*-Waterless A/B Questions-*

[ChemNewbie]

I would think heat would be necessary for bicarb to baseify pseudo in the first place wouldn't it?.

That's kinda what I was thinking. Swic hasn't had very much luck as far as yields go with the carbonate in a normal A/B pseudo extraction. He has never tried heat in combination with the carb, but may do so in the near future just to see what happens.

[former_chemist]

bicarb isn't basic enough to convert the HCl salt to a base, you need carbonate (made by heating bicarbonate before adding - not in the reaction mixture).  The reaction will form an amine carbonate which has to be heated to convert to the amine and CO₂ and H₂O.  The amount of water formed by the reaction should not have a great effect and has even been noted to speed up the reaction.  As noted previously this won't work with new formulations that have heat or solvent sensitive gakk in them.

[ChemNewbie]

I shoulda read the other post I responded to a little closer.  I didn't realize that they were talking about heat being required for bicarb to basify pseudo HCL. I was referring to sodium carbonate specifically. I wouldn't bother trying to use bicarb to base anything anyway.