Chemists introduce a two-step process for making phosphorus compounds | Hacker News Reader

Chemists introduce a two-step process for making phosphorus compounds

phys.org

85 pointsPaulHoule11 comments

So... I did my PhD in a group that did a lot of phosphorus and P4 chemistry. Even though I rarely dabbled myself, the most interesting ligands were, iirc, unoxidized phosphorus compounds. This has two oxygens still, notoriously difficult to get rid of.

My coworkers decided to take on a 'move fast and break things' mentality, and hilariously had to transport a crate full of highly dangerous P4 by car to our lab when the last European supplier closed down, as to secure the future of the research; had they crashed the car, that would have made for some interesting headlines. So, not detracting from the importance of avoiding P4; but I'm left wondering if this still needs work to really make an impact on industry and research.

I fully accept the (huge) possibility that I'm wrong though because it's been a while and this never really was my specialty.

Either way cool to see P4 chemistry on the HN front page!

The article says it's better for the environment (maybe less energy consumption or waste products?)... Either way, that's one way to get permission for the using a more hazardous process.

Edit: any other interesting John Drury Clark style anecdotes?

Hehe, well, to add some nuance: P4 is incredibly nasty stuff, and you definitely don't want a domestic terrorist or whatever buffoon with a lust for chemical destruction to get a hold of this stuff, so the whole batch of P4 sitting at that shut down factory was due to disappear into the proper channels of destruction. But it's a small world, so a guy knew a guy, and we were good to pick up a material quantity that wasn't too felonious, but sizable enough to keep the somewhat underfunded research going.

I got out of chemistry for being too clumsy, a hazard for myself and others. I left without shoes one day, having dropped a big flask with incredibly smelly and volatile amines on my feet. They smell like essence of fish, so, the shoes were a total loss. I kept a spare pair in the lab ever since.

Another one, that doesn't really go anywhere: Working with tertiary butyl lithium was always super fun. It's this crowded group of negatively charged carbon that is forced, against its will, to bond to a positive lithium ion. The thing is pretty eager to react, but funnily enough it's always dissolved in flammable solvents. If you spritz a little bit out of your syringe, it immediately goes woosh.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=e9VNaUY-ri4&pp=ygUYdGVydCBidXR...

Money quote (from the paper):

>Here we report an approach using trifluoromethanesulfonic anhydride

Turning gold into lead, basically. It's interesting that such a process is possible but Tf2O is made by using, IIRC, phosphorus pentoxide:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trifluoromethanesulfonic_anhyd...

If trifluoromethanesulfonic anhydride is made from phosphorus pentoxide, i.e. from the anhydride of phosphoric acid, that is perfectly fine for their purpose, which is to produce a phosphorylation agent starting from cheap phosphoric acid without passing through a reduced form of phosphorus, like elemental phosphorus.

This just means that phosphoric acid enters the production process in two different steps.

Producing phosphoric anhydride from phosphoric acid is no mean feat. Some of the literature will even tell you it's impossible, but certain metal metaphosphates will release P4O10 gas at around 1000 C. What does not work is dehydrating the acid directly. But AFAIK all industrial production of P4O10 presently relies on reduction to P and further oxidation.

Taking into account that all the currently existing living beings on Earth depend critically on the affinity of phosphate for water, which enables it to extract the water from other chemical substances (creating macro-molecules or releasing energy), then it is not surprising that separating the water from phosphate is difficult.

It is not clear however if this is more difficult than the traditional path for obtaining phosphorylation products. Presumably those who have published this research should have been aware of this.

Wow, I wonder how this will affect phosphate and fertilizer prices.

Also, came here for the fertilizer info, as I believe P deposits are getting more expensive? (happy to be corrected)

I don't know about costs but phosphorus is a limited resource and more than 70 percent of the world's supply of phosphates is controlled by one country: Morocco.

Some estimates put "Peak Phosphorus" as early as 2030 but unsurprisingly, that claim is highly contested.

It should have no effect on fertilizer or phosphate prices, because it is a cheaper method to produce certain organic compounds of phosphorus.

Phosphate is used as an input for these chemical processes, but the fraction of the phosphate production that is used for such processes is very small in comparison with what goes into fertilizers.

The only possible effect is a price reduction for some organic compounds of phosphorus, e.g. for some pesticides.

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