Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Reactions with Sulfamic acid

dischem - 2-7-2014 at 16:25

Hi!

I'm relatively new to home chemistry, having just some first year uni courses under my belt. I was looking into the hydrolysis of Sulfamic acid into ammonium hydrogen sulfate (or ammonium bisulfate) when dissolved in water. I mistakenly thought I could form sulfuric acid from it by reacting it with HCl...so now I just have a bunch of ammonium bisulfate sitting around. There's very little information about it online, do you guys have any idea about useful reaction mechanisms with the bisulfate? I was reading on this site about the electrolysis of it to generate H2O2, which would be useful. Any other ideas of what I can do with it to turn it into something more useful?

I have a fairly complete set of equipment (distillation/reflux setup, heating mantle, magnetic stirrer, volumetric flasks, and electrolysis setup).

Thanks!

BobD1001 - 2-7-2014 at 18:46

One very neat use of sulfamic acid is its use in smoke generating compositions. Of course this is more pyrotechnic than chem, however it is a hugely impressive smoke mixture. I can honestly say I have never seen any smoke composition outperform sulfamic acid in terms of smoke volume generated. The composition is: ammonium perchlorate 42 parts, sulfamic acid 58 parts. Very tough to ignite however, best bet is to use silicon permanganate fuse, or of course Mg ribbon.

[Edited on 3-7-2014 by BobD1001]

hyfalcon - 3-7-2014 at 02:00

This time of year a sparkler works to initiate any of my high temp reactions.

Texium - 3-7-2014 at 06:12

Oh yeah, I need to stock up on those! As well as punks, I find them really useful for igniting other stuff and I used up all the ones I had left over from New Year's.

unionised - 3-7-2014 at 10:30

Quote: Originally posted by hyfalcon  
This time of year a sparkler works to initiate any of my high temp reactions.

This seems to be about 4 months early.

hyfalcon - 3-7-2014 at 10:33

What's happens in November in the UK?

Metacelsus - 3-7-2014 at 19:09

Guy Fawkes day.

Brain&Force - 3-7-2014 at 21:01

It's US Indepedence Day. The day you should celebrate, unionised, because you finally got rid of us. :P

Yeah, I can't get fireworks where I live, just party poppers and things.

papaya - 3-7-2014 at 22:32

The question is too interesting to turn it into offtopic/detritus, I also want to hear good suggestions for it's use. for example SA + nitric acid must give you N2O gas, wikipedia confirms this, but what concentration of nitric is needed for this?

TheChemiKid - 4-7-2014 at 05:18

Quote: Originally posted by Brain&Force  

Yeah, I can't get fireworks where I live, just party poppers and things.


I can't even legally get poppers or sparklers. :/

Brain&Force - 4-7-2014 at 11:35

Sulfamate salts? Possibly make some acesulfame potassium?

TheChemiKid: I keep reading you're either in Sweden or the US - where are you having difficulty acquiring fireworks? I live in a really dry area, so fireworks are illegal for fear of starting brush fires. Also I live in the most chemophobic state in the US.

It's always funny how people are SO afraid of fireworks.

Texium - 4-7-2014 at 12:10

Yesterday I went down to the fireworks stand about five minutes from my house with my dad and picked up a bunch of fireworks for tonight. There's definitely no fear of them here in Texas! There's about 4 or 5 stands in between my house and my school.

Brain&Force - 4-7-2014 at 12:24

The southern US is generally good about fireworks, ESPECIALLY New Mexico, Alabama, and South Carolina. Not where I live, though. (CA)

Texium - 4-7-2014 at 20:49

Yep, on their way to Utah, my aunt and uncle saw a fireworks assortment at a gas station called "The Big Bang" which cost $600, was in a box about 6 feet tall, 4 feet wide and 8 inches deep, and claimed to be the most powder allowed in one product by law. I think that was in New Mexico.
We never buy anything like that, but we had some decent stuff this year. What's really cool is to see the ones that the people in the wealthier neighborhoods surrounding mine shoot off! They always get a lot more of the big stuff.

Aha, I managed to find a picture of the huge assortment: http://a2.tnt.ms/assets/products/lg/101206-Big-Bang-884f3441...

violet sin - 5-7-2014 at 00:44

a great deal of this thread should be deleted outright. Now I'm not against banter about random things, but we have a place for that and I see a bunch of posts by these members there any way.. so maybe don't off this thread straight out the gate with that.

so far the chem answers were weak and this is buggin me because I really like sulfamic acid. I think it is neat, cheap, available, useful and under-appreciated. it is great for a bunch of things. the smoke screen bit was a nice off topic bit, thanks BobD1001. but the question asked wasn't directly about sulfamic acid, more of a what to do with the ammonium bisulfate produced mistakenly.

I haven't had a whole lot of time to look into the bisulfate my self. but info seems about as spread out as most I found on sulfamic acid was.

http://books.google.com/books?id=ltNLAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA577&a...
interesting:
p 577. " if common salt is added to fused ammonium hydrogen sulfate, hydrogen chloride is evolved and ammonium sodium sulfate is formed. the reaction is, however, incomplete and a small quantity of sulfite is formed. on further heating, ammonia is evolved and sodium hydrogen sulfate produced."
p 577. " when ammonium chloride and ammonium hydrogen sulfate are heated with an excess of manganese dioxide, nearly 15% of the chlorine is evolved. sodium chloride, under similar conditions, yields about 20% chlorine, whilst a mixture of ammonium chloride( 1 equiv), sodium hydrogen sulfate( 4 equivs), manganese dioxide( 4 equivs) and a little water, as much as 83% of the combined chlorine was obtained. ammonium sodium sulfate being formed

http://www.nrel.gov/docs/legosti/old/4279.pdf
solar energy storage: ammonium bisulfate cycle. kinda interesting they propose a method of using solar flux to separate the components of decomp and is some plans, used additional metal sulfates to grab SO3 produced as pyrosulfates.

thats all I could find tonight, been a LONG day. Sulfamic acid it self is great for electrochem, and is one of the more soluble of the lead salts. good for nickel and copper as well. I found some times you had to use amidosulfonic acid to find older papers on sulfamic acid. I will be reading up on this more and will link anything interesting that comes up. all the papers I requested and or tracked down for sulfamic acid are on another computer so I cant pop 'em up here now. sorry

violet sin - 6-7-2014 at 00:16

alumina production from clay: http://www.minersoc.org/pages/Archive-CM/Volume_17/17-3-271....
"The technically promising processes involve heating mixtures of clays and ammonium salts, preferably ammonium sulphates (Grim, 1962; Ullmann, 1954), because water-soluble aluminium salts are formed as the reaction products. These processes involve the following steps: (i) sulphating the alumina of the clay by heating with (NH2)2SO4 at ~400~ or with (NH4)HSO4 solution in an autoclave at 200~ (ii) extracting the Al-sulphates by leaching with water and converting them to aluminium hydroxide by precipitation with ammonia"

Microwave-assisted acetalization of pentaerythritol catalyzed by ammonium hydrogen sulfate( pdf):
http://www.chemistrymag.org/cji/2003/059071ne.htm

@dischem: and this is what I think you might like most...
Regeneration Of Sulfuric Acid From Sulfate Salts Via Hydrogen Peroxide:
http://www.ihs.com/products/chemical/technology/pep/reviews/...
" In this review we present a technical and economic evaluation of the conversion of ammonium bisulfate (ABS) generated in methionine and MHA processes to sulfuric acid via the hydrogen peroxide route, based on the production of 130 million lb/yr (59,000 t/yr) of sulfuric acid at a U.S. Gulf Coast location. Although any source of spent acid or sulfate salts may be used as feedstock."

all I have had time to look through tonight.
-Violet Sin-
edit: forgot a link


[Edited on 6-7-2014 by violet sin]

Mailinmypocket - 6-7-2014 at 02:24

Sulfamic acid is a handy reagent to make nitrogen gas if you have sodium nitrite...
http://mattson.creighton.edu/N2/index.html

dischem - 6-7-2014 at 14:17

Quote: Originally posted by violet sin  
a great deal of this thread should be deleted outright. Now I'm not against banter about random things, but we have a place for that and I see a bunch of posts by these members there any way.. so maybe don't off this thread straight out the gate with that.

so far the chem answers were weak and this is buggin me because I really like sulfamic acid. I think it is neat, cheap, available, useful and under-appreciated. it is great for a bunch of things. the smoke screen bit was a nice off topic bit, thanks BobD1001. but the question asked wasn't directly about sulfamic acid, more of a what to do with the ammonium bisulfate produced mistakenly.

I haven't had a whole lot of time to look into the bisulfate my self. but info seems about as spread out as most I found on sulfamic acid was.

http://books.google.com/books?id=ltNLAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA577&a...
interesting:
p 577. " if common salt is added to fused ammonium hydrogen sulfate, hydrogen chloride is evolved and ammonium sodium sulfate is formed. the reaction is, however, incomplete and a small quantity of sulfite is formed. on further heating, ammonia is evolved and sodium hydrogen sulfate produced."
p 577. " when ammonium chloride and ammonium hydrogen sulfate are heated with an excess of manganese dioxide, nearly 15% of the chlorine is evolved. sodium chloride, under similar conditions, yields about 20% chlorine, whilst a mixture of ammonium chloride( 1 equiv), sodium hydrogen sulfate( 4 equivs), manganese dioxide( 4 equivs) and a little water, as much as 83% of the combined chlorine was obtained. ammonium sodium sulfate being formed

http://www.nrel.gov/docs/legosti/old/4279.pdf
solar energy storage: ammonium bisulfate cycle. kinda interesting they propose a method of using solar flux to separate the components of decomp and is some plans, used additional metal sulfates to grab SO3 produced as pyrosulfates.

thats all I could find tonight, been a LONG day. Sulfamic acid it self is great for electrochem, and is one of the more soluble of the lead salts. good for nickel and copper as well. I found some times you had to use amidosulfonic acid to find older papers on sulfamic acid. I will be reading up on this more and will link anything interesting that comes up. all the papers I requested and or tracked down for sulfamic acid are on another computer so I cant pop 'em up here now. sorry


Wow, that's all really interesting information, thank you. I'm going to check in with my school tomorrow to see if I can get access to that report about recovering sulfuric acid from ABS & AS. I was reading another thread about the production of hydrogen peroxide through the electrolysis of ammonium bisulfate, (http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=2150), but it didn't look like a real conclusion was reached.

I'll throw some ABS in a beaker and try some of those reactions. Ammonia production looks pretty useful. I really prefer to synth my own chems rather than buy them if I can manage.

Any thoughts on the thermal decomposition of sulfamic acid to N2, SO3, SO2 & H2O? I was thinking about doing that to produce SO3 and reacting it with water to get my H2SO4, but I decided against it as I had no NaOH to scrub the SO2. I also had no idea how much of the sulfamic acid is going to decompose into SO3 vs SO2.

symboom - 14-10-2016 at 04:09

Dissolving manganese dioxide in sulfamic acid is this posible it is a reducing agent
Forming manganese sulfamate

chloric1 - 16-1-2023 at 05:27

Ammonium bisulfate can be reacted with stoichiometric amount of strontium chromate to make ammonium dichromate and strontium sulfate. You just dissolve your ammonium bisulfate in sufficient water and heat on stirring hot plate and add your pale yellow strontium chromate and stir with heat to digest. The slightly soluble strontium chromate will gradually turn into the white sulfate as reaction completes.

Most transition metal sulfamates like nickel sulfamate and copper sulfamate are highly soluble in water so you may be able to up your plating game to electro forming small parts for jewelry and sculpture.