Nicotine Salts?

Regarding some decarboxylation attempts on “monomeric benzoic acid systems”.

Benzoic Acid:
… decarboxylation of benzoic acid itself is slow at 400 °C in tetralin (3-5% in 1 h), unless a fairly strong base or other decarboxylation promoter is present. … The rate of decarboxylation in naphthalene was not significantly different from that in tetralin, increasing slightly from 3 to 4% …

Nicotine is a weak base with a pKa of 8.0 (from a very comprehensive paper on Nicotine - recommended).

2-Methoxy Benzoic Acid (same as Salicyclic Acid - but with a Methoxy, rather than a Hydroxy, group):
In the three experiments with this substrate, decarboxylation was almost complete, ranging from 84 to 88%. No starting acid was recovered …

The decarboxylation of 2-Hydroxy Benzoic Acid (Salicyclic Acid) was not attempted in study quoted above.

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