I have that fertilizer and it's really hard to extract ammonium nitrate. I once had success by using this method:
I added almost equal amount of boiling water to the fertilizer in the tin can. After that I left this to decant and I collected the clear liquid. I
put it into evaporating plastic can and left it for like 1 month in the house and few days outside on the summer time. I am not sure if anything had
evaporated. Then I took the liquid and put it in ice. After 5 minutes to 20 minutes crystals started growing. And then after I had some nice crystals,
they fell on a earth outside and got destroyed...
After that I had no success with doing that again.
Another try:
I put a big amount of fertilizer into jam jar and slowly added hot water to it while it was sitting in the hot water. I had a saturated solution at
like 40celsius degrees but I had to filter it when its so hot. Now the problem is there is something gray like sand or mixture of sand and something
else gray insoluble. There are some bigger particles that I managed to filter with clothes, but other smaller (maybe colloidal) particles are very
hard to filter without making very big mechanical looses using clothes. I was doing that outside at like 15 degrees so in the every bottle some
crystals appeared mixed with that gray dirt. I could recover them as those weren't pure. But when I try to freeze that solution which I filtered with
a lot of clothes, no crystals appear.
Maybe AN is reacting with those clothes?
Now how could I filter that small particles without coffee paper very efficiently?Xenoid - 25-10-2010 at 10:43
Calcium Ammonium Nitrate (CAN) is a mixture of ammonium nitrate and limestone (calcium carbonate). It often appears to contain various "trace
elements" such as copper compounds either by accident or design.
Dissolve as much CAN as you are able in boiling water, ie all the white prills, don't worry about the coarse grey limestone sludge.
Filter through disposable paper kitchen towels supported in a large kitchen sieve. Try to leave most of the limestone "crud" in the boiling vessel,
ie. decant.
Allow the relatively clear filtrate to cool, and place in a refrigerator, leave for a day.
Harvest all the ammonium nitrate crystals. Reuse the liquid as it still contains appreciable ammonium nitrate.
Preferably, when you have collected a reasonably large quantity of AN crystals, redissolve them in a minimum amount of clean boiling water and
recrystallise them as above, to purify them.
Dry the crystals at about 120 oC. in an oven for about 24 hours. Keep in a sealed container, AN is hygroscopic, it will absorb water and probably
won't dry in the sun.Aqua-regia - 25-10-2010 at 10:47
You dont have pure ammonium-nitrate In your country ? In middle Europe, France, etc. you can free buy. Random - 25-10-2010 at 11:17
Thanks Xenoid, I will try to do that. By paper towels you mean those brown stronger ones or just I can use white too?
Aqua-regia, no, I don't have another source of AN.Xenoid - 25-10-2010 at 12:04
I have only ever used cheap white paper towels. It is a few years since I "processed" any CAN, I can't remember if I used one or two layers. Since
this is a hot filtration, you may find that AN crystallises on the filter paper, just wash it through with a little extra boiling water, it is very
soluble. The paper may clog with the very fine "mud", just replace it with another sheet. ldanielrosa - 26-10-2010 at 02:48
I don't know what it's worth to you, but I use calcium nitrate and ammonium sulfate. OTOH I don't need much.
Each of them is also useful for other things like nitrating any soluble sulfate salt (like CuSO4), or making pure ammonia (add Ca(OH)2).Random - 28-10-2010 at 05:42
I don't have ammonium sulfate, but I would like to know if there is a way to make it from potassium metabisulfite, CuSO4 or something else + NH4NO3.
I tried filtering with paper towels a hot solution which was concentrated. I filtered it few times it was still gray but a little bit less. Then I put
that in cold water outside and a lot of crystals appeared , after that I again dissolved them by putting the jar into hot water. No water was added to
solution though. After those were dissolved, I filtered it a lot with many paper towels, sometimes 1, sometimes even 3. Volume of solution decreased
by 1/3 or 1/4 because of mechanical looses. Then I again put this into cold water outside, but no crystals appeared. I couldn't even filter it completely to get a clear solution... hissingnoise - 28-10-2010 at 06:14
Interesting, this thread gave me idea to take a 1.5 liter bottle, put into it CAN fertilizer and to let it sediment, then I should just make a small
hole with a knife or something just above the sediment. If everything will go right, the clear solution will go out because of the water pressure
above. If the pressure wouldn't be so strong, I could also put on the bottle cap and squeeze the bottle to make pressure. I am not sure though if this
will be enough concentrated solution. What actually happened when I was filtering that solution, shouldn't it crystalize after that long filtrations
in the same cold water like it did before. I mean It was many crystals, I am not sure why those didn't appear again.
I couldn't even filter it completely to get a clear solution...