condennnsa - 19-3-2011 at 16:53
Well I'm in the process of dissolving matches striking pads from about 200 matchboxes. From what I've read on the internet, the solvent of choice for
this would be acetone. But, I could not buy the large amounts of acetone needed for a good price. I figured, that maybe ethanol would also work. I
tested a striker by submerging it in 70% rubbing alcohol (ethanol) for 20 min, and it worked!
The striker composition became all mushy, but did not completely liquefy. Encouraged by this, I took all my strikers, dumped them in a 2.5 L PET
bottle, and 1 liter 70% ethanol .
After shaking the hell out of it, the solution was a deep red, and now I'm filtering it. The phosphorous in match strikers seems to be extremely fine,
as the filtering process is painfully slow. Boiling the red phosphorous-alcohol solution , definitely seems to help.
Now what I'm after is a little amount of the best purity phosphorous one can extract from match strikers. If I get 1 gram, I'm happy.
Now that I have collected some filtrate, I can definitely see that there are quite a lot of cellulose fibers in there, from all that shaking of the
strikers in the beginning. Also, wikipedia says the composition also has 25% ground glass.
What would be the best way to get rid of these two ?
I was thinking, treatment with NaOH solution might work, since it dissolves glass, and also cellulose IIRC. But I think for it to dissolve glass it
needs be quite concentrated. Would it work?
I'm rather worried to not do something which might react to give off phosphine gas without me knowing it... thanks
m1tanker78 - 19-3-2011 at 17:11
From my experiences, NaOH solution needs to be heated to have an effect on glass. Even then, it takes for frick'n ever. Then you have all the other
crap in the glass left over. The cellulose should dissolve no problem though. I've seen it dissolve cigarette butts in a matter of 2-3 days at RT.
Couldn't you just get by with having the glass in the red P?
Tom
Bot0nist - 19-3-2011 at 19:29
This has been covered ad nauseam i believe. Did you try searching the site?
http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=9168
http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=2142
Here is just a couple I found here.
[Edited on 20-3-2011 by Bot0nist]