jimwig - 6-11-2004 at 08:48
I have purchased this as a agricultural product before. But I was curious if it can be made from an (onhand) source such as ammonium or potassium
nitrate say with a base as NaOH?
JohnWW - 6-11-2004 at 09:40
Being a much stronger base, NaOH would expel gaseous NH3 from an aqueous solution of NH4NO3.
John W.
The_Davster - 6-11-2004 at 10:21
Yes you can make sodium nitrate from ammonium or potassium nitrate and NaOH. Ammonium nitrate is preferable because the sodium nitrate can easily be
recovered after the reaction because the ammonia/ammonium hydroxide produced most will excape as a gas. The sodium nitrate can then be recovered by
boiling down the solution.
Potassium nitrate and sodium hydroxide will not work as well because the products, KOH and NaNO3 are both soluble so fractional crystallization would
be needed here and plus, the presance of KOH, a base, would make filtering problematic.(after if fractional crystalization was used)
Base for NaNO3 forming reaction...
kazaa81 - 7-11-2004 at 14:23
Would be NaCl a suitable compound for make NaNO3 from NH4NO3 or KNO3?
If would, it is more cheap than NaOH.
Thanks at all.
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My 50th post
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Theoretic - 11-11-2004 at 03:57
Some time ago I thought about the possibility of reacting molten AN with NaCl and NH4Cl evaporating off, leaving NaNO3. NaCl isn't a base, but
it's just a simple ion exchange followed by volatilization. However, then I found out that chloride ions catalyse a particular pathway of
decomposition of AN, so either you carry out the reactuion very fast so the undesirable decomposition doesn't have time to occur, or you use some
other method of decompositioon prevention. Simply doing it probably won't work.