MrGreen
patreon
Future Fluorine chemistry project
🕑 Added 2023-08-16 12:01:21 +0000 UTCHey guys, I'm currently working on a project that was very difficult to find a safe-ish pathway to making a very interesting liquid called a perfluorocarbon. I find them interesting because these liquids were once tested as synthetic blood substitutes, full liquid breathing for infants, and even in deep water liquid breathing tests performed by the navy. These potential uses were thought to be possible due to it's ability to dissolve a high volume of oxygen and carbon dioxide while being inert. It had some flaws mostly in the liquids high density, so today they're mostly used as really expensive coolant in servers and computers, as a contrast agent in MRI and CT scans, and in vitreoretinal surgery. (Injected in eyeballs during surgery). I won't be able to show these specific uses for obvious reasons, but there's plenty that can be demonstrated of it's physical properties and how to make it.
Fluorine chemistry is usually extremely dangerous and so most industrial pathways to perfluorocarbons are impossible without huge risks for an amateur chemist like myself. So I've explored multiple different Patents with many pathways, some of them involving somewhat simple and much safer fluorine chemistry I can follow. This image shown is a sneak peak of just one of the apparatus I need to build for it. While not super technical, it will possibly be the most difficult and main hurdle in this project as it produces a highly reactive gas I need called TFE, the gas used to make Teflon. So I gotta be careful not to make too much lol.
My goal is to use different small scale methods and apparatus like this to make a perfluorocarbon called "perflubron" otherwise known as C8BrF17 which is the main perfluorocarbon previously studied for human liquid breathing.
It's a very big leap for me, and with it's dangers and complexity, it might take a while for me to progress through this goal as I want to do it more professionally. So I'll be posting my progress and behind the scenes results on this patreon as I explore this project further
Comments
Mr Green
Haha yeah it can be pretty scary. Will probably be a while before I feel comfortable doing it tbh. Thanks for becoming a patreon and supporting me in this effort, I'll try to stay as safe as possible! :)
Zutia
I'm looking forward to seeing the progress! But yeah fluorine chemistry is seriously scary. I'll need to drop my pledge after a few months, but I'm definitely happy to help you invest in equipment and safety. It's super gratifying to see a fellow aussie doing such cool chemistry, it makes me want to put my own chemistry background to use. But yes please keep up the amazing work! And stay safe!
