form the HCl salt necessary? not at all, in fact a HBr salt should be formed as side reaction to the ring bromination albeit with strictly stoichmetric HBr evolution. It may be isolated as the crude immediately, or freebased and precipitated as the salt of your choice. HCl being amongst the most common with the sulfate running in close second. I'm not convinced that an A/B accomplishes anything acetone and vac won't except to increase mechanical losses through increased handling. Reading pihkal, i gather most of the distilled freebases were distilled primarily for thier characterizations, which seemed more absolut as a freebase BP, than as a HCl MP.
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