oxycodone synthesis 14-HYDROXYCODEINONE: The same product obtained from the 30% hydrogen peroxide treatment of thebaine in acetic

acid can also be obtained directly from codeine. 30 grams of codeine in 80 ml water with 25 grams acetic acid, is treated cold with a solution of 20 grams sodium dichromate in 25ml water. An oily precipitate forms which becomes crystal after short warming. The mixture is heated to 80C with stirring until all the solid goes into solution; the temperature rises spontateously to 90C. After short standing, the base is precipitated from the cold solution as the dichromate by adding an excess of chromic acid solution. Crystallize from alcohol with a little chloroform as plates, decomposes at 275C. Stable to strong acid or alkali. Soluble in chloroform, ethyl acetate, ligroin. Sparingly in alcohol, insoluble in ether or water. Simple hydrogenation over Pt, Pd, or Ni would satutate the recovered and purified compound to the potent dihydro version. Hydrogenation over Pt or Pd in dilute acetic acid give 93% to 97% yields. This product would be 14-hydroxydihydrocodeinone or Oxycodone, either as the dichromate or possibly acetyl salt. What I like about this procedure is that it is simple and fast and uses only very available reagents. What I don't like about it is that no yields are stated. Codeine -> 14-Hydroxycodeinone Dissolve your codeine base in the acid solution (acetic, we're following the method given in Lone Ranger's procedure above, so use those amounts) in a rb flask and set it in an ice water bath with stirring. Now that it's nice and cool, slowly pipette in the dichromate solution. The solution immediately turns a milky orange/yellow. Now remove the ice and set it in your oil bath on a hotplate and throw your water cooled condenser on top. I used a temperature controlled hotplate so I just dialed the temp in to ~83C and made sure it stayed there for ~20 min. If you stick a thermometer in your oil bath you should be able to do about the same. Heat is bad for opiates, but I have not found that letting it cook at 80-90C for 30 min to be terribly detrimental. Anywayz, you can tell that the reaction is complete when there is no more color change. The new color should be a dark brown/red. Pipette pour your solution into a sep. funnel, wash your flask with a bit of water and pour that in too. There will be some black insoluble crap left in the flask. Don't worry about that shit. Now basify with ammonia. You don't have to be exact, just make sure the pH is taken to above 10 and then extract three times with chloroform. If you get an emulsion, just deal with it by adding a butload of chloroform and only taking the unemulsified

chloroform with each separation. Take your chloroform solutions and back extract with water twice to make sure you didn't bring nasty Cr with your product. The product is yellow when disolved in a large amount of solvent and dark brown/red when concentrated. You just converted codeine's hydroxy group to a ketone and put a hydroxy under the nitrogen bridge. Evaporate off your solvent. 14-Hydroxycodeinone -> Oxycodone Next is to reduce that double bond which is VERY EASY if you have a source of hydrogen. As far as other equipment, you need two syringes with the plunger removed and needles attached. To each you attach a balloon the the plunger end. Then, you need some sort of thick rubber to cover the mouth of your flask, but can be penetrated (air tight) by your needles. Ok, so you throw in like 3 molar % (of initial moles of codeine) of Pd/C (either 10% or 5% Pd on Carbon) into your flask which contains your goodies in a fairly concentrated solution of ~8% acetic acid in MeOH (Not super concentrated, but definately not super dilute) with STIRRING. Then you fill your ballons through the needles, purge your flask air space with hydrogen by inserting both needles through the rubber diaphram and insert a third needle to allow an out flow. After it has purged for a while pull out the purge needle and make sure that the hole it created is now sealed. Refill your balloons and reinsert them. Let it stir overnight. I have done this on a few gram scale so there wasn't a lot of hydrogen absorbed. If you were doing a tens of grams scale, you would need to refill the balloons several times during the reaction or you may still need to do this if you have bad leaks. Ok, so filter your solution. It's about the same color, maybe a little bit lighter, but don't worry cuz it worked. Again, basify, shake with chloroform and extract 3x. Evaporate, disolve in acetone and gas or drip in HCl to crystalize. Your crystals may turn to goo when exposed to air during filtration if you use wet HCl. Don't worry about it, just realize you are gonna have to drip an aqueous oxy solution into your nose instead of getting to snort bumps to get high. Do not over acidify during crystalization! When your solution turns from brown to clear, stop adding acid and filter. If you overacidify, your crystals will turn to brown goo balls in your flask. They won't be destroyed but if you dried and snorted 'em the leftover HCl's might burn your nose a bit. This procedure is very easy and the whole shebang except for the work-up could be done in a day no sweat. The yields of both steps are very high yielding. I have taken an H-NMR of the compounds at each step of the way and found them to be highly

pure with no observable starting material in their spectrums. So get to work! Next time I'll go over the conversion of oxycodone to oxymorphone which is super potent and this is even more simple of a reaction. None of the reagents in either synthesis are suspicious so fuckin' chill.