I was shopping around in the local asian mart today, and I stumbled across several boxes of bottles of Amyl Acetate Banana flavoring. After searching on the internet, I've found information that this stuff is supposedly 25% Amyl Acetate in water. I was wondering if it would be possible to turn this stuff into Amyl Nitrate fairly cheaply if one were to have a free supply of Nitric acid.
Here's what I thought of and wanted to run through here for discussion. A solution of 50% NaOH would be added in molar excess to the Amyl Acetate in water and refluxed for 1-2 hours. After the Amyl Acetate was hydrolyzed to Amyl Alcohol, the Amyl Alcohol would be separated out and washed with a small saline solution. The amyl alcohol would then be put in a flask with an equimolar amount of Nitric acid and refluxed for 1-2 hours, neutralized with an excess of sodium bicarbonate, and then separated out.
Does this sound feasible? Will a solvent be needed to extract the amyl nitrate in the final step, or will it not be soluble once the nitric acid is neutralized?
If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then give up. There's no use being a fool about it.