How-To: Make the key glowstick chemical yourself

I have lots of hare-brained projects involving chemiluminescence that are currently back-burnered because the chemical that causes the bright chemiluminescence of commercial glowsticks, i.e. trichlorophenyl oxalate (TCPO, shown below), is relatively hard for hobbyists to acquire. I’ve even gone to the trouble of setting up a business account with a major chemical supplier, establishing business credit references, and getting my residential address approved to receive chemical shipments from them. Just so I could log onto their website and order 100g of TCPO. Which I did many months ago. It’s been back-ordered with their supplier since then. Who knows when or if I’ll ever actually get it.

This video from YouTuber NurdRage comes with a lot of caveats: the synthesis of TCPO from trichlorophenol and oxalyl chloride is relatively straightforward as syntheses go, and the starting materials are much easier to acquire than TCPO itself, but they’re still not at all grocery-store type compounds. And it’s not a thing to attempt without the expertise, equipment, and facilities to do it safely. Plus the creepy “Jigsaw” voice effect that the narrator uses to disguise his identity doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. There’s nothing illegal about this procedure, as far as I know, but I think he wants to remain anonymous so nobody can sue him if they try to play along at home and end up burning it down.

Nonetheless, I was grateful to find this video in the tubes, and will probably attempt it myself at some point. Famous last words, anyone?

3 Responses to How-To: Make the key glowstick chemical yourself

John Park on February 19th, 2010 at 2:57 pm said:

That was very cool, great find. Sad to say, since I know so little about it, chemistry is like magic to me. Any idea of the cost of making this amount of glowing magic?

Reply ↓
- bjr54 on February 22nd, 2010 at 1:09 pm said:
  
  About $350 will get you enough chemicals to make 250g (enough for about 30 Liters of glow stick goodness!) Unfortunately, ordering smaller quantities doesn’t really affect the price much; most of the cost is shipping and packaging. If you will be working in small quantities, you’d probably be better off buying the cheaper diphenyl oxalate ($100/25g) which has a similar but slightly dimmer effect. Don’t forget to factor in the cost of the chemicals other than TCPO used by the glowstick reaction!
  
  If you don’t know much about chemistry, I’d suggest you start by playing around with luminol ($40/5g). It doesn’t require organic solvents and as a bonus experiment you can do blood residue detection with it too! The main downside to luminol is that it isn’t as bright and can’t be made to glow in a wide variety of colors.
  
  Reply ↓
SEO on April 20th, 2011 at 5:06 pm said:

great stuff here.

Reply ↓