SWIM was telling me he recently read in a chemistry handbook about the reduction of copper oxide using hydrogen gas. This got him thinking, If this applies to copper oxide would it also apply to dmt oxide?

Hypotheticly, If one where to inject hydrogen bubbles into an acidic solution in a safe controled fashion before basifying, could the present oxide be reduced to regular freebase dmt, and could therefore migrate more easily into the naphta layer and increase yields? (SWIM noticed that oxide less readily dissolves in regular naphta, maybe that other solvents yield different results)

Any thoughts on this by the more chemically inclined?

Sister isn't 100% sure about copper oxides solubility, but can almost certainly tell you that it will not dissolve in a non polar solvent. You would likely need to use an acidic solution to dissolve both the dmt oxide and copper oxide.

But when you put the oxide in an acid like HCl you will end up with

CuO + 2 HCl → CuCl2 + H2O

Could you post your reference?

Wait a minute, Sister mis-read your post, she thought your were talking about using CuO as a catalyst. What you are talking about is

CuO + H2 → Cu + H2O

Sister isn't sure if it would work or not, but expects that if it did work you would need to use monatomic hydrogen not H2. Sister has attached a reference where a similar compound is reduced using nascent hydrogen. Look at claim #3 at the very end. (Disregard everything else in this patent as it not what we should be discussing on this forum)

Nascent hydrogen generation is actually quite easy, dissolve your oxide in dilute HCl and then toss in some aluminum foil (not too much, and a small amount at a time) as the aluminum dissolves in the acid it will release lots of monatomic (or nascent) hydrogen. Sister would use a large excess of Al, say 3-5 moles of Al per mole of dmt oxide. At the end you will have a slurry that should be quite easy to extract with naptha. You might dilute a bit before extracting.

Be sure to let us know how it goes.

Hi there Pebble, to put it simply: copper is a transition metal, DMT is an organic compound. The only thing that copper oxide and dmt oxide have in common is the word oxide in their name.

Because they are such different compounds they have completely different chemical properties. To reduce an amine-oxide (such as dmt oxide) one would typically use a reducing agent such as lithium aluminium hydride or sodium borohydride. The method you are suggesting would probably not work and just be a waste of your time. Hope I have helped clear this up.

Thanks

There is talk of using zinc to reduce dmt n-oxide, but AFAIK nobody has analysed it with LC/MS or something similar to show to what extent this really works with the alkaloids we're interested in.

Thanks for your insights all of you. I wasn't planning on carrying this out, the question was posed more out of curiostiy then anything else.

Who knows, I'm working on my chemistry skills so when the time is right and my confidence permits me, I'll let you know how things turn out. If anybody else feel like pursueing this angle, feel free.

PotB