I consider 18 elements easy to obtain. Some of these elements can be bought in a nearly pure form and just have to be purified. Others can be produced with simple chemical reactions at room temperature.
I consider 16 elements rather difficult to obtain. These elements are either very expensive or can be synthesized at moderately high temperatures.
I consider 12 elements very difficult to obtain. Synthesizing these elements requires high temperature thermite reactions or molten salts. I believe, however, that if enough time and energy is invested, it is definently plausible for me to make these elements.
The other 72 elements are either incredibly dangerous to synthesize (eg fluorine), incredibly rare (eg lanthanides), or nearly impossible to synthesize (eg transuranics). There are few elements in this list that I think may be possible to make but I do not currently know enough information about them. These include antimony, xenon, and many others.
I make my hydrogen by reacting sodium hydroxide and aluminum. In this reaction, I do not smell sulfur impurities as when I react an acid with a metal. The gas can be stored in a syringe.
Buy a helium balloon. The helium can probably be purified by effusion.
Relatively pure lithium metal can be carefully extracted from unrechargeable lithium batteries.
A common source of beryllium is beryl minerals which have the formula Be3Al2(SiO3)6. Emerald is a beryl mineral that is colored green due to chromium impurities. Industrially, beryllium is produced by reducing beryllium fluoride with magnesium. Beryllium can also be produced by the reaction of potassium and beryllium chloride. Emerald can be dissolved in aqua regia. I also could try extracting beryllium from beryllium alloys which are used in watch springs because they are lightweight.
Dehydrate boric acid, which I purchased as cockroach killer, to boron oxide. Then mix with magnesium powder and heat to red heat.
The easiest allotrope of carbon to obtain is graphite, which can be found inside batteries. It can also be synthesized in many different ways such as the dehydration of sugar by concentrated sulfuric acid.
One could obtain a reasonably pure sample of nitrogen from the air. Heat iron to remove the oxygen and bubble the air in sodium hydroxide to remove the carbon dioxide. You'll be left with a mixture of about 99% nitrogen, 1% argon, and other impurities. I'd probably want to produce nitrogen chemically to ensure higher purity. One way is to carefully heat ammonium nitrite. Overheating would result in other undsired decomposition products.
NH4NO2 --> N2 + H2O
Ammonium nitrite is a little difficult to synthesize but nothing I can't handle. One method would be to dissolve NOx gasses into a strong solution of ammonia. Another possiblity is to heat potassium nitrate which would give the nitrite and to fractionally crystalize this with an ammonium salt. I could also use the potassium nitrite and react it with sulfamic acid. Sulfamic acid is often used in toliet cleaners and other cleansers.
KNO2 + HSO3NH2 --> KHSO4 + H2O + N2
One way to produce oxygen is through the electrolysis of water. Probably an easier way is to add hydrogen peroxide to a decomposition catalyst like managanese oxide, which can be obtained from batteries.
2H2O2 --> 2H2O + O2
Fluorine is the most electronegative and reactive of all of the elements. It vigorously reacts with the vast majority of elements and compounds at room temperature and pressure. It reacts slowly with argon, krypton, nitrogen, and oxygen, and can only form compounds with helium and neon under extreme conditions. Unlike its neighbor chlorine, it reacts explosively with hydrogen even in the dark. George Gore first produced impure fluorine by electrolyzing molten silver fluoride. He tried collecting the gas in platinum, gold, and palladium containers, but the pale yellow gas rapidly turned each metal into a powdery dust. He proceeded to construct a carbon vile, which worked to some extent, and he was able to transfer the gas to a calcium fluoride container before all of the carbon had been attacked. Gore then proceeded to add his collected fluorine to hydrogen. He narrowingly escaped death from the resulting explosion and vowed never to work with fluorine again.
For almost a century, it had been detected that there was a new element in the mineral fluorspar (calcium fluoride) and several chemists, the "Fluorine Martyrs", risked their lives trying to isolate "the tiger". Injury sometimes occured from exploisions, but more frequently from hydrofluoric acid posioning. Hydrofluoric acid rapidly attacks glass, skin, and bone. Esteemed chemist Humphrey Davy who successfully isolated several metals including sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, strontium, and barium from fused salts, failed to produce fluorine and posioned himself in one of his attempts. George and Thomas Knox were poisoned by fluorine and one took three years to recover. Both Jerome Nickels and Paulin Louyet died during their experiments. It was not until 1886 that Henri Moissan, after being posioned several times, isolated and captured fluorine by electroylzing a mixture of molten potassium bifluoride and anhydrous hydroflouric acid with plantium-iridium electrodes in a chilled platinum vessel. The scary thing about trying to isolate fluorine is that it takes almost no skill to endanger oneself. The toxic hydrofluoric acid can easily be produced by distilling sodium fluoride with sulfuric acid.
2NaF + H2SO4 --> Na2SO4 + 2HF
Well, I guess I could get this from neon signs. Industrially, it is made from fractional liquification of air. 1 in about 65,000 atoms in the air are neon.
Electrolysis of molten hydroxide with iron electrodes. Another more difficult method involves initating a thermite reaction with the molten hydroxide and magnesium turnings.
Magnesium fire starter. Sacrificial anode rods that prevent rusting are usually either aluminum or magnesium. The anode in an old water heater that I took apart, however, was steel.
Purify from aluminum foil. Dissolve in hydrochloric acid and then reprecipitate with magnesium.
Thermite reaction of finely powdered silicon dioxide (made by purifying beach sand) and magnesium powder.
The alchemist Henning Brandt discovered this element in 1669 by boiling down 5,500 liters of urine to an oily soup. In an effort to isolate gold from urine, he instead recovered 120 grams of phosphorus. He could have obtained at least 5 kilograms if he did not discard the salty precipitate. Brandt ignited his dried urine with charcoal and obtained a new substance that glowed in the dark when exposed to air. Since urine smells pretty bad, I might try my hand at the modern preparation of phosphorous, which is to heat phosphate rock with sand and coke to high temperatures.
2Ca3(PO4)2 + 6SiO2 + 10C --> 6CaSiO3 + 10CO + P4
The phosphorous would be distilled and condensed under cold water. Another variation of this reaction is with aluminum and sodium phosphate which can be purchased from any hardware store as TSP.
12NaPO3 + 20Al + 6SiO2 --> 6Na2SiO3 + 10Al2O3 + 3P4
I bought a rather large can of Grant's Sulfur Dust a while ago which is 92% sulfur and 8% other ingredients. A possible method of purification may be to dissolve the impurities in water. I have read that some of the detergents often used in sulfur compounds are also insoluble in water so dissolving the sulfur in carbon disulfide or benzene is an additional step that may be necessary. Both of these solvents are pretty difficult to synthesize. Careful quantitative analysis would be required to make sure that the 8% has been gotten rid of.
Chlorine is a rather easy and useful element to synthesis. For my element collection, I want to properly concentrate and dry my chlorine with concentrated sulfuric acid. I've created chlorine in many different ways, but my favorite method is to oxidize bleach using sodium bisulfate.
NaOCl + NaCl + 2NaHSO4 --> 2Na2SO4 + H2O + Cl2
Other common methods of preparation inclue oxidizing hydrochloric acid.
NaOCl + 2HCl --> Cl2 + NaCl + H2O
MnO2 + 4HCl --> Cl2 + MnCl2 + 2H2O
Industrially, chlorine is made through the electrolysis of salt water. In this process, oxygen and chlorine are produced at the anode and hydrogen is produced at the cathode. This is not a great way to prepare chlorine in the home lab because not only does it contain oxygen, but it is hard to collect and the reaction rate is slow. Nevertheless, if large amounts of chlorine need to be generated over a long period of time, this is a cheap way to go. It is also a great amateur experiment as electrochemistry has many variables and can lead to intriguing outcomes. Just be warned that chlorine is toxic.
The air we breath is composed of about 78.1% nitrogen, 20.9% oxygen, 0.9% argon, 0.04% carbon dioxide, a variable amount of water vapor, and various other compounds in smaller amounts. Probably, I would first get rid of the carbon dioxide but bubbling air through a sodium hydroxide solution. The next step would be to throroughly dry the air with calcium chloride. Finally and most difficulty, I would burn an excess of magnesium to form magnesium oxide and magnesium nitride with oxygen and nitrogen, respectively. The argon left over in this manner would theoretically be 99.7% pure.
Synthesizing potassium is analagous to sodium except the reaction would be more vigorous and more difficult to control. Use potassium hydroxide in place of sodium hydroxide (duh).
Calcium has the same reactivity issues as sodium and potassium so it's pretty difficult to isolate. It is most commonly produed by electrolyzing molten calcium chloride, which melts at a high 772C. Calcium chloride can be bought in hardware stores for use in dehumidifiers. I also recently discovered that it is a chemical that is sometimes used to treat swimming pools. Other methods of producing calcium which generally give an impurer product are reduction with aluminum thermite and decomposition of calcium azide. Unfortunately, the azide can probably only be produced from calcium itself so that's no use.
There is no real significant use for scandium compounds or for the metal itself in the pure state. Scandium is pretty inert and resists attack by concentrated acids. Perhaps, I could I extract scandium from one of its alloys (which I have no idea where to find) by dissolving the alloy in nitric acid, which would react with the other metals in the mix. Otherwise, if I do get the whole thing to dissolve, there is a well-known isoation of the scandium ion in solution which involves reacting thiocyanate in ether. Then, I would either have to react strontium chloride with calcium metal, or perform electrolysis on one of its eutetic mixtures with other chlorides.
Wow that was absolutely exhausting! And I've just reached the transition metals! This page will definitely be continued once I recuperate.