Question Reducing Nitromethane, Easiest Extraction.

[Blammo]

I'm looking to reduce nitromethane to methylamine, and then extract the methylamine from the solution somehow.

My question is, is the methylamine, when using the iron and a smal amount of HCl, mostly in base form?

I figured I could either dump in lots of hcl when the reaction is done, filter out the iron, and then boil away the water to produce methylamine hydrochloride.

Or I could set things up to drop in some sodium hydroxide and gas some methanol with the produce methylamine gas.

Which sounds easier to you folks?

 

[mycelium]

It literally depends on the process you have ironed down.
In the MDMA entry in PiHKAL, Sasha said he used the HCl methylamine, but he also had a separate paragraph if you were using the 40% basic methylamine.

I bet, you could look at both of those paragraphs, and notice the different amount used and go from there.

And I've never made methylamine, but I am sure that you can convert either to the other, ie.. store in the HCl form, and turn it into whatever form you are using, based on the process you are using
I doubt you'd want to add HCl to a basic non polar solution, I don't know if it would react the way you want, but I aint a chemist

 

[loadingST]

Mabe the most simplest reduction of nitromethane is using Al/hg and bubling the resulting gases through a acid trap, but its a one hell of a way to make it haha

 

[Blammo]

Yeah, thing is it's probably the easiest thing for me to get that can produce nitromethane. Formaldehyde and ammonium chloride are just about as much much work as this, and produces other amines that have to be filtered out.

This is to isolate methylamine, which would then be used to form an imine. Not proceeding through a route which reduces them both simultaneously.

I'm hoping that this can be ironed out, so that I can somewhat easily make methylamine. I'm gonna ask around on other forums as well, as this feels like basic chemistry that just needs to be ironed out.