Sciencemadness Discussion Board - Easy production of ammonia?

Easy production of ammonia?

ueki - 28-5-2008 at 17:51

Does anyone know how to easily produce ammonia?

The_Davster - 28-5-2008 at 18:06

From what becomes the important question...
The gas is easily made by mixing amounts of solid ammonium salt(any will work) and any hydroxide, and adding water.

If you want to make ammonia solution the gas can be led into a flask of water in an ice bath.

ueki - 28-5-2008 at 18:09

haha... funny story, i don't know of any ammonium products that I can get my hands on... or hydroxides really. I have Na2CO3, a basic salt... and Mr. clean, 0.14% NaOH, but those are all the soluble hydroxides i can get my hands on. I know draino uses NaOH, but I thought it reacts with aluminum particles in it when dissolved... is this true? If so, how can they be seperated?

stygian - 28-5-2008 at 18:17

Nitrates reduce to ammonia pretty easily, don't they?
Surely you can get some urea.

ueki - 28-5-2008 at 18:29

lol once again, not that i know of

Sauron - 28-5-2008 at 18:59

well, lol, haha, use the fucking search engine because there have been many many threads on the subjects of where to get OTC ammonium salts, how to concentrate ammonia, how to get anhydrous ammonia, how to get urea, how to make urea, and so on.

That is what the FSE is for.

Do not clutter up the forum with newbie questions that have been asked to death and answered in depth already just because you are too lazy to search.

All it does is antagonize everyone.

Ammonium chloride is very commonly available under the name sal ammoniac. That is the generic name not a brand.

Ammonium nitrate you might have trouble buying because of its use in blasting agents, in some parts of the country it is watched like crazy and in others it is just a fertilizer sold in 25 lb or 50 lb sacks.

Urea is very easy to find, try a hardware store or a gardening dept at a DIY store. It's also a fertilizer. You can also recover it from your own urine (or anyone's). But if you start collecting urine people may think you are weird.

Really, UTFSE and you will see that all these things have been raked over here many times.

Formatik - 28-5-2008 at 19:50

Urea can also be used as an ammonia source. According to Beilstein heating 1 mol. KOH and alcohol with urea in a tube to 100 deg. forms potassium cyanate and NH3: CO(NH2)2 + KOH = KCNO + NH3 + H2O, but without a drying agent water will come over also. Boiling urea with alkalis or acids also eventually decomposes it, but into NH3 and CO2. Though just heating urea alone works, upon heating it forms NH3 and cyanuric acid, as well as biuret and melanuric acid. P2O5 has a similar action, but forms cyanuric acid, cyanic acid, cyamelide, NH3 and melanuric acid. Not sure about the purity made by heating urea but ammonia gas is flammable (autoignition temperature: 651°C) so it is important not to overheat.

And also use the search function:

Ammonia preparation:

http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=7464
http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=10324

Anhydrous ammonia:

http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=53

Urea synthesis:

http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=3386
http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=2415
http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=10362

etc.

ueki - 28-5-2008 at 20:15

thank you for attempting to help shockwave, and btw sauron, I HAVE used the search engine, but like i previously stated, I do not have access to ammonium compounds nor nitrates

not_important - 28-5-2008 at 21:40

Quote:

Originally posted by ueki
thank you for attempting to help shockwave, and btw sauron, I HAVE used the search engine, but like i previously stated, I do not have access to ammonium compounds nor nitrates

Then you're pretty much SOL; the easy, home lab, ways to ammonia are from

aqueous ammonia (household ammonia)

ammonium salts, the most common OTC ones are the sulfate, carbonate (baking), chloride (some soldering fluxes, often NH4-Zn chlorides), nitrate, and phosphates (fertiliser, 'yeast food')

urea or a mixed fertiliser with reasonable urea content.
other amides, now uncommon as OTC

reduction of nitrates is a poor route in general, consuming strong bases and reactive metals as well as nitrates which are becoming increasingly rare.

After that you're looking at treating sewage with lime (CaO or Ca(OH)2 ) and steam, the way it was done a century or so ago, the Haber-Bosch process, hardly a home project, or moving to Jupiter.

Sauron - 29-5-2008 at 03:57

The combination of lack of ingenuity, cluelessness and an apparent excess of sloth makes for an unproductive fellow.

Pray tell us why you have "no access" to ammonium compounds when such are commonly OTC? Are you in prison or on a desert island? If the latter, at least you have Internet access.

You can buy 28% reagent ammonia most places and 5-10% ammonia anywhere.

Urea is a cinch.

Come on. Use some initiative. No one is going to tell you how to make bricks without straw.

ueki - 30-5-2008 at 18:43

Sauron, I don't really care what you say. The point is, I can't. I can get windex, with Ammonia-D??? Who knows how good that is/how pure it is.

On a different note though, I may be able to buy some pure urea, however does anyone know to catalyse its decomposition to NH3? Btw, the only other product is CO2, right? No chance of dangerous compounds forming? If so, how can I overcome this? And yes, I have checke dthe search, and would perfer not to use urease. However, i did read increasing alkalinity or acidity, catalyses the decomposition. Anyone have a little more specifics tho?

[Edited on 30-5-2008 by ueki]

Sauron - 30-5-2008 at 19:07

Then not_important was correct and you are pretty much SOL.

Your inability to explain, or refusal to explain, your mysterious inability to obtain the simplest and most ubiquitous materials such as household ammonia, is what marks you as a supplicant for spoonfeeding. Spoonfeeding is not what this forum is all about.

Urea does not require and catalyst to decompose. Just heat. Melting urea is easy. If it is reasonably pure the melt will be clear. Heating continued above the melting point will result in the evolution of large volumes of ammonia gas, which can be led into water to obtain concentrated ammonium hydroxide of 28-30% or, chilled to the hazardous anhydrous liquid ammonia. Please do a little study and see that the decomposition of urea always also produces other products, such as carbon oxides. Take appropriate precautions against possible exposure to CO.

[Edited on 31-5-2008 by Sauron]

not_important - 30-5-2008 at 19:56

Alkaline hydrolysis in hot concentrated aqueous solution avoids most byproducts. If you use a hydroxide as the base, there won't be much CO2 given off, as it will combine with the hydroxide giving carbonate; this means you want an excess of hydroxide.

Look at the nitrogen percent of the N-K-P rating of fertilisers, pick those with the highest N rating. Read the label, see how much ammonium nitrogen and how much urea nitrogen each has. On with only ammonium nitrogen is the best, just treat with NaOH solution. If it's high urea, then it's the slower hydrolysis route. You may need to capture the ammonia with a mineral acid to get a reasonable pure ammonium salt, and then treat that with NaOH in order to get a quicker concentrated flow of ammonia.

Sauron - 30-5-2008 at 21:34

And he's probably going to tell us he can't get lye, either.

Lives someplace without drains, or with the new self cleaning variety.

Really, this fellow has exhausted my credulity.

Aqua_Fortis_100% - 30-5-2008 at 23:03

Yeah.. Indeed I cant think all of NH4 compounds abovementioned just turned off from OTC without a lot of problems to several people.. So, ueki , a 3rd SOL for you (note, I'm not want to flamme you). Try to look better while traveling on these know sources of OTC products. Supermarkets (fertilizer sections), local agro center, etc

BTW, Urea is a very good ammonia generator itself, not needing any other thing to be mixed with it, this being its best advantage. But urea can be tricky.... I've tried one time to absorb the ammonia produced from the procedure found in a US patent provided by Rosco Bodine somewhere, that use NH4Cl as catalyst to quickly (15 mins being the usual claimed) decompose urea chiefly in cyanuric acid (and LOTS of ammonia evolved, of course), but I didn't get the proper care: even with only 1/4 of the soup can filled, the mix foamed A LOT and just the overflow goes down to absorbing flask, causing a mess.. I dont know if pure urea heated behaves similarly to urea/NH4Cl. Is very probably without this catalyst the NH3 foaming will be greatly reduced, while at other hand you will certainly need more time and energy to heat the mix..

But I guess, was just my fault.. Next time I will take less amounts at time..

[Edited on 31-5-2008 by Aqua_Fortis_100%]

kilowatt - 31-5-2008 at 01:21

Quote:

haha... funny story, i don't know of any ammonium products that I can get my hands on... or hydroxides really. I have Na2CO3, a basic salt... and Mr. clean, 0.14% NaOH, but those are all the soluble hydroxides i can get my hands on. I know draino uses NaOH, but I thought it reacts with aluminum particles in it when dissolved... is this true? If so, how can they be seperated?

Well I guess they've done a good job on you then if you can't get any of those things. Can't you even buy concentrated NaOH/KOH drain cleaners, or ammonia based cleaners? These are common household products. If you can't get them, you will have to step it up to the next level, otherwise you will not get any, plain and simple. Calcium or lithium metals burn in nitrogen gas to form nitrides which react with water to give ammonia. You can make either of those through hot electrolytic processes or distillative coke reduction. There's also the Haber process if you can get a scuba or paintball (3000+psi) compressor. Urea can be thermally decomposed with steam or reacted with alkali hydroxide to liberate ammonia, or you can do distillative coke reduction of urine or animal horns. Urea is commonly available as a fertilizer type product. For hydroxides, you can produce them with an electrolytic membrane cell (like tyvek) or amalgam cell (you'll need a few pounds of mercury for that). You can also heat sodium carbonate to over 1000°C to decompose to Na2O which reacts with water to form NaOH. Of course anyone can buy urea or other ammonium salts and sodium hydroxide online, but if you can't for some reason, you're going to have to step up and synthesize your own with methods like these, otherwise you're SOL.

Sauron - 31-5-2008 at 02:27

This guy is obviously being totally disingenuous.

So don't expect him to be preparing and Li or Ca nitrides.

For him, "can't get" means "too lazy to look".

Don't waste any more cyber ink on him. Not worth it.

MagicJigPipe - 31-5-2008 at 07:23

Explain to me how you can't get household ammonia solution.

I, however, understand the fact that you can't get pure sodium hydroxide locally. I can't either. Lye has been "banned" here. The best I can do locally is 35% K/NaOH solution and even that is rare (only one place has it).

That solution is perfectly clear. There are other NaOH solutions but I don't consider them an option because they are thick, purple, syrupy gels and are way to impure for my taste.

Alternatively, you could mix HCl and ammonia solution to get NH4Cl. This is really a waste of energy because of the amount of water that must be driven off but it works. When I did it I just let it evaporate in the sun. There are much better ways, though.

ueki - 31-5-2008 at 20:28

Ya, I do have household ammonia, but in the range of 5%; Windex. However though, I have discovered today that Mr. Clean is useful as a lye solution (even though it says 0.014% NaOH), it still produces a Cu(OH)2 percipitate with CuSO4. So, I think I'll use that to catalyse the hydrolysis of urea, if I find that using plain water is too slow.

And ya, of course I can't get Li or Ca, they are classified as "harzardous materials" from any company that sells chemicals I have found, and thus are not shipped to consumers.

Thank you, to the people that actually say anything worth mentioning.

[Edited on 31-5-2008 by ueki]

MagicJigPipe - 31-5-2008 at 21:42

Uhhhhhhh... Don't use Windex. I can't believe I have to tell you this but there are ammonia solutions (generic, very cheap) that are simply NH3 dissolved in water. They are usually only 5-10% but, like I said, they are much cheaper than brand name alcohol/ammonia Windex and consist of only 2 ingredients.

Where do you live? Is your only source of products a gas station?

124563 - 26-6-2013 at 11:12

Quote: Originally posted by ueki

you can buy ammonia salts or urea in instant cold packs

ElectroWin - 26-6-2013 at 13:12

if you cant buy urea, then use any of the above links suggested to extract it from urine.
even crude urea should be fine for the suggested hydrolysis reaction above to generate ammonia, if it is concentrated enough.

you can concentrate the urine until it crystallizes, by evaporation at reduced pressure.
(concentration by boiling at ordinary pressure causes some of it to decompose and polymerize to biuret, around 108 C.
you can concentrate it around 6:1 by boiling if youre careful, but 16:1 is better for running the ammonia generator.)

[Edited on 2013-6-26 by ElectroWin]

ElizabethGreene - 27-6-2013 at 19:35

To my great delight, I can now answer this question "How do I make ammonia with absolutely nothing, in a barren wilderness devoid of any commercial enterprise?"

First, using a rock, dig a hole in clay-bearing ground. Form and knead the clay into number of small containers. Then gather a large pile of wood, many hundreds of pounds. Next, gather limestone. Then rub two sticks together to make fire. The fire will be used repeatedly, so care should be taken to preserve it. Additionally it will provide heat and some deterrence to predators. Place the limestone rocks in the fire and burn the wood to ash over a sunrise and sunset. Place your clay containers near the fire to cure them. Rotate them regularly so they don't crack. Allow the ash to cool and soak in water. Drain the ash water into your clay container. Heat rocks in the fire and add them to the ash water, boiling it to reduce its volume until it is very thick. Then allow it to evaporate to dryness. This is pot-ash.

There are two methods to proceed from this point. The first option is to evaporate gratuitous amounts of urine into a thick liquid or powder, concentrating the urea. Addition of the potash to the concentrated urine solution will cause the release of gaseous ammonia. Some heating may be required.

The second method is more educational, the decomposition of cheese with soda lime at high temperature.

Carefully add the cooked limestone "quicklime" to the concentrate pot-ash solution. This reaction is exothermic, releasing great quantities of heat. This mixture is "soda lime". Concentrate and dry it as described previously.

Now, locate and domesticate a cow. Wait for it to have a calf, then kill the calf and retain the stomach. Milk the cow into a clay or bark container. Add a small portion of the calf stomach to the warm milk, causing the milk to curdle. Drain the liquid parts of the milk, retaining the curds. If desired, add salt (from the sea) to taste. Press the curds to remove the liquid and allow them to cure in a cool dark place for a moon.

Now, given "cheese" and "soda lime" follow the procedure as described by Cohen in Practical Organic Chemistry.

"Grind up a fragment of cheese [...] with 5 to 6 times its weight of soda-lime. Pour the mixture into a small test tube [substitute a small clay container...] and cover it with an equally thick layer of soda-lime. Heat strongly, beginning at the top layer. Ammonia is evolved."

Mission accomplished.

sargent1015 - 27-6-2013 at 20:16

Quote: Originally posted by ElizabethGreene

Mission accomplished.

Just... wow. If I am ever on an island and need to make ammonia gas for some reason. I am now quite prepared.

bfesser - 30-6-2013 at 07:51

Pure gold, <strong>ElizabethGreene</strong>, 99.9995% pure Au!

testimento - 3-7-2013 at 04:27

Could it be possible to get ammonia from proteins like whey, soy, etc? Some are rather cheaply available and taste like shit, so..