Hi, I hav recently been doing sum research in the area of opiate chemistry. I came across a post on a forum on the synthesis of dihydromorphine from dihydrocodeine which is available here in the uk as paramol (7.46mg DHC/500mg paracetamol). The basic idea is to reflux DHC in HCL with 5% (of HCL) boric acid as rate enhancer for 24-26hrs, to yeild 95-97% DHM. I feel I am fairly knowledgeable now when it comes to chemistry, I'm self tought but fully understand the basics such as extraction, washing, distillation ect... (With alot of help from the organic chem lab surv manual) but wud like to run the procedure I've finalised on passed you guys to get ur opinions/suggestions. To start with obviously ill hav to acquire DHC, thought the CWE as used with codeine should be enough but may do an A/B to make very sure there is no binders/paracetamol left to cause unwanted side reactions. Boric acid ill get by reacting borax(cheap in tesco) with HCL. Now for the reaction I was planning on using 30ml HCL/gram DHC, with 5% boric acid refluxed for 26hrs, when the reflux has finished I thought I'd raise the pH to 9.1 using ammonia and extracting with naptha (only NP available to me at the mo or would use toluene:/). Then either evap the solvent to yeild the FB (for smoking) or lowering the pH with H2SO4, extracting with DH2O, then evaporating to yeild Dihydromorphine sulfate which will either be weighed into capsules or put into solution to be stored in vials. So if u have any comments/suggestions I'd love to hear thèm, Cheers
I forgot to add the HCL is in the form of 'spirits of salts' (25% HCL), and I also wondered if I were to add acetone to the RXN mix wen reflux is finished to make the DHM crash out would this be a better option than extracting with naptha? I'm just not sure of opiates solubility in naptha as most teks/synths involving morphine seem to use chloroform.
Hmmm...the thing is I know online DHC is expensive. So for a 120 mg pill is like 47€…so you can probably find a gram the same price of DHM on the street. As for the rest of your question...im sorry i cant help. Just offerin advice.
hi im sorry to dig up an old thread but ive recently become interested in this synth again and had to reregister to reply :/ have recently found a cheap source of DHC that would make it economical, and so my original query stands does anyone have any comments/suggestions on the basic synth write up?? many thanks, josh
