Extracting Phosphorus From Urine

[Silencer]

I am reading the book Quicksilver which has the running theme of alchemy and natural philosphy. Well, at one point someone discovers that you can get this cool stuff that glows by boiling some urine, so it gets demonstrated in the courts.

 

Anyway, can you realy extract phosphorus from urine? If so, how? Has anyone here done it?

[jdurg]

Yes, you easily can. What you have to do is collect a MASSIVE amount of urine and let it putrify. this will cause the formation of a large amount of phosphate ions. You then take the putrified urine and roast it with pure carbon. This will release white phosphorus which will spontaneously ignite as it's formed unless the roasting with Carbon is done in an oxygen free atmosphere.

[ecoli]

Probably...if one were so inclined

[budullewraagh]

best way is to go buy some tribasic sodium phosphate and heat it in a CO2 atmosphere with carbon and silicon dioxide

[Crash]

neat-o, ill go with the pee method. oxygen free enviroment you say? whats the easiest way of doing this? trap a hole heap of smoke in a hood?

[budullewraagh]

you have to be kidding me. the yield is terrible. absolutely dreadful, and really the smell is worse.

 

my suggestion:

buy some tribasic sodium phosphate. it is sold as TSP or trisodium phosphate, a strong cleaning agent, at many stores. finely grind some charcoal and intimitely mix this, some sand and the TSP. put this in a makeshift furnace. i suggest you pump in a bunch of argon or helium to prevent oxidation. you'll need to heat this mixture thermite-style i suppose. figure out a way to heat it without burning things because if you CAN burn things your phosphorus will immediately oxidize upon formation. the phosphorus you produce will be quite hot and gaseous, so you'll probably want something to trap it as it escapes, perhaps liquid nitrogen or something of the sort. a graham condensor or something similar would work a charm depending on how much you're making. just be careful not to have any oxygen coming in because if you do, you are, for all intents and purposes, screwed. white phosphorus gas oxidizing in the air is no fun whatsoever.

[Crash]

cheer cheer, ill try it! wheres the best place to buy helium or argon from?

[YT2095]

any Hardware shop that sells MIG or TIG Welding supplies.

[Tetrahedrite]

The element phosphorus was actually discovered by an alchemist (I think his name was something like Henning-Brand) trying to recover gold from urine. *laughs*

[budullewraagh]

yeah, hennig brandt, altho he made people call him herr doktor brandt, in 1669 made it in hamburg