Electrochemical HNO3 production from any ammonium salt
There's a small project I'm about to start and the objective is to produce HNO3 from any ammonium salt using a Si:Sn:MgO:ZnO as the cathode and iron
as the anode.
I currently have fertilizer grade ammonium nitrate and I'm thinking about melting it and running an electrolysis to isolate the gases (in theory NO,
NO2, N2O and NH3) produced by the cathode and dissolving it into water. I'm not worried about the wield and the efficiency of it, I only need to make
sure all NH3 is oxidized before it hits the water.
I'm faced with two problems atm:
The first is that the electrolysis cell I made is with acrylic and it will melt before the ammonium nitrate, so I'm thinking about doing the
electrolysis in a NH4NO3 solution. Will it produce H2 instead of the possible gasses? Would a 35% ammonium hydroxide solution be a better option than
a solution of ammonium nitrate?
The second is with the electrode itself... Will it lose it's oxygen atoms to the ammonium gas or am I gonna have to heat the gas and make it pass
through a tube with MgO+ZnO+Si?
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