It also works on large scale with less solvent and ethyl benzoate. 1.5x weight ethyl benzoate is heated to disolve amide, allowed to cool, gased with HCl to ph 1.5, heated to 180'c for 30min, centrifuged, residue acid/base extracted. I think in this case they were trying to minimize the amount of solvent heated to 180', for multi-kg batches.