With this I mean no fluoride salts but reactive poisonous gases like free F2 (how do you store it ??) or HF, ClF or ClF3.
Not that I want to have these chemicals in my lab but I am just curious. Bot0nist - 19-9-2011 at 09:10
Like hydrofluoric acid? I have some dilute hydrofluoric acid. It is pretty reactive and poisonous. One could liberate some of the HF without to much
trouble I guess. But I don't want to.bbartlog - 19-9-2011 at 12:53
I have a canister of R134a refrigerant in my car, as well as PTFE tape. I think my wife has some dilute HF etchant paste somewhere in her craft
supplies. As for F2 (or worse ClF3), I wouldn't care to try and store such a thing at home, though I could envision working with the former under the
right circumstances. plante1999 - 19-9-2011 at 14:47
I have 15%HFChordate - 19-9-2011 at 15:56
Loads of fluorine compounds are released upon thermal decomposition of teflon, including hydrogen fluoride gas, perfluoroisobutane (many times more
poisonous than phosgene), tetrafluorethylene, and others.
As for storing F2, it is tricky. Fluorine reacts with just about everything except helium, neon, and completely fluorinated polymers, and it tends to
diffuse through those. Copper and nickel tends to be more stable to fluorine because it is passivated by surface fluorides.
The only people who tend to need to store fluorine are people doing daily fluorine chemistry, such as nuclear fuel processors, and the handful of
crazy chemists who are fluorine specialists. One fluorine lab I saw in an online video kept their supply in a 5 liter cylinder on the roof and piped
it down to the lab in milliliter quantities. (there is an old joke: how do you spot the fluorine chemists at a conference? You look for people with
less than 10 fingers).
Most people generate it as needed from fluoride salts or HF solutions because then you don't encounter these problems.Endimion17 - 19-9-2011 at 17:18
If you want a somewhat safer form of HF, you can get ammonium bifluoride, which is effectively the salt of ammonia and 2 moles of HF. It is used for
etching glass and other functions, and is safer than HF. I tried it once, and it does slowly etch glass. Good for frosting windows and other
etchings.
I was being sarcastic. Of course I know how fluorine is made. I passed inorganics at college.
I was just implying that he isn't aware of the fact that it's not something people do in the lab when they want fluorine. Fluorine is made
industrially and comes in small, pressurized tanks.
BTW "synthesis of fluorine"... Shouldn't that be wrong? Compounds are synthesized. Elements are isolated. In my language, "analysis" is used as the
opposite of synthesis, too.Chordate - 20-9-2011 at 19:43
Huh, I've only ever fluorinated with electrolytically generated fluorine from MeCN/TEA/H<sup>18</sup>F. Probably because we only ever
needed a few milligrams worth of material and had to make it on site. My bad. A fluorine chemist I am not.
[Edited on 21-9-2011 by Chordate]
copper fluoride
jamit - 20-9-2011 at 21:14
I've attempted to make copper II fluoride using 3% hydrofluoric acid which you can buy OTC at Menards as Rust Remover.
I made the mistake of using glass beaker and now its ruined.
Anyway, I transferred copper carbonate into a plastic beaker and added hydrofluoric acid until it stopped bubbling and no more carbon dioxide was
produced. I then filtered the solution and allowed it to evaporate. I did three batches of this and had mixed results. The first batch produced a
light blue powered substance that stained my watch glass.
It doesn't matter if the copper fluoride is dry, it will still contain residue of hydrofluoric acid and it will etch the glass and make it cloudy.
The second batch produced crystals of copper II fluoride. this was a surprise and it looked really nice.
I then tried a third batch and couldn't reproduce the 2nd batch... it was just like the first batch... powered light blue substance.
Because fluoride compounds etch or destroy glass, I don't think I'll be doing any more experiment on it until another time later.
Well, good luck, and let us know if you make anything worth reporting!
