Sciencemadness Discussion Board - Red P from matchbooks: crazy but brilliant innovation

Red P from matchbooks: crazy but brilliant innovation

Limpet Chicken - 11-6-2004 at 10:15

I Just discovered a way to extract 99.9% of the phosphorus coating from matchbox strikers, simply run a lighter that has a long flame several times back and forth across the striking strip, then scrape with a knife, almost 100% of the phosphorus came off, leaving only a very faint reddy-brownish stain on the paper!!!

This takes SOOOO much of the donkeywork with solvents/filtering ETC. that comes with extracting from matchbooks!!!!!

This is so damn brilliant, that if I didn't have a handfull of phosphorus I would be jumping up and down like a little kid with his christmas presents all ofer my bedroom

[Edited on 11-6-2004 by Limpet Chicken]

Esplosivo - 11-6-2004 at 10:54

Isn't that reddish stuff on the matchbooks actually some sulphide of phosphorus?! I don't think phosphorus is the consituent of that reddish stuff. If phosphorus is present it is most probably mixed with some other stuff. Just a thought though.

Limpet Chicken - 11-6-2004 at 11:00

It is quite definately red P on the strikers, along with a little binder and glass frit, because I have made tiny amounts if white P from burning piles if scrapings from matchbooks before. I imagine all the crap can be left behind during distillation to make white P.

[Edited on 11-6-2004 by Limpet Chicken]

Organikum - 11-6-2004 at 11:01

Striker pads consist of about 50% red phosphorus, 25% grounded glass and the rest is mostly casein based glue and other shit.

Happy scraping!

Dont forget to calculate the glass into the ratios of reactions.
Dont cook methamphetamine and wash your hands after visiting the toilet.

Limpet Chicken - 11-6-2004 at 11:05

The point of the thread was, that by running a lighter flame along the strip, the glue melts allowing the phosphorus to be scraped off with a blade in almost one piece

Organikum, I have no intention of either cooking meth, or for that matter, scratching my nuts with my hands contaminated with red/white P

And why shouldn't I wash my hands after taking a loo break from my meth cooking?

[Edited on 11-6-2004 by Limpet Chicken]

thunderfvck - 11-6-2004 at 12:39

Wouldn't it still need to be treated with HCl?

axehandle - 11-6-2004 at 12:43

Quote:

casein

Isn't that a protein extracted from human hair?

Limpet Chicken - 11-6-2004 at 12:49

Axehandle, I'm 99.99 percent sure the protein in hair and nails is keratin. Casein is the protein in milk, which, I think can be precipitated out as curds with HCl, and washed to recover the casein, which, interestingly enough is listed as a possible starting point for tryptamine HCl

, it can also form a peptide called caseomorphine, I'm not sure of a synthesis for this, but it's manufactured, along with a similar peptide called gluteomorphorphine from u guessed it...gluten, in some autistic children, which leads them to becoma addicted to these foods.

Thunderfvck, why not just distill a few times to condense pure white P?

The_Davster - 11-6-2004 at 12:50

Well, I just found some remanents from my pyro days, over 200 books of matches with the heads cut off so I will give this extraction method a try after my finals are over in two weeks. Sadly I havent done anything in my lab for over a week becuase of these exams :mad:

Esplosivo - 11-6-2004 at 20:35

Quote:

Casein is the protein in milk, which, I think can be precipitated out as curds with HCl, and washed to recover the casein

Casein is the protein present in milk. Lately I've done such an extraction, but using a mixture of citric and ethanoic acid (dilute) which I added to the milk and left for around 1 day.

HCl is not just going to precipitate the curd but will also hydrolyse the protein into its respective monomers (ie amino acids). Probably that's the use of HCl during extraction, so that the casein can be made to 'dissolve'.

chemoleo - 11-6-2004 at 21:10

Hmm, I always thought that it needs a bit more than ambient temperatures to hydrolyse polypeptides with HCl... last time I read about it, it required high temp (>90degC) for several hours.
sorry it's a bit off topic, i know. Let get back onto it

Esplosivo - 11-6-2004 at 21:43

It depends mostly on the concentration of the acid, but at room temp. hydrolysis does occur, though it is fairly slow (tried hydrolysis of small quantities of casein with HCl took 10 min for a somewhat complete hydrolysis

). Precipitation of casein is slow and therefore there might be some loss of product. Just a thought anyway.

This is most probably off-topic but is there any other way to extract the phosphorus from matchboxes in bulk, ie not by scraping the boxes one by one - such as any form of 'solvent extraction'. Thanks.

S.C. Wack - 11-6-2004 at 23:45

Well, the Hive would have procedures for sure. But I've heard rumors that the best of all procedures is to cut out a couple hundred strips and soak them in a quart mason jar under enough dry IPA to cover them. The strips should be cut out carefully, so no unnecessary volume of paper is present.

This sits for some minutes to a half hour, then is shaken like hell for about 5 minutes or until every bit of the stuff has fallen off. The alcohol/powder is dumped out and fresh IPA added for a liitle more stuff. The IPA is decanted off of the precipitate, solids washed with water, heated with NaOH to dissolve glass particles, and then HCl for any Sb2S3 or whatever the hell is in there as well.

Keep in mind that the stormtroopers may break down your door, toss grenades through your windows, condemn your house, and charge and convict you of intent to manufacture methamphetamine, if your large purchases of matches are noticed, or the cut out matchbooks are noticed in the trash, regardless of your actual intent.

Organikum - 12-6-2004 at 04:45

You should use neither NaOH nor HCl and for sure not with heat or you will oxidize your phosphorus away....

A mixture of acetone and ethanol denat. works fine says a scraping friend of mine who does this for a long time and wouldnt lie at me.

Dissolving the glass with hot NaOH?
Wont work, lowers yields and makes no sense at all.
The concentrations and temperatures needed for dissolving glass are far higher than phosphor will stand.
No HCl! DILUTED NaOH in the cold. (look in Vogels 3rd)

PS: Limpet Chicken, you still have to do the ethanol/acetone wash for the glue is not completely gone by flamming it - it just looses it glueing properties.

[Edited on 12-6-2004 by Organikum]

S.C. Wack - 12-6-2004 at 11:29

Org, please hold my hand and tell me what applicable page of Vogel you are talking about - its a big book.

Argue with geez in the Hive about boiling with HCl, no point in arguing with me since I am clueless. Hot 10% NaOH doesn't affect glass, much less glass powder? Thats funny, because if you do what I said earlier in a glass container... So the sparklyness going away is due to? What doesn't make sense about this (other than its unnecessary if exact weight is unimportant)? Please elaborate, I'm very stupid, completely make up my posts, and have never done anything like what I say.

I can't imagine why Mellor and industry talk about boiling red P in NaOH to purify it from white P. You'd better email the editors and correct them.

Shaking is to be much preferred to scraping, IMHO.

Please share your source that says that red P, HCl and aq. NaOH react in a meaningful way. Anyone who tries the method I posted earlier and gets phosphoric acid or anything else but red P gets a check in the mail, if they post their result. Though I probably should have put the HCl first, and the NaOH second or optional.

Organikum - 12-6-2004 at 11:46

But you dont have to remove any WHITE PHOSPHORUS here.

Vogels has an INDEX. Look for yourself. Matchbox scraping is a religion and it is not mine.

S.C. Wack - 12-6-2004 at 16:48

Who are you and what have you done with Organikum? I am not your bitch, for sure.

Yes, I did look in the INDEX, which is why I asked you for more help. I cannot find anything there on mbrp, or HCl or NaOH/red P. Perhaps someone a little more helpful can help me here?

Where did I say that there was WHITE PHOSPHORUS in mbrp? Is it not obvious that my reference was in response to your assertion that NaOH and red P is bad?

Not all matchbook strikers are the same and the redder, the better. Even so each strip contains a very small amount.

wtf?

Proteios - 13-6-2004 at 07:34

there used to be a guy called lestat, his favortite thing to bang on about was making P from match books....and getting 'poisoned' by it... he also used to come from the UK and be a post whore. Just for a historical context, he got banned the same day Limpet Chicken signed up.....
Limpet Chickens average posts per day: 9
Lestats average number posts per day: 3

Im sure Limpet Chicken will not repeat Lestats mistakes though.

tom haggen - 14-7-2004 at 17:15

I remember seeing something on the history channel about synthesizing elemental phosphorus by letting urine sit for a long time. By the way organikum, let me get this straight. The method you describe for extracting red phosphorus goes like this. Soak match strips in an acetone ethanol solution (removing the adhesive), then Soak in a cold dilute NaOH solution; I'm assuming that’s for dissolving the glass particles. Then let things dry, and presto you have pure red phosphorus.

[Edited on 15-7-2004 by tom haggen]

S.C. Wack - 14-7-2004 at 17:50

It definitely wasn't Organikum that suggested the NaOH! I don't know how dilute a NaOH solution can be and still eat the glass. I never measured, and have a bunch of NaOH, so I use it. No one said anything about pure red P, just more pure than before. Reading Fester got me to mention Sb above but that is in the tips, but-

HCl is used to remove other things. There is some mention of iron oxides and Ca carbonate. I suppose this varies with the manufacturer.

The urine was used because they didn't know that phosphates were all around them in other forms.

Sorry Limpet for hijacking your thread.

tom haggen - 14-7-2004 at 18:13

Organikum said don't use HCl and don't use hot NaOH.-

Quote:

DILUTED NaOH in the cold. (look in Vogels 3rd)

is what he did say though.

S.C. Wack - 14-7-2004 at 18:39

My challenge still stands, and I haven't had reason to cut any checks.

Are you or anyone else saying that this doesn't work in practice? It does on this planet.

And did you find the part in Vogel that he was talking about?

And did you look in the Hive to see the posts by people boiling with HCl? Well, you have to register to see all the posts.

EDIT: Do you think that I just make this stuff up or what? It pisses me off that you do. So I typed 'red phosphorus purification' in the espacenet title search engine. The first hit, US2537078 talked about the drawbacks of the prior art.

This prior art, they say, was boiling with 5-10% NaOH or Na2CO3 for 2-4 hrs, to remove white P. And boiling with 5-10% H2SO4 for 4 hours, to remove iron.

The drawbacks to this do not involve the loss of red P. The problem is the heat requirements and the phosphine produced from the white P, both a loss and hazardous. Nowadays the rate of conversion is very high.

I admit that I have not processed enough at a time to give accurate loss of weight (conversion of glass to silicate and ? to ?) with my beam. Future experiment, or a milligram scale.

http://l2.espacenet.com/espacenet/viewer?PN=US2537078&CY...

[Edited on 15-7-2004 by S.C. Wack]

tom haggen - 14-7-2004 at 21:36

The search engine at the hive blows my balls. Quality of posts at that site are poor compared to the ones at this site. Granted I did see some pretty educated people posting their doctorates in chemistry, of which I don't stand a chance in hell of understanding. However the bad posts at that site are extremely bad and useless also.
But honestly I have no experience in this particular red phosphorus experiment so I'm in no place to say whats correct or incorrect.
I think the only thing I like about that site is the fact that they allow you to have a 19kb avatar. Of course once I understand what the more advanced members at that site are talking about than I will probably find more use for it.

[Edited on 15-7-2004 by tom haggen]