L-Tryptophan decarboxylation issues

[forsttten]

i had some issues with decarb of l-tryptophan. i used a procedure, that was posted on erovid, as i remember, but for some reason it all doesn't seem to work
30g of l-tryptophan from a supplement store were added to a mixture of 150ml of benzyl alcohol with 50ml of acetone as a catalyst in a 500ml RBF with a reflux condenser and a balloon at the end. i then put it a stir bar and heated to around 120-130C under strong stirring. for next 9 hours a gas, which, i suppose, to be co2, was producing, but all the tryptophan didn't seem to dissolve at all. also after letting the mixture sit for a while without stirring, it separated in 2 layers: the upper one is a liquid with brown colour and below it, the creamy suspension
i checked it's solubility in benzyl alcohol, tried to add more of the solvent, but there's still a lot (~85% of the mixture's volume) of insoluble cream-coloured suspension of tryptophan in BnOH and acetone
what can be the reason for this? how can i get it to dissolve? is it supposed to act like this?

 

[Osmosis Vanderwaal]

I wenrt through what Rhodium has and also a couple of scholastic papers and although acetone is sometime used as the ketone I didn't see any that used benzyl alcohol as the solvermt. Furthermore, it seems benzyl alcohol and acetone react with one another in various unexpected ways. Summary. Benzyl alcohol is the wrong solvent for this reaction and tetralin is what they used and reflux for 3 hours Yielded 75% and the highest yeoding ketone was MEK (butanone) at 86%

 

[forsttten]

i read those papers and heard about tetralin for dissolving, but another issue is that i have no access to tetralin or acetophenone, which was also used in other decarboxylation methods. so i'm just wondering if i can use any solvents apart from tetralin, benzyl alcohol or acetophenone

 

[Osmosis Vanderwaal]

can you get xylene, toluene,, benzaldehyde, phenol cumene or anisole? Alkylbenzenes + sodium hydroxide=tetralin. I see that benzyl alcohol can be used with the catalyst being spearment oi and a better choice yet is turpintine with 5% dmso catalist carvone (spearmint oil)l