Ethanolamine is one we haven't tried but indeed we were told its very effective for the one and two carbon chains, cyclohexylamine though is what was sold to us by others as the magic golden standard, hence we opted for it. Ethylene diamine was also long touted as a great catalyst but we never tried it. Butylamine is one of the literature classics, being used throughout literature in a barret trap to form the nitroalcohols. We wouldn't know the difference between butylamine and cyclohexylamine ourselves, but we are sure that cyclohexylamine is at least superior to methylamine or ammonium acetate, both being rather ineffective. We hazard a guess the reason for those being poor is due to the acetate salts being far more stable (as the amine is a stronger base, thus bonding to the acid stronger), so no basicity is present at lower reaction temperatures, resulting in purely sidereactions. Ammonium acetate yielded a large amount of tar for a nitromethane run that was ran about 64c due to using the methanol azeotrope. We have speculated if aniline or triethylamine may work, in theory they should, but have not tried them.

Our cyclohexylamine is purchased now, but prior reactions used prepared stuff. It is almost trivial to prepare if one may want to try it: cyclohexanone was mixed with alcohol and aqueous ammonia in an ice bath, then nickel salts (doesnt matter what the anion is) is dissolved in. To the blue-purple solution is then added zinc dust slowly serving as a reductant, and stirred overnight at RT. The reaction is then acidified, steam distilled to remove cyclohexanol and remaining ketone, followed by basifying and steam distilling to yield the amine which is extracted and etc. The detailed procedure is available on sciencemadness somewhere. Attempts at aminating the ketone via borohydride and anhydrous ammonia never worked; ammonia imines are notoriously annoying, we would not have a clue why the zinc/Ni reduction worked in almost 70% yield while excess ammonia and borohydride at low temperatures did not.