Making Red Phosphorus:The striking

Making Red Phosphorus:The striking pad on books of matches is about 50% red phosphorus. The determined experimenter could obtain a pile of red phosphorus by scraping off the striking pads of matchbooks with a sharp knife. A typical composition of the striking pad is about 50% red phosphorus, along with about 30% antimony sulfide, and lesser amounts of glue, iron oxide, MnO2, and glass powder. I don't think these contaminants will seriously interfere with the reaction. Naturally, it is a tedious process to get large amounts of red phosphorus by scraping the striking pads off matchbooks, but who cares? Making Hydroiodic Acid:This is made by mixing iodine and red phosphorus. When making hydroiodic acid from iodine and red phosphorus, the acid is prepared first, and allowed to come to complete reaction for 20 minutes before adding the ephedrine to it. The way around the roadblock here is to just boil off some more of the water from the ephedrine extract, and make the acid mixture in fresh pure water. Since the production of HI from iodine and red phosphorus gives off a good deal of heat, it is wise to chill the mixture in ice, and slowly add the iodine crystals to the red phosphorus-water mixture.