page_title: Phosphorus
section_title: Production
hierarchical_section_title: Phosphorus / Production
caption_attribution_description: The site of secondary mining of Phosphate rock in Nauru, 2007.
context_page_description: Phosphorus is a chemical element with the symbol P and atomic number 15. Elemental phosphorus exists in two major forms, white phosphorus and red phosphorus, but because it is highly reactive, phosphorus is never found as a free element on Earth. It has a concentration in the Earth's crust of about one gram per kilogram. In minerals, phosphorus generally occurs as phosphate.
  Elemental phosphorus was first isolated as white phosphorus in 1669. White phosphorus emits a faint glow when exposed to oxygen – hence the name, taken from Greek mythology, Φωσφόρος meaning "light-bearer", referring to the "Morning Star", the planet Venus. The term "phosphorescence", meaning glow after illumination, derives from this property of phosphorus, although the word has since been used for a different physical process that produces a glow. The glow of phosphorus is caused by oxidation of the white phosphorus — a process now called chemiluminescence. Together with nitrogen, arsenic, antimony, and bismuth, phosphorus is classified as a pnictogen.
  Phosphorus is essential for life. Phosphates are a component of DNA, RNA, ATP, and phospholipids.
context_section_description: Most production of phosphorus-bearing material is for agriculture fertilisers. For this purpose, phosphate minerals are converted to phosphoric acid. It follows two distinct chemical routes, the main one being treatment of phosphate minerals with sulfuric acid. The other process utilises white phosphorus, which may be produced by reaction and distillation from very low grade phosphate sources. The white phosphorus is then oxidised to phosphoric acid and subsequently neutralised with base to give phosphate salts. Phosphoric acid produced from white phosphorus is relatively pure and is the main route for the production of phosphates for all purposes, including detergent production.
  In the early 1990s, Albright and Wilson's purified wet phosphoric acid business was being adversely affected by phosphate rock sales by China and the entry of their long-standing Moroccan phosphate suppliers into the purified wet phosphoric acid business.
caption: Mining of phosphate rock in Nauru
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