Recently I was looking at the rhodium vaults and i found an article on the decarboxylation (sp?) of tryptophan to yield tryptamine. One of the synthesies called for suspending the tryptophan in something called tetralin containing acetone. I did a search on tetralin and couldnt really find any diffenative answers (but mabye im just stupid). But I did find lots of things mentioning Naphthalene, 1,2,3,4-tetrahydro-. What exactly is that? Is it anything like plain napthelene? like in mothballs. Does this mean that it is possible to synthesize tryptamine with acetone and napthalene (sp?). I probably sound pretty stupid but pls dont flame me unless you have some useful information as well. BTW the website i looked at is http://www.rhodium.ws/chemistry/tryptophan.html. THX all for any useful responses.

The tetralin is just a high-boiling-point solvent. The acetone (or any other ketone) is a catalyst for the decarboxylation, IIRC. I think you can substitute xylene for tetralin, since it has a fairly high boiling point. Or try to find some hydrocarbon or chlorinated solvent that has a similar BP to tetralin and substitute that. I believe somewhere on the Hive someone mentioned using MEK instead of acetone, probably because it's a pretty common ketone and doesn't evaporate as fast as acetone.