There is a real need for a useful, scaleable and simple route to propionic/acrylic acids from OTC chems...

They are needed for:

(1) Propiophenone-type routes to amphetamines
(2) Jon's Loperamide mod routes
(3) Fentanyl Syntheses
(4) etc.

Yes, I know there are ways and means of acquiring them, these routes are going to be way too easily restricted once the fuckwits get involved, whereas glycerine, etc. cannot be restricted by any method I'm aware of... Plus some people are just allergic to having to purchase even industrial chemicals other than solvents of the most ubiquitious nature (ie. DCM/Toluene/Hexane/...)

Anyone got any ideas or thoughts, let's have 'em - personally I'd prefer to go via acrylic acid, it could be subjected to CTH very simply by just boiling it in ethanol/isopropyl alcohol with a catalyst, whereas those routes going via lactic acid/HI would suffer from the restrictions imposed on meth production that these routes seek to avoid.

"When fused with an alkali, it forms propionic acid."

Very nice! Thanks for pointing that out. I've always wanted to play with propionic acid but I didn't realize it was this OTC.

I'd consider doing something similiar to this: http://www.sciencemadness.org/member_publications/terephthalic_acid_from_PET.pdf but with plexiglass instead.

I always thought they used rayon for that?

This isn't really thermolysis though,is it?  Its hydrolysis since you'd be breaking apart the polymeric ester with a base... forming the salt and releasing the alcohol.

hey guys just curious but what would you use for/do with propionic acid? not the anhydride,,just the acid?

how about willgerodt with acetone in aq (NH4)2S and sulfur. need of avtoclave, pressure, stink of H2S, low yields  .. but all OTC
SOMA, thankf for sharing that info about plexiglass.

That's the one's we are already aware of, quite frankly, if it comes to that point, I'd probably utilize the lactic acid (easily available in massive quantities and improving with the advent of the lactate ester plastics) and HI. MEK, while available is a bitch to source in any quantity,  calcium propanoate is available, but in this country unless one is in the bakery trade, it is only available really through one company and in my dealings with them they have been less than helpful and the purchased products never arrived.

I want something I can pick up, go to the cashier & pay for, mail order to an address is dodgy here (so many front companies have been set up due to the bike clubs/other gangster related shit that the NCA and the various state agencies probably have trouble keeping tabs on themselves & each other).

I wonder, anyone ever tried the Lucas Reagent - it is a secondary alcohol after all & as such should react fairly readily - forming the 2-chloropropionic acid and then dehalogenation? What would be the best way of achieving that end, Zn? Maybe phosphorus acid? Maybe even phosphoric acid could do the trick...

Alternatively, go via the "Modified Clemmenson Reduction" (Zn/HCl - no mercury) of Methyl Pyruvate, which given that we are dealing with an aliphatic ketone, should work well (yields will be piss poor, but nothing here is all that hard to get or overly expensive either, except the KMnO4 and something else should work there).