Now to my experiences with very subpar conditions. I only had natrium hydroxid _based_ cleaner. This one also consisting of aluminium pellets and some silica stuff I already forgot about. Since I couldnt buy any, I did some research which concluded that it would maybe not hurt the reaction. With not much chemical knowledge. So I went ahead and the alkali solution looked very different, with leftover salt and Al. Since at the step the alkali sol. is used leftover Al from the reduction would be present anyway, it won't hurt, please correct me. I couldn't really find anything about the other compound other thant its not very reactive.
Also I didn't think well enough about disposal and even storage while synth. I got a bit excited and wanted to try. Additionally I didn't have a proper room, everything small and full of easily inflammable material. So I build an improvised extractor hood and tried to stay on a big glass plate on the floor with everything. Of course I fkin spilled some freaking toxic AlHg solution. Mostly on the plate, I think. I just planned to research disposal beforehand, so I was a bit panicking having no elemental sulphure to at least make it unsolvable, so I just soak most of it some towel and proceeded.
Ok, a bit confused, also I just had max. 1l round glass or erlenmeyer flasks and some even smaller. So I just halfed all the amounts with knowing I should have doing mol-based calculation.
So my AlHg amalgation was working good, with eye balled amount of mercury nitrate. (I didnt wanted to mess more than needed with this compound). Although it took pretty long and it still reacted when pouring water in it over and over, is this normal? So I waited and poured more water until it didn't (so much, dont remember in detail). Might that come of to sticky Al? I cutted it with scissor and it sticked together from pressure. But since it was pretty dark and small bubbles i proceeded.
Then I added the 1p2n, 5g in 50ml iso and 25ml ethyl acetate and was alert for the agressive reaction, but not much happened, after a while I gave heat with water bath, I happened something, but stayed very mildly active so I gave heat until there wasnt anymore reaction. It looked right, although I had no real condenser, i was just holding^^ a bottle over it. The amalgane looked same as before, for me, dunno. Filtered it off and poured the alkali sol in it. Then I collected the base layer with a syringe, way too small, took forever.
The salt preparation then...I forgot to solve the tararic acid I got and just threw some crystals in basically and then reminded it should have been an solution and poured aceton in it (probably not working). But immediately after pouring the acid crystals in, it started to build more crystal, the acetone didnt change a lot. I measured pH and got red, so i over acidized it, damn, i thought get some base in to neutralize again. But actually pouring ethyl acetate in it. Which I realized shortly later when I realized that I only got this stupid mixed natirum hydroxide. I measured the pH again and suprisingly it wasnt that red anymore so I hoped the best and went to filtration for which I used a tea filter and let it dry then.
Suprisingly it looked very white and like it should, so I went ahead to test a bit and it burns so much, that it's quite useless. I hope recristallation will help here. But the yield also is too good to be true, around 3,5g of 5g - is the tartrate heavier than other salts? Also its effect were not as expected, I was pretty tired and have tolerance from prescription, but yeah... dunno. have I just bunk that burns like hell? anyone ideas?
edit: yield is without extracting sludge, just the top layer.
edit2: about quick ideas how to dispose those ugly flasks toxicating my apartment i would be very happy. will a hdpe flask hold all the leftovers mixed together? Probably not mixing would be better, but at this point I need to get it out of my place first of all.