LabCoatz - 2025-02-09
Somebody had to do it eventually. Fluorine is the most extreme element on the periodic table...it is corrosive to almost every known material, it can ignite water, and it is fairly toxic! Still, making it isn't actually that difficult (although it does have some nuances), so I figured it was about time somebody documented the process. Get JLCPCB 1-6 layer PCBs for just $2! : https://jlcpcb.com/?from=lcs JLC3DP 3D Printing $0.3& CNC Service Starts at $1, Get $60 for New Users: https://jlc3dp.com/?from=LabCoatz Wanna help support LabCoatz? Feel free to donate, become a channel member, or join my Patreon using the links below! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcT_WBynr2K8nANsVrR8BYw/join https://www.patreon.com/labcoatz https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/labcoatz Check out all of these fine creators and their related content: @ExplosionsAndFire @chemdelic @Fluorineisgreat @ChemicalForce @ScrapScience @ChemistryEasy @theCodyReeder @periodicvideos @TheRoyalInstitution @AdvancedTinkering and @EliasExperiments and their awesome fluorine videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzIH6raTxyE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXf0wKeoIbs The "Chemistry - easy" fluorine video (in Russian) with a working Dennis cell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgVlsZZ5Y8Y Want a high quality lab coat? Check out @geniuslabgear through my affiliate link (this is basically as close as I can get to offering regular channel merch lol): https://geniuslabgear.com/LABCOATZ WARNING: ...why do I even need to provide a warning? IT'S FLUORINE GAS, DO NOT ATTEMPT TO REPLICATE MY WORK! This video was made simply to educate you, not give you a step-by-step guide to making something as hazardous as fluorine. If you do end up trying this though, be sure to take all of the necessary safety precautions (full-body PPE, a fume hood or other form of extreme ventilation, and neutralization/emergency measures in place). 0:00 Introduction 2:33 A word of warning... 2:56 "Advanced Tinkering", fluorine safety, and misconceptions 7:26 Chemical routes to fluorine 8:30 Electrolysis 10:40 Anhydrous HF woes 11:12 Bifluoride electrolysis: details and first attempt 14:04 The final version 15:57 Fluorine at last (iodine burning)! 17:12 Calcium chloride test 17:45 Phosphorus 18:15 Acetone 18:56 Burning water 19:30 Nitromethane 19:54 Dichloromethane: a "non-flammable" liquid 20:33 Bromine (via sodium bromide) 21:08 Vanadium 21:47 Samarium 22:10 Trying to see fluorine 22:44 Sulfur 23:08 Flesh and gloves 24:28 Cloth and Styrofoam 24:53 Fluorine vs. wood 25:09 Burning fluorine in butane 26:11 Magnesium powder and sodium 26:58 Toluene 27:23 Bonus: hydrogen! 27:48 Explosions&Fire and smelling fluorine 32:11 Thank you all!
There are old chemists and bold chemists but there is no old bold fluorine chemists
No ... more bold fluorine chemists
@pimbel8830 Damn!! Beat me to it 😂😂😂
Take it easy, but TAKE IT!
I'd like to beg to differ; ALL fluorine chemists are bold, and some are old! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_O._Christe
I will say, however, that there are no sloppy fluorine chemists!
There are also bald chemists 🫡
E&F was on a mission to burn bulk titanium. Please burn some bulk titanium in a fluorine atmosphere.
@alexhamon9261 it'd probably just passivate honestly...even bulk magnesium passivates (they even made a whole electrolysis cell out of it)! You might be able to ignite it if it's heated to 400C though, which should sublimate away the titanium tetrafluoride layer.
You know probably much more than 1&2 group metals rapidly exothermicly react with fluorine, i mean could be classified under its atmosphere as fire hazard
Maby try to burn gold shavings? (It may be too unreactive)
@LabCoatz_Science REACT FLUORINE WITH CESIUM! FOR MORE FUN, USE LITERS OF CHLORINE AND KILOGRAMS OF CESIUM!!!!
having worked with TiCl4, I don't like it 😅
turns into TiO2 and HCl gas upon contact with H2O
"If you're dying, it probably smells like you're dying." Another brilliant line from E&F.
I read this towards the beginning but wasn't sure if it was a quote from other comments elsewhere, or his channel... But I just got to that part in the video! 🤣
It's so much more funny hearing it in his Auzzie accent! 😘👌
Australian accent = best accent.
New Zealand is a close second.
Australian poetry right there
“Get a degree and a fume hood first 💀💀” was diabolical
no degree and no fume hood, chlorine has been achieved several years ago(I guess I have more than 100g total produced and used in situ), if I want fluorine as a mile stone, NoBoDY can sToP ME! and if my life is what it takes... THAt's a BARgaIN! wasn't MUCh to begin with anyways!
@deathkeys1 you good man?
Loving the collab but please nobody die from this silliness. Last thing we need is Youtube deciding amateur chemistry is not something they want to show anymore...
You're 100 percent right. I mean he already accidentally ingested an experimental upper, which luckily wasn't too bad, but didn't he even overdosed it? 😅 Like a lot? I mean this theobromine analog
Huh. I just realized I worked in a "fluorine lab" for a summer. I was more focused on the sarin nerve gas that was the real focus of the lab and didn't connect that we were also using fluorine. (The real point of the work was to study and eventually synthesize an enzyme that breaks down sarin and the then-Soviet equivalent. The easiest way to confirm that we had isolated some of the enzyme (from squid neurons) was to react some sample with very, very dilute sarin then react that with something that contained a tiny amount of fluorine and that byproduct could be easily detected and measured. It was all very safe and the worst part was handing squid guts.)
That's probably the coolest mad science combo ever lol: fluorine, nerve gas, and squids!
Reading that was a wild ride!
Yum, fluorinated calamari...
@hanifarroisimukhlis5989 Sounds like a surefire way to have explosive diarrhea... 😅
@LabCoatz_Science This is how one punch man begins😂
LabCoatz : Dont try and replicate this, unless you are a professional.
Professionals : I would not make flourine even if my life depended on it and i was on fire.
LabCoatz in contact with fluorine gas: *literally on fire*
Bone hurting juice
do not make HF while on fire
Exactly. Flourine is terrifying and almost everything I make explodes.
We need MDA or TMA synthesis (TMA PLS) so we can be friends with the guys in black suits!
-Mom can we have fluorine gas?
-No, there is fluorine gas at home!
There is no more home
I tried to purchase a small cylinder of hydrogen from CIG (BOC), I was interviewed by a manager and even though I was over 21 he insisted on my father’s signature, which I didn’t obtain. If I was able to obtain a cylinder of hydrogen, I would attempt to obtain a small cylinder of fluorine which I believed that CIG had in stock at the time.
They had a section called “Special Gases” for orders other than oxygen and acetylene.
@darylcheshire1618Just Oxygen and Acetylene were considered "ordinary"? No Nitrogen, Argon, Helium, Methane, Propane, Nitrous Oxide or Carbon Dioxide?
@ Special gases, this was in the ‘70s
Refrigerator: 😶
@darylcheshire1618 I’m just unbelievably shocked anyone would store it for transport.
"What did you get up to this weekend?"
"Oh, I just burned some water."
explosions and fire... extractions and ire
He's the man
I was a fluorine/fluoride analyst at the last lab I worked in. The HF definitely destroyed my sense of smell. Thanks for the rep 😂
Did it affect your taste in any way?
I thought it was like getting punched in the nose. I used it just once, to make YbF4. Never again. And before anyone says "why didn't you work in the hood?". I WAS in the hood. That shit is an escape artist.
My smell was completely destroyed by HCl and Cl2. There has to be barely any chemists with a sense of smell lol
I am currently realizing I have been basically nose blind my entire life, thinking the smallest amount of smell I did get was normal.
Hearing what it's like going from with to without actually seems like useful information to know
@michaelf7093 Yes, it basically feels like sharp pain. Not much nuance to the smell.
It's really crazy you worked with that stuff at home. Please stay safe! And thank you so much for the shoutout!
Anytime! Remember me when you and Niklas' videos out-perform mine, haha!
@LabCoatz_Science You will certainly also get a shoutout and maybe your videos outperform ours by a lot. Who knows. Also you are a lot younger still so you have that as an advantage ;-)
@EliasExperiments Haha, I would say being older and more experienced might be the greater advantage! But thanks, I look forward to seeing what you guys come out with!
"In my next update, how I made CIF3 and melted my garage like a WW2 bunker"
HOW DID YOU GUESS.
Yesssss... The Brauer Handbook rules... 😂🎉😂🎉🎉
At the start I was wondering "yeah, he did this in a pro lab as Tom did"
NOPE. That's incredible. Huge congrats !
Little tip for the future. If you want to bend some pipe (like copper for example) without kinking it, you fill it with sand or salt and cap both ends. Then bend around something like scrap belt drive wheel or something like that in a regular vise. With super small radius it might still kink but If when you do anything reasonable the results are great. No special tools needed, no brazing, no welding, no soldering. With a little bit of practice, even coiling is possible. That's how I made my first condenser when I couldn't buy one as a kid.
Salt is better, because you can wash it out. Sand sometimes gets stuck especially when you are about to make coppertube spirals.
@AnonymosAnthropos True. Salt is easier to wash.
Great tip 👍
These are the kind of comments I read the comment section for!
Filling material for bending pipe is liquid metal or alloy that is solidifying inside the pipe after being poured in. After the solidification its useless to put stoppers on its ends. The beinding might be easier compared to sand or salt also no kinking should be expected as the filling material is more densly put in.
the mad man actually did it. even as a chemist myself i wouldn't touch it
“If you’re dying it probably smells like you’re dying” is for sure one of the quotes of all time
2:42 "Significantly beefing up safety equipment and PPE..."
Showing a MDF homemade fumehood in the background🤣
I giggled when I saw it but glad you completed these experiments in one piece, good job!
@DangerousLab I mean, it was significant for someone like me, haha!
Don't forget about those 'down-wind' if/when venting the fumehood outside...
@LabCoatz_Science We will never feel we had enough safety for making fluorine!
@EgonSorensen Don't worry about those 'down-wind' if/when venting the fumehood outside, they have already melted
@frogz - Better not trouble EPA too much, or perhaps they have melted too? ;ø)
Now that you have fluorine, you can now try to synthesize noble gas compounds (e.g, Xeon diflouride, krypton diflouride). As far as I know, no chemtubers have done it, so you might want to give it a shot....
Chemtubers? That's ridiculous.
Fuck it, go all the way and make tetraxenonogold. (it's real)
@BuffaloBayou-qc2ofYou seem ignorant.
@JetFuelSE god did not intend for that molecule to exist
'Advanced Tinkering' has done this. Though in a real Fluorine Lab
Fluorine is my favorite chemical in the periodic table because of how crazy it is. My background is in biology, and I've read about cases of HF exposure. Messing with the calcium channels that keep your nerves and muscles working and demineralizing bones. In my head, sulfuric acid is like a fire because it will burn you. HF is like getting a radiation burn. It hurts, but the burn itself isn't the biggest worry.
My college summer job was working as a piping inspector at a smallish oil refinery. We used ultrasound to measure pipe wall thickness to monitor corrosion on equipment (pipes, vessels, etc)
One unit we had to visit Frequently was the alkylation unit- where hydrogen fluoride was used to increase octane or
Something. (This was LONG AGO)
We were always required to wear chemical gloves, goggles, boot covers, different clothing.
They showed us exposures of 10% HF the size of a dime on your hand would look like the worst rattlesnake bite of your life. A hand size splash would be fatal. We took it very seriously- fortunately we were unlikely to come into contact with it.
Except that one time. When there was some maintenance done on a valve. (I think- again long ago)And there was a “small release” which was a cloud of HF knee high headed our direction.
We dropped everything and ran, except one guy who put the ladder away before running and had a small amount of exposure. He had to inhale calcium gluconate vapor for a while as a precaution but he was fine
Anyway there was a particular vessel that we had to monitor weekly. And was replaced about every six months.
It was constructed from titanium and had a several inch thick teflon coating inside.
* THAT*** died every 6 months.
Fluorine is Scary. If you inhale it, it turns into hydrofluoric acid- in your lungs as it contacts moisture. It leeches through your flesh destroying everything in search of calcium. Its toxicity comes from destroying those calcium channels and the physical damage it creates in search of calcium
If i remember correctly, cesium should react strongly with fluorine, it should create one of the most stable salts possible
True. There are already videos of it reacting though, and I didn't have any of my own to react!
I just got an idea from this! Make beryllium oxide! (Kinda like Caesium fluoride but double bond)
@lilbloodredridinhoo64don't you mean barium oxide?
Beryllium is not the most reactive alkali earth.
Also it's ReALLy toxic
No, I meant beryllium. I always thought it was the most reactive alkaline metal.
Ohh it makes sense! It's at the bottom of the Ptable, just like Caesium! (Idk why I never thought about that.)
But magnesium oxide has the highest melting point of the alkaline oxides.
This is pushing it. I don't know if I'd have the man ornaments to do this and I've intentionally synthesized more than a few balloons of phosgene. The toxicity is a concern but the reactivity of fluorine makes it extremely difficult to handle.
I don't see many amateurs that really surprise me. You did it my man.
Honestly, I'd be more terrified of the phosgene! At least the fluorine output from this generator was low enough for the fume hood output to be safe (below 1ppm fluorine given the flowrate)...pop a balloon of phosgene and inhale, and you probably won't be around for too long!
I like Tom's description of smells.
I remember one of my professors bringing in a former student who was missing a hand and an eye, and the first thing he said was, "As you can tell, I'm a Fluorine Chemist."
To this day, I still don't know if he was joking.
20:14 Honestly, seeing DCM ignite like that gives me such a primal, visceral sense of unease.
Nothing should be able to do that!
Reminds me of that styropyro video where he made a smoke bomb that burned carbon tetrachloride as the fuel.
Now we can finally make a car that uses water as a fuel (just use fluorine as the oxidizer).
@lagrangiankid378 no carbon emissions either! Just a lot more hydrofluoric acid...
Easier would be a car that uses water as an oxidizer
“No, elemental fluorine has commanded respect since well before anyone managed to isolate it, a process that took a good fifty years to work out in the 1800s. (The list of people who were blown up or poisoned while trying to do so is impressive).” — Derek Lowe
My high school chem teacher said it best "fluorine is the freaking t rex of the periotic table"
"You know the difference between oxygen and <i don't remember, but not very reactive>?
It's about the same as difference between oxygen and fluorine"
@pimbel8830 I wonder if fluorine is similar to 1000 degree oxygen. Just fluorine does it at room temperature. At fire temperature it reacts with brick. Not at room temperature but a bit of acetone on the brick got it hot enough to look like the brick was being welded away!
Let’s congratulate your test-tube manufacturer.
I'm a professional synthetic chemist, and also have a home lab, in which i have indeed made cyanide. But I won't touch fluorine, and not even HF. Just no.
I feel, as a layperson, laypeople simultaneously overestimate the danger of fluorine and aren't aware of how bad it really is. Like, no, it's not going to turn everything it touches into poisonous cancer causing agents, but at the same time you have professional chemists who would never mess with the stuff.
This is why hydrofluoric acid is my favourite to spill on my hands.
The man the myth the legend
Hyped af.
It's terrifying that the commercially available HVAC coil cleaner I used to use at work was just dilute hydrofluoric acid. It was a high enough concentration to have warnings about cardiac arrest from skin contact.
Looks like another patient has escaped the nile red asylum. We need to track down the maker of these madmen.
Thanks for the feature! It was nice hanging out in your garage!
28:33 there's my cat, OLED Amin
This is borderline psychopathic. Awesome work! I think this is one of those things you have to work with to really understand. Just reading about it or watching videos isn't going to be enough. You've just got to be careful/lucky enough to not screw up in a possibly fatal way.
Yeah, it is pretty edgy stuff, but at the end of the day, it's basically just another angry gas: as long as you protect yourself and avoid contact (or particularly dangerous situations), it's totally possible to work with!
@LabCoatz_Science it's awesome that you demonstrated it and made it in your garage no less. You definitely deserve congratulations for that. I think that like most dangerous exotic reagents it's dangers are exaggerated, it's nice to see it in actual reactions rather than described in a book, thanks for trying it with so many elements and compounds.
Way to go! I like how the turkey meat made sparks when you put it in fluorine gas - that's something most of us have definitely not seen before
Most Science Youtubers: "Don't do it. It's dangerous."
NurdRage: "Perfect phrase for your epitaph."
Ok my first reaction to the video was "wHAtS WrOnG wITh U? "
Loved hearing your guest talk. It reminds me of an old quote: "the more you know, the more you know how little you know" And become humble about your own knowledge
5:00 chronic low exposure = bone cancer
Oh man I wish I woulda stuck with chemistry. I got in legal trouble (not exactly related) for drugs. Dream gone. I live vicariously through these vids. Thank you.
And Tom, Nigel, many others, I can’t name everyone
To comment on my comment, I now work in property restoration. As in water, fire, mold… but in my work, we do, at times, level 4 hazmat. Usually meth labs. Don’t make meth kids. Still, I can’t help but laugh as my coworkers kinda don’t know much about chems. Man… 😅 stay outside until I tell you it’s safe. It’s weird how little knowledge they’ll allow for people to just “go in”.
I live in the boonies.
@CutChemist4688the forbidden synthesis
Water was the coolest, burning the stuff that puts out fire....amazing
There are plenty of things that normally "put out fire" that will react quite violently when used in the wrong situation.
Trying to extinguish metal fires with CO2 would be a prime example. Burning magnesium in a CO2 atmosphere is one of the more memorable highschool chemistry demonstrations.
Trying to mop up spilled LiAlH4 with a wet rag is another classic blunder.
I mean it allways depend on the type of fire. Burning cooking oil + water = big fireball.
Audio listeners never knew flooring could be this complicated
I love how supportive and cooperative the YT chemistry community is!
Wow, thanks for the great video man, but stay safe. I want to keep seeing your stuff!
This is my first time seeing one of your videos. I'm already subscribing because of your clear high quality, your respect for safety, and the way you cite sources and hype other members of the chemistry community. Thanks for doing this with proper PPE; fluorine deserves its reputation.
@LabCoatz_Science - 2025-02-19
Spam "F" for fluorine
@Spoons-here-now - 2025-02-19
f
@spinoziller2826 - 2025-02-23
Na
@psychciety - 2025-02-23
F
@matthewcox7985 - 2025-02-24
I will just say...
What the F...
@thiccycheeser69 - 2025-02-25
W