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Methamphetamine Synthesis

The document describes two major methods for synthesizing methamphetamine: the pseudoephedrine method which extracts pseudoephedrine from plants and uses it along with hydroiodic acid and phosphorus; and the P2P cook/reductive amination method which uses phenyl acetic acid and converts it to phenyl acetone then to methamphetamine through reductive amination with methyl amine.

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Archit Kadam
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720 views3 pages

Methamphetamine Synthesis

The document describes two major methods for synthesizing methamphetamine: the pseudoephedrine method which extracts pseudoephedrine from plants and uses it along with hydroiodic acid and phosphorus; and the P2P cook/reductive amination method which uses phenyl acetic acid and converts it to phenyl acetone then to methamphetamine through reductive amination with methyl amine.

Uploaded by

Archit Kadam
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Methamphetamine Synthesis

There two major ways of synthesizing methamphetamine .


1. Pseudoephedrine method
2. P2P cook / reductive amination method
Pseudoephedrine method –
Pseudoephedrine is usually found in cold medicines like – SUDAFED/SINUS
Now a days it is prohibited from using in cold medicines ,as people were
making methamphetamine from it .
Other source of pseudoephedrine is a plant called ephedra. The stems of
ephedra contain Pseudoephedrine .

To synthesis methamphetamine from pseudoephedrine we must first extract it


from the ephedra plant .
Any decent solvent may be used to isolate Pseudoephedrine from the plant.
Example : Alcohols and Ethyl ether.
Once the pseudoephedrine is isolated from the ephedra plant we start our
synthesis :

Here pseudoephedrine is C10H15NO


Whereas methamphetamine is C10H15N

We may see that pseudoephedrine is similar looking to methamphetamine ,


except it has an extra atom of oxygen .
To remove this extra atom of oxygen we can reduce it .
For reducing this we use HI i.e Hydroiodic Acid .

When hydroiodic acid reacts C10H15NO it produces :


H2O along with an I- ion .
To balance this I- ion we displace it with phosphorus .
So when we do try to write this equation , it looks like 

3.C10H15NO + 6.HI + 2.P = 3.C10H15N + 2.PI3 + 3.H2O

As we can see the reactants , reagents and products involved


Our methamphetamine synthesis from Pseudoephedrine is complete.

P2P Cook / Reductive Amination method :


Reductive amination uses phenyl acetic acid as its precursor .
Phenyl acetic acid is converted to phenyl acetone .
PH-C-COOH ----------------------  PH-C-COO
(decarboxylation )
This is done in a tube furnace with the involvement of acetic acid .

Now we need to convert this phenyl acetone to methamphetamine .


This is done by reductive amination of phenyl acetone .

Here we are removing oxygen and adding an amine .


To add the amine we may use methyl amine .
So we get methamphetamine and water .

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