. So the drum (its semi-transparent ptfe) was put out in the late afternoon sun. Within 30 minutes things were proceeding as though they had never stopped. Didnt bother the yeild any either.

Hi, does anyone have a write up for a Strecker Degredation of alanine to acetaldehyde, preferably with an easy to get oxidation agent like bleach. I've ran the rxn about a dozen different times and just can't get a distilate. Vinegar was used as a a catalytic amount of acetic acid to prevent polymerization.

P.S. Last time I ran it with Ca(OCl)2 I got a run away which produced acetyl chloride. That should be interesting to someone.