Cat piss? I know how that was made. That HAD to come via phenylacetic acid, with incomplete conversion of PAA to phenylacetone (1-phenyl-propan-2-one otherwise known as P2P, which itself, I think smells rather pleasant. Not overwhelming, just...nice, faintly flowery with a hint of hydrocarbon to it), phenylacetic acid on the other hand smells like cat piss.
One process in phet manufacture starts with phenylacetic acid (which can even be produced from polystyrene foam, if determined enough, or better if going the Willgerodt route, using styrene monomer (don't for the love of anything holy, unholy or hanging on the fence in between the two, try to thermally crack polystyrene in your glassware, you won't like what the residue is like. You'll never get it off short of something brutal like piranha acid, which ain't nice stuff. So build metal can disposable stills, nig-rig fire extinguishers that have been vented, dissassembled and cleaned or what have you, and use those, because the polymeric glorp is not something you want in a lab flask or condenser, it sets solid like glue. Fuckin' disgusting, so throwaway parts for the still itself, receiver is alright, just not the vessel the big quantities of smashed up, as far as possible compacted polystyrene are to be heated in, and the styrene monomer distilled off)
Phenylacetic acid is used by preparing, usually, either the calcium salt, or the salt with lead, and then destructive distillation, 'tis a harsh technique, basically distilling, but just the polystyrene in there, no solvent, just dry polystyrene, hence destructive, it depolymerizes it and gives styrene, which can then undergo some reactions, including a Willgerodt (caution, it both stinks
to high heaven, right up through the ceiling of said celestial abode, and curves back round to find itself up satan's own ass hole, and it also produces a lot of hydrogen sulfide, a noxious gas, about as toxic as hydrogen cyanide, only cyanide antidote kits don't work, and it has a ninja-sneaky manner of first paralyzing the olfactory nerve in sublethal concentrations. Or before someone has had time to inhale enough to off them, the paralysis is temporary unless the subject then dies; but the nasty sneaky little bastard factor is in that with the heinous stench of rotten eggs (H2S is what CAUSES rotten eggs to stink like theresa may's disease-riddled chancre-sore-encrusted snatch, due to the breakdown of sulfur containing aminoacids in the egg protein such as cystine, cysteine etc), it APPEARS to go away. It didn't. It hid from you because you can't smell it anymore.
All the while it is building up and poisoning you slyly until you drop dead. Or else you catch one big lungful and just drop dead on the spot.
The lead or calcium phenylacetate salts are then too, destructively distilled, giving a ketone (this appears to be a general reaction, E.g acetic acid, or rather, as calcium or lead acetate, when subjected to destructive distillation, gives acetone.), in this case the well known and much sought P2P/phenylacetone/BMK (benzyl-methyl ketone, a rather ugly piece of nomenclature if ever I saw one) that is then used to prepare the amphetamine via either reductive amination, for meth/ethamphetamine or else the ketoxime is formed via hydroxylamine and a mild base (NaOAc or carbonate will suffice, 'tis just to deprotonate the hydroxylammonium salt)
And then the ketoxime reduced to an amine using sodium in anhydrous ethanol (Boveault-Blanc reduction), for primary amines like amphetamine itself.
IIRC, I've never tried it, but apparently a vast improvement on using lead or calcium phenylacetate, is, whilst carefully controlling stoichiometry, using the adipic acid salt, an acid with two acidic groups, but the stoich. taken care of so that it is only half-deprotonated, along with a catalytic quantity of barium hydroxide or maybe oxide, was a long time since I read that paper and then destructively distilling.
Apparently gives a vastly superior yield to using the lead or calcium salts, with the adipate hemi-salt. Not just a few percent but close to double, or up in the 70-90% range depending on what ring substitutions if any someone happens to be tinkering with.
I seem to recall something about barium being used on its own too (not as metallic Ba, oxide or hydroxide, forget which)
But phenylacetic acid itself, it smells like the cat got home after a night on the hard liquor, dragged itself quarter-arsedly (forget half arsed, this cat is FUCKED up) into the nearest corner, pissed all over the carpet whilst the family are on hoiday for a week, and then fucks off to go lie down in the cat's employee's bed so as not to be near it's own piss.
The smell of P2P...its faint, well, detectable easily enough if smelled, although given its high boiling point it isn't hugely volatile at atmospheric pressure; (needs a decent vacuum to distill it, which may well be where the PAA contamination got in, or rather, where it got itself the opportunity to avoid being evicted)
Kinda...flowery, slightly but not too sweet, heady, with hints of say, some mid weight alkane like heptane, the hydrocarbon undertones being quite subtle. And as if one were to take a perfume like that combination and per liter, add perhaps two drops of turpentine, just barely detectable. Nice smell, PAA just stinks like Fubar's kecks after he's CBF changing them for the n'th fortnight in a row
And then a cat pissing all over his lap of course, since it does distinctly smell of cat piss and theresa may.
Alrighty there Monsta! been a while.
Good things? *lifts up sadie's top and legs it as fast as his fucked up neck, kneejoint and hips will permit*
Bad things? * pulls down Theresa May's trousers whilst wearing his welding mask and aims her at Monsternoodle, face first view right up the moldy, fungating, icicle-filled offal-maw, looking the other way, as if a latter-day Perseus, having chopped off Medusa's bonce with his shield as mirror to avoid being turned alive, into stone.*
I hate to think what looking right into that stench gash and tradesman's door to perdition, would do to somebody, but if they didn't turn to stone, it would be worse. Far worse. Something like being turned inside out, made unable to die, and being rolled eternally in caustic potash with a candiru up your dick eye. If candiru, like certain other catfish had evolved venomous spines, and if like a small number of other catfish, were capable of producing an electric discharge, like a torpedo ray or electric eel. Until the stars burn out their hydrogen, their helium, and they eventually have faded to a cold, inert ball of iron, interacting by gravitation alone, (Fe is the limit, it can be produced in stars but not fused, so it is in essence, the dead end, changing from a blazing fusion reactor confined by gravity, to a chunk of (EVENTUALLY) icy-cold iron.
You'll still be there. Trapped between our Sadie's hotness, desperately trying to use it to cling on to sanity, and on the other hand, the abominable stink-gullet of May's mushroom-encrusted pus factory, just ready to come and bite off your face with her cervical teeth (well, I say teeth, more, solidified, yeast-coagulated cancers in pointy polypoid form.)
So you ready to get frenched by Cthulhu on one of his post drinking binge, horribly hungover and probably been huffing petrol while he's at it?
I much prefer our wee ikkle Sadie myself
but sorry, me and sham are too busy fighting it out over her and your stuck with Theresa May's BSL-4 laboratory with the negative pressure atmosphere reversed.
Don't say you didn't ask monsta
You know what they say....'be careful what you wish for, you might get it'
