If you decide to go this route, I advise you to buy standardized pepper extract, piperine 95% pure. This can be sold through chinese suppliers as raw materials for bioactive additives. So we avoid one stage of extraction of the primary substance. Next, we make the reaction of oxidative cleavage with the help of relatively available reagents:
Step 1:
1. Piperine (10g) was dissolved in acetonitrile (300ml), H2O (300ml) and dichloromethane (150ml) and sodium bicarbonate (15g), ruthenium chloride (1.5g) and
Oxone (43g) were added
2. The mixture was stirred for 24h before a further amount of sodium bicarbonate (15g), ruthenium chloride (1.5g) and Oxone (43g) were added
3. The solution was stirred for another 24h before being poured into H2O (300ml) and extracted with dichloromethane (400ml)
4. The combined organic extracts were washed with a saturated solution of sodium thiosulfate (200ml), dried (MgSO4), and evaporated, If necessary, can be cleaned by vacuum distillation, yield 1,8g piperonal
Oxone - patented name for disinfection of pools, and sold in the appropriate stores. It can be released in different forms and packaging, in the form of tablets for dissolution, but for our purposes it is better to look for powder or granulated. Next, we need nitroethane, in some cases the reagent is sold as a additive for automotive fuel, not to be confused with nitromethane (It can also be sold as a additive to fuel).
Step 2:
1. To a solution of piperonal (10g) in acetic acid (50ml) was added nitroethane (10ml) followed by cyclohexylamine (7ml) and the mixture was held at 100*C for 6h
2. The mixture was then diluted with H2O (10ml) and left at 4*C overnight before being filtered to yield 3,4-methylenedioxyphenyl-2-nitropropene 7,5 g as yellow crystals
Next we can have several routes. We can reduce nitropropene in MDA, but in the subject of this topic we are looking for another substance. Although for MDA is possible methylation of the amino group to MDMA. In this case, the primary reaction may be amalgam.
Another way is to obtain a ketone from nitropropene:
1. To a refluxing suspension of iron dust (35g) in acetic acid (150ml) was added dropwise a solution of 3,4-methylenedioxyphenyl-2-nitropropene (10g) in acetic acid (100ml)
2. The resulting mixture was stirred at reflux for 2h before being diluted with H2O (500ml) and extracted with dichloromethane (300ml)
3. DCM extract dried (MgSO4) and concentrated under reduced pressure to yield 3,4-methylenedioxyphenyl-2-propanone (9g) as a brown oil
From propanone and already with nitromethane (or ready methylamine), we can go to MDMA via amalgam or choose other routes.