Methamphetamine by Catalytic Hydrogenation of Ephedrine
Procedure
One 160 cubic foot tank of hydrogen was purchased for $225 dollars. A 2L heavy-walled round bottomed flask was purchased, along with a vacuum adaptor and glass stopper. Some big clear tubing with cross-hatched threads was purchased from home depot, teflon tape was wrapped aroung the threads on the H2 tank, and the tubing was just the right size so that it could be twisted and pushed onto the tank, it was sealed with some O-clamps from home depot. Using some pipe adaptors, an adaptor was made to reduce the big tube into the smaller (orange) 300 psi welding tube. The tubing was run through a standard welding pressure gage. This was connected to a t-junction fitted with hose-attachments available in the gas fittings section. One end of the t-valve was fitted with a valve, all the gass connections were aided by teflon tape and O-clamps. The 2L flask was filled with 125g Ephedrine extracted from Ma Huang, 800ml of Everclear, 10g 3% Pd/C, an egg-shaped stirbar, and 20ml of H2SO4 draincleaner. The vacuum adaptor and stopcock were attached. A clamp was placed around the flask neck, and one around the stopcock. These were both secured very tightly. The flask was assembled over a stirplate with a pot of water, which it was immersed in. The water was heated to 60C, and the flask stirred vigorously. The tube from the H2 tank was connected to the vacuum adaptor (teflon tape and O-clamp used here as well). The valve was opened and the atmosphere removed by vacuum (or mouth suction). The valve was then closed. By opening the valve on the H2 tank carefully the pressure was set to 30psi. Stirring and temp were maintained for 120 minutes. When complete the pressure was released through the valve in front of a fan blowing outside. The Pd/C was recovered by filtration. The majority of the EtOh was boiled off (~200ml remained). The 200ml of remaining reaction mix was filtered 3 times to make sure all the Pd/C was removed (you could see some was still in there). This was then dripped into 1L of 8% NaOH (premade and cooled). 125ml of DCM was added and the meth was extracted by heavy shaking for 5minutes, followed by 2 more extraction of 100ml each. The DCM extracts were collected. Dried with Sodium Sulfate. The DCM was then cooled in the freezer and bubbled with HCl gas for 30 minutes. What was recovered was 114g of clean white crystals. These were filtered and dried. The crystals were made into a saturated solution with boiling anhydrous Isopropyl Alcohol. The IPA was cooled in the freezer for 5 hours, and the snowflake crystals were recovered by filtration. Yield after this was 108g of methamphetamine*HCl (86%). And it blew the fucking pants off anything you’ve ever seen.
