I've been dabbling into reduction of propiophenone to the alcohol and looking at the most OTC route possible
TiCl3, NH3 - good yield but to much volume and to many salts. Ticl3 can easily be prepped from Ti powder but it takes a little time. Nice color, deepest blue.
IPA and NaOH in a pressure cooker for few hours or 22h at normal pressure works as stated but reference is incredibly diluted, 25 g in several litres. But its pretty amazing in general.
Hints at the quasi-fact that the MPV-reduction doesnt only work with aluminium isopropoxide (which needs nasty Hg for making it), but that other alkali and earth alkali alkoxides might be able to pull this reaction off, as well, and most important, in a less diluted reaction mix.
That is most promising (except maybe, for what follows at the end of this post) right now and would open MPV-red to the masses.
We should put work into this, Im willing to experiment but others need to check the theory. Magnesium alkoxides would be most amazing, and OTC prep of Na and K alkoxides is supposed to work as well. Maybe even lithium. Could also use that Na-MgO aggregate for making the needed alkoxide.
Unless we would go for a electrochemical reduction method, what would probably work well and maybe even beat the above idea, there are only other reduction methods left, which require "real reduction agents" to be made or aquired.
Dithionite really is a hit, buy it OTC, make yourself by zn and bi sulfite and forget Dioxane or DMF as theyre not necessary. Just look for some older paper using NaOH and dithionite on various ketones in some standard OTC solvent.
Some other rather available reagent along with hydroxide but I forgot which it was. Looked promising an classical.
some notes
https://erowid.org/archive/rhodium/chemistry/ppa.htmlhttps://www.google.com.ar/patents/WO2005100299A1?cl=en
