Meth from ephedrine completely OTC.... maybe

[Lem2]

https://www.thevespiary.org/rhodium/Rhodium/chemistry/p2p.ephedrine.html

https://www.thevespiary.org/rhodium/Rhodium/chemistry/phenylacetone.html

It seems that adding H2SO4 and ZnCl2 to an aqueous solution of (psuedo)ephedrine creates a mixture of 4 components in equilibrium:

Ephedrine <=> Enamine <=> Imine <=> P2P + Methylamine

There is a patent which describes shifting the equilibrium to the right by steam distilling out the P2P. What I was thinking is why take it all the way to P2P? why not apply Hydrogen and Pd/C, or urushibara nickle, or an aluminum amalgum, or an elecrtolytic reduction to the resultant mixture? to my knowledge, the imine can be hydrogenated to the amine under _very_ gentle conditions.

Would any of the other chems in this mixture be more sensitive to the hydrogenation than the imine? if not, this could be a very OTC, quite high yeilding procedure.  
He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.

[amalgum]

When starting from ephedrine, then the goal is pure d-meth.  If you do that you will most likely end up with a racemic mixture.  What a waste of ephedrine!

[foxy2]

It sounds to me like allot of people are making their meth otc.  Or was that a dream?

Must have been
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[Rhodium]

Even if the method will produce the racemic product, I think this would be worth looking into. The RP/I2 method will go out of fashion after being in use for 15 years now, after all OTC RP/H3PO2 supplies have dried out after they were placed on List I a few months ago.

[Lem2]

hey amalgum, if you got perhaps an %80 molar yeild out of this, it would be a %40 molar yeild of D-meth, which is better than what a lot of bees get w/ the RP/I anyways. Also, perhaps you could seperate the racemates, oxidise the levo to the imine, throw it into your next rxn w/ the ephedrine, and reduce to d,l meth, thereby recycling it and getting pure d-meth in %80 overall yeild.
He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.

[Lem2]

Rhodium, would you by any chance have the solubilities of the components of this reaction in various solvents? I wonder if there is a solvent that the imine is soluble in that the others aren't.

i.e. let the rxn reach equillibrium, extract w/ mystery solvent, removing some of the imine from sol., let rxn. reach equilibrium again, extract again, repeat till satisfied.

or perhaps something that would crash the imine out of the water, but nothing else? that would shift the reaction towards the imine by constantly removing it from the solution?
He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.