4 ms·

Money quote (from the paper): >Here we report an approach using trifluoromethanesulfonic anhydride Turning gold into lead, basically. It's interesting that su

• adrian_b 3y ago
  If trifluoromethanesulfonic anhydride is made from phosphorus pentoxide, i.e. from the anhydride of phosphoric acid, that is perfectly fine for their purpose, which is to produce a phosphorylation agent starting from cheap phosphoric acid without passing through a reduced form of phosphorus, like elemental phosphorus. This just means that phosphoric acid enters the production process in two different steps.
  • scythe 3y ago
    Producing phosphoric anhydride from phosphoric acid is no mean feat. Some of the literature will even tell you it's impossible, but certain metal metaphosphates will release P4O10 gas at around 1000 C. What does not work is dehydrating the acid directly. But AFAIK all industrial production of P4O10 presently relies on reduction to P and further oxidation.
    • adrian_b 3y ago
      Taking into account that all the currently existing living beings on Earth depend critically on the affinity of phosphate for water, which enables it to extract the water from other chemical substances (creating macro-molecules or releasing energy), then it is not surprising that separating the water from phosphate is difficult. It is not clear however if this is more difficult than the traditional path for obtaining phosphorylation products. Presumably those who have published this research should have been aware of this.