[fewneural]

I am a visual artist and I want to work on a project utilizing the effects of lumiol. I understand that the chemical it reacts with in human blood is hemoglobin. I am hoping to make a long lasting invisible image using the properties of lumiol that can only be seen when exposed to UV light. I have run into several potential problems. First, I'm having difficulty getting the blood to the desired consistency. I also have not found a way to clean the surface I am using without smearing the image (I'm trying different paper types with various coatings to avoid absorption.) I want to make sure that this method will allow the viewer to see the image for the life of the piece. Lastly there are the legal issues involving safety for an art piece that is intended for human interaction and uses biological materials. Any advice is appreciated. I have been looking into ways to avoid the coloration and consistency issues by extracting the hemoglobin but from my understanding the process is difficult and the amount of pigmentation in the extraction would most likely make it not worthwhile.
Thanks

[Corribus]

More correctly, the chemical that luminol is sensitive to (indirectly) is the iron in hemoglobin, not the protein itself, so you can pretty much destroy the protein and still expect to see a glow, provided the iron is still present. For that matter, you can just use a lot of inorganic iron salts and get the same effect without the biohazard concerns.

Also note that this reaction won't last indefinitely. You need peroxide to drive the reaction, which will need to be sprayed on immediately prior to doing the chemiluminescent experiment, and peroxide has a fairly short shelf life. I.e., this isn't something you can just prepare and then weeks later have illuminate magically and repeatedly when you turn on a black light.

Maybe you can explain the effect you are after and we can help with a solution.

[Babcock_Hall]

The luminol reaction is done under harsh enough conditions that the protein (hemoglobin) might well denature.  It may be that in the luminol reaction conditions, the iron ion remains bound to the heme ring, which is not covalently linked to the protein.  Besides hydrogen peroxide, sodium perborate can be used as the oxidant. 

As an alternative to human blood (and one that avoids some health concerns), one might use animal blood.  In addition many substances besides blood give a positive reaction with luminol.  They include copper ions, cobalt ions, rust (iron oxide), and bleach.