Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Tryptophan decarboxilation too tryotamine using carvone

Smoker Root - 12-8-2019 at 16:20

Hi, I have dreamed with this decarboxilation a lot, an avelable straight foward procedure with easy-to-get chemicals. And I finally found it un Rhodium(I Will link it at the end) The article is very precise and even the purificación of the tryptamine is very well explained.

However, the only parte we're everithing (exageraring) gets messed up is un the refluxing part. The author chooses too reflux in a 250ml Erlenmeyer flask at a rate of 1 drop condensing every second for 4h 30min, it comments that it tienes transparent at 4h, so I suppose that I hace too judge wether the reaction is over by it's color bur not sure. For the rest it seems fine, but the reaction is extremly sensible too oxygen, the fast refluxing speed is so solvent vapors push oxygen away. However, this looks like a nigleable way of keeping oxygen away, refluxing under nitrogen would be better? Any further improvements?

Here is the paper:https://erowid.org/archive/rhodium/chemistry/tryptophan.html

PS: What is the average concentration of household amonia?

Love you all

draculic acid69 - 12-8-2019 at 21:07

Household ammonia has a lot of other crap in it like soaps.try and get a bottle of 30%
that isn't cloudy.the stuff in supermarkets is only 3%.

Pumukli - 13-8-2019 at 02:50

The decarboxylation reaction produces CO2 and this gas fills the flask, the air space in the condenser, etc. So you would working under inert atmosphere so to speak.

The 4 hour 30 minutes reflux time isn't carved into stone! Reaction can be finished (become transparent) in say 2 hours or it can require much longer reflux time, say 8 hours! Depends on your catalyst, reflux temp, ratio of substrate to catalyst, etc.

Smoker Root - 13-8-2019 at 13:33

Quote: Originally posted by Pumukli  
The decarboxylation reaction produces CO2 and this gas fills the flask, the air space in the condenser, etc. So you would working under inert atmosphere so to speak.

The 4 hour 30 minutes reflux time isn't carved into stone! Reaction can be finished (become transparent) in say 2 hours or it can require much longer reflux time, say 8 hours! Depends on your catalyst, reflux temp, ratio of substrate to catalyst, etc.



Ok, thank you a lot to clear out my doubs I thought the same.

Tsjerk - 13-8-2019 at 22:21

The 5% ammonia I can get in the supermarket is only ammonia in water. It is clear and colorless.

Smoker Root - 14-8-2019 at 03:58

Quote: Originally posted by draculic acid69  
Household ammonia has a lot of other crap in it like soaps.try and get a bottle of 30%
that isn't cloudy.the stuff in supermarkets is only 3%.


Yes, don't worry. It was for making the dilution with puré amonia

mackolol - 16-8-2019 at 12:23

I'm focusing on this reaction recently too and i find procedure written on Hyperlab
https://www.hyperlab.info/inv/index.php?act=ST&f=17&...
basically he tells that with little addition of dmso reaction goes better and more likely. I tried it of course, but the smell was horrible, like sewage and very hard to get rid of from my garage. The solution for it is to take some pipe from aparature and drive it to hypochlorite solution.
Also, my food grade tryptophan turned to be too bad quality. Decarboxylation yielded in lots of tarry stinky polymers and extraction ended in giving ambery colored gum. I have 200g of l-tryptophan so i will be attempting to purify it from food grade even further according to this patent.
https://patents.google.com/patent/EP1756055A1/en
I can tell you definetely that this decarboxylation seems easy but you have to have good reagents and circumstances.

Pumukli - 17-8-2019 at 09:17

Mackolol: First and foremost: I've never tried decarboxylating tryptophan. My experience is mostly with proline.

Solubility "issue": I used basically kerosene as reaction medium. You can guess the solubility of an amino acid in that. Very minimal if any. Yet the reaction was possible, with cyclohexanone or acetophenone as a catalyst! (Even carvone seemed to work somewhat, though it failed in the end.) After roughly 10 hours the mixture became clear and translucent orange colorued liquide. I would'n mess with solubilizers, especially not with DMSO which hates high temperatures and ready to release stenchy dimethyl-sulphide.

I also used "food grade" proline. Sometimes it produced black tar, gunk, whatever, sometimes gave a clear orange liquide in the end! I'd rather blame the catalyst not the amino acid. (Food grade should be pretty high purity, people could easily get jailed if something problematic could find the way into their customers' bodies. At least this is my reasoning.)

Smoker Root - 20-8-2019 at 12:35

Quote: Originally posted by mackolol  
I'm focusing on this reaction recently too and i find procedure written on Hyperlab
https://www.hyperlab.info/inv/index.php?act=ST&f=17&...
basically he tells that with little addition of dmso reaction goes better and more likely. I tried it of course, but the smell was horrible, like sewage and very hard to get rid of from my garage. The solution for it is to take some pipe from aparature and drive it to hypochlorite solution.
Also, my food grade tryptophan turned to be too bad quality. Decarboxylation yielded in lots of tarry stinky polymers and extraction ended in giving ambery colored gum. I have 200g of l-tryptophan so i will be attempting to purify it from food grade even further according to this patent.
https://patents.google.com/patent/EP1756055A1/en
I can tell you definetely that this decarboxylation seems easy but you have to have good reagents and circumstances.


I think you don't have to go so extreme, bad yields where probably due to some cutting agents, as I call them, that made the tar