Electrolysis of molten sodium hydroxide drain cleaner with either copper or iron electrodes in a steel crucible. Electricity will be supplied from a jerry-rigged computer power supply. Sodium will be stored in mineral oil.
I have a gallon of brine from Searles Lake, CA which is comparitvely rich in lithium compounds (no more than 0.1% by mass). What I would like to do is build my own spectrometer and hopefully detect the spectral lines of the lithium in this brine. The plan is to use a DVD-CD to refract the incoming light and to take a picture of the lines with a digital camera.
Synthesizing it from sulfuric acid and sodium acetate is the way to go. I will wash the tan sodium acetate formed by baking soda and vinegar in methanol to get rid of some of the fermentation impurities and discoloration. Distillation with sulfuric acid will probably allow no higher than 90% acetic acid. With a minimum of 60% acetic acid, urea can be used to concentrate it because it forms an adduct. I plan on extracting urea from my own urine. Basically, this would involve boiling down sterile urine and extracting urea (about 10g/L) from it with denatured alcohol. Sure, it's a little bit disgusting, but it's cheap and easy.
This is a very complicated project that evolves a lot of steps, but the versatility of the Grignard reagent will make all the hard work worth it. I have completed the first step, which involved synthesizing cupric sulfate from ammonium sulfate fertilizer, ammonia, oxygen, and copper wire. Next, I will distill >90% ethanol from denatured ethanol and then dry the ethanol with the homemade cupric sulfate. I will then distill the absolute ethanol with concentrated sulfuric acid at around 140C to give diethyl ether. The ether will first be dried with calcium chloride and then be excessively dessicated with sodium hydroxide. Finally, I will react the dry ether with magnesium and an alkyl halide. The alkyl halide that I can probably most easily make is isopropyl chloride. This would be done by catalyzing the reaction between dried rubbing alcohol and concentrated muriatic acid with Lucas's reagent, or zinc chloride. Butter of zinc would be prepared by reacting zinc from batteries with hydrochloric acid. This particular instance of the Grignard reactant would yield isopropyl magnesium chloride which yields the final product of isobutyric acid upon bubbling of carbon dioxide into the solution. If I start to smell something akin to putrid socks, I will know that at last I will have performed the entire synthesis successfully.
I have nearly a score of ways in mind to produce benzene, but this route seemed the most attainable. Saponfication of polyethylene terephthalate, a common recylable plastic, in ethylene glycol, produces good yields of terepthalate acid. This can then be decarboxylated with quicklime or lye to give benzene.
I have made methyl salicylate along with the ethyl ester several times before and it smells so good I could drink it (but sadly I am restrained by its toxicity)! What I would really like to do in this project is produce enough of the oil to properly purify it and confirm its boiling point.
The goal here is to be able to dial in a temperature and then have some sort of system that would automatically turn on and off my hot plate as needed to maintain that constant temperature. Basically, the idea is to build my own thermometer that would act an as electrical switch to control the hot plate. I have already made significant progress on this project so hopefully, I will be able to show the final working product here soon.
The starting material for producing phosphorous would be sodium phosphate. This would probably be converted to phosphoric acid and then partially neutralized with baking soda to form a mixture of sodium hydrogen phosphate. This mixture would be heated and then subsequently rapidly cooled to form various sodium polyphosphates, collectively known as Grahm's salt. Finally, this would be ignited with magnesium or aluminum powder to form phosphorous. The hardest part about this whole process would be to build a apparatus that appropiately and safely handles that last step.