Well, here it is. A wild stab in the dark, born of sleepless nights and way too much hive reading. If it works, GHB can be put on the "uncontrollable" list.
Basically, the idea is simple.
I: Ethylene glycol is placed in a vessel with NaOAc and NaCl and H2SO4 is added to yield chloroethylacetate (ClEtOAc, ClCH2CH2OCOCH3) by reaction ( (CH2OH)2 --> (CH2OAc)2 --> ClCH2CH2OAc) (refs and details provided later).
Alternately, ethylene chlorohydrin and acetic acid can be esterified quantitatively in the presence of catalytic tosic acid. Sulfuric acid would likely also work.
II: chloroethyl acetate is cyclized by PTC under not-very-hydrous conditions (i.e. Na2CO3 solid phase?) to GBL.
Molecule:
cyclization ("ClCOC(=O)C>>C1COC(=O)C1")
No refs on this one exactly as stated. Several cyclizations, done with K.OtBu, NaH, or NaNH2 (the most common ones) into 5 and 6 membered rings, and the promise that PTCs can deprotonate very basic substrates. This one should be very close to the limit, but still doable. The fact that it's an intramolecular substitution makes it much faster.
The real challenge is to prevent hydrolysis of the ester before cyclization can take place. This will no doubt require careful reaction design, and the first bee to pull it off will recieve unending accolades, not to mention a never ending supply of GHB
.
I really hope someone could try this.
Probably oxidation of THF is more practical, at least for the time being.