I seriously used to place very high interest on this method, but when you look at the numbers, it quickly becomes a serious deterrant.
Aside from the environmental concerns, the sheer quantity of needed mercuric salt makes it a very expnsive venture. As for making your own Hg salts, that's fine, but not when the amount of work involved to make anhydrous Hg(NO3)2 far exceeds the logical threshold of acceptable work effort for this compound.
Making anhydrous Hg nitrate is not easily feasable in any method that allow for production of a truly usable quantity. And buying it becomes VERY expensive when it is not renewable, and you need lots of it because it is so heavy.
Seriously, when you need 32.46g of Hg(NO3)2 for just a little 100mmol reaction, it doesn't seem to scalable. That's only ~16.3g of safrole. You need twice as much mercury nitrate as you do safrole, that is ridiculous. See what I mean?
Sucks doesnt it? I liked this idea too. For a long time I was really interested in adding N-methylformamide to safrole, because it would make the N-formyl-MDMA, and when you reduce the organo-mercury nitrate with NaOH/NaBH4/H2O, the formyl group would hydrolyze off as well, making MDMA in one reaction, providing that NMF adds of course. I still love the idea, but fuck man, when you need 100g mercury nitrate for only 50g safrole, and the nitrate isn't even reusable, it really doesn't seem worth it. It's like spending extra money so you can have extra headache.
PrimoPyro
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