Sciencemadness Discussion Board

OTC source of phosphates?

Junk_Enginerd - 14-5-2022 at 03:22

I've looked around but I'm having issues finding any reasonable phosphate source. I'm not really too concerned with what sort of phosphate it is.

It's not a part of any detergents I can find, and afaik phosphates are banned in detergents in the EU for environmental reasons. All fertilizers I've investigated seems to be <10% phosphates and I'm not too confident in my ability to concentrate it from such a low percentage.

The main potential use for it would be experiments with making refractory bricks and such, so ideally a rather large amount for low cost is the idea... Anyone have any ideas?

unionised - 14-5-2022 at 04:01

A lot of rust removers are essentially phosphoric acid which you can neutralise with your favourite base.

Superphosphate fertilisers might help.

If you really aren't fussy, you might be able to use bone meal but be prepared to have to remove lots of stinky organic stuff.

Lionel Spanner - 14-5-2022 at 04:34

Calcium phosphate is available in bulk as a feed supplement for horses - it's used to increase bone strength.

Sulaiman - 14-5-2022 at 04:45

Phosphates are one of the key fertilisers, the P in NPK
Should be easily obtainable, I bought/use monopotassium phosphate.

draculic acid69 - 14-5-2022 at 05:55

Quote: Originally posted by Junk_Enginerd  
I've looked around but I'm having issues finding any reasonable phosphate source. I'm not really too concerned with what sort of phosphate it is.

It's not a part of any detergents I can find, and afaik phosphates are banned in detergents in the EU for environmental reasons. All fertilizers I've investigated seems to be <10% phosphates and I'm not too confident in my ability to concentrate it from such a low percentage.

The main potential use for it would be experiments with making refractory bricks and such, so ideally a rather large amount for low cost is the idea... Anyone have any ideas?


Food grade h3po4 is really cheap on eBay or fertilizer is next best option.
Rust remover has surfactants and I've seen chromic acid in there as well

Fantasma4500 - 14-5-2022 at 14:48

well get some fertilizer, run the MSDS on it before buying
ppt out with calcium, acid on that, discard CaSO4
>H3PO4
rust remover in my country at grocery store is about 20% H3PO4 plus they sell it in a neat HDPE bottle- always useful.

if youre really lusting for a project you can extract it from the insides of bones, contact a butcher for bones

hodges - 14-5-2022 at 18:01

Crystal growing sets from a toy store (US) generally contain phosphates of ammonia. Usually they have separate packets of coloring (dye). You get a pretty large amount of the phosphates since they are designed for growing large crystals.