Acetone semicarbazone

Acetone semicarbazone is an organic compound derived from semicarbazide. It's got quite an interesting structure. I plan to use acetone semicarbazone to make semicarbazide.

I made acetone semicarbazide using a synthesis from www.prepchem.com which I modified slightly.

To a 250ml conical flask, I added 2.29g of hydrazine sulphate, 2g of sodium carbonate and 2ml of water.

After stirring, I poured in a solution of 1.14g of sodium cyanate in 25ml water along with 2ml of acetone. I stirred the mixture well for 10 minutes then left it to stand for 24 hours. After this, I filtered the mixture, collecting the filtrate. I evaporated the filtrate down to dryness, then to it I added 50ml of ethanol. The original procedure called to use a soxhelt extractor but I don't have this. Anyway I stirred the mixture so the ethanol could dissolve as much product as possible. Then I filtered the mixture again collecting the ethanolic filtrate.

I dried the filtrate in a crystallizing dish and was left with a pathetic amount of acetone semicarbazone. The amount was so small that I didn't bother weighing it. So I'm not sure what the yield was.

I think a larger quantity could have been obtained if I had used a soxhelt extractor or a least used hot ethanol. Warming the mixture before the cyanate addition would probably have helped as well.

see here for how this reaction works