I was talking to a gentleman onboard a spaceship last night, and he happened to mention that he took 1mmol of a fragrant ketone (i am personally guessing camphor
) in DCE (10ml) to which was added NaBH(OAC)3 (2mmol) and a low molecular weight amine HCl salt (1.5mmol). This was stirred, and Et3N (2mmol) was added. TLC after 24 hours showed the presence of starting material apparently.....so my travelling companion then seemingly added another 1 eq of Et3N. After another 24 hours he said everything had gone to completion. Did he mean his marriage plans ? Travelling ? Lifes ambitions? I dont know, but he was a very happy sort of character. He confused me when he said that a simple acid/base extraction followed by a cowboy distillation affored very pure product, which crystallised wonderfully from IPA/Et2O.
He was a very strange man...he stopped talking and i was a little bored - luckily the inflight movie was excellent!
PS - in his sleep, he was blabbering about how "it only went to 65% in DCM" and that "DCE was the key"...wasnt he a strange one!