Ethylamine, mass spectrum

The presence of this peak is good, although not conclusive, evidence that the test substance is a primary amine. The peak may arise from secondary fragmentation of ions formed from the fragmentation of secondary or tertiary amines, as well. In the mass spectrum of ethylamine (Fig. 8.39), the mie = 30 peak can be seen clearly. 

As I have pointed out before, street samples do not always contain what is claimed. They are often mixtures, and they may hold components which are unknown to us. In such cases, GC-MS is of great help. A product which was submitted to our laboratory as Mescaline did not contain a trace of 3,4,5-trimethoxyphenyl-ethylamine but instead 2 different organic bases could be isolated and identified by GC-MS, Fig. 3 gives the mass spectrum of the major component which led to its identification as l-(l-phenyl)--cyclohexylpiperidine or phencyclidine, the active ingredient of Sernyl, the so-called peace drug. 

Potassium borohydride reduction of runanine (17) yielded dihydro-runanine (24), the H-NMR spectrum of which (Table II) exhibited a triplet (64.25), the proton bearing the hydroxyl group coupling with those of C-5 (35). The optical activity of runanine (17), [a]D —400°, was similar to that of hasubanonine (5), [a]D —214° (3) therefore, it was concluded that the ethylamine linkage must have the same configuration as hasubanonine [C-13 (R) and C-14 (S)]. From these results, structure 17 was proposed for runanine (35) however, no application of mass spectral data to the structure elucidation was presented (35). 

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