Recently, scientists from the University of Oxford have come up with a new way to obtain fluorine atoms, used to manufacture important chemical compounds used in industry and research, in a much safer and less energy-intensive way.
About Fluorine:
Fluorine comes from a calcium salt called calcium fluoride, or fluorspar.
Fluorspar is mined and then treated with sulphuric acid at a high temperature to release hydrogen fluoride (HF).
Hydrogen fluoride is then made to react with other compounds to create fluorochemicals.
Fluorine is a highly reactive element used to make fluorochemicals,
It is used to produce plastics, agrochemicals, lithium-ion batteries, and drugs.
Issues with hydrogen fluoride
A major downside of this process is that HF is an extremely poisonous and corrosive liquid that irritates the eyes and respiratory tract even at low concentrations.
It also requires special transportation and storage
Hydrogen fluoride spills have occurred numerous times in the last decades, sometimes with fatal accidents and detrimental environmental effects.
New procedure to obtain fluorine atoms
To avoid HF and to make the extraction process requires less energy, the researchers took inspiration from how the human body makes bones and teeth: through calcium phosphate biomineralization.
They ground fluorspar in a ball-mill with potassium phosphate.
While fluorine is very reactive, calcium atoms prefer phosphorus even more, so the milling created calcium phosphate and another compound with fluorine atoms. They called the latter Fluoromix.
When Fluoromix was reacted with organic compounds, it could create around 50 fluorochemicals with up to 98% yield.
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