AJKOER
Radically Dubious
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Theoretical Preparation of a Nitrate (NH4NO3) from Inexpensive Household Chemicals
Hi:
The theoretical (suggestions/advice welcomed) of the preparation of nitrate salt is as follows:
1. Prepare Ammonium Acetate. Add household ammonia to selzer water (or, another source of pure H2CO3). Let stand for a day. Add vinegar. Let solution
air dry to recover Ammonium Acetate crystals or cool to crystalize out.
2. Heat Ammonium Acetate in oxygen (or a large amount of air) in a closed chamber. To the generated gases (NH3, NO2, CO2, CO, NO, and vapors of
acetamide) add cold NH4OH/H2O2 solution.
Chemical reactions:
NH4OH + H2CO3 = NH4HCO3 + H2O
NH4HCO3 + CH3COOH = CH3COONH4 + H2O + CO2
3 CH3COONH4 + 8 O2 ---> 2 CO + 4 CO2 + NH3 + NO + NO2 + 9 H20
CH3COONH4 --> CH3C(O)NH2 + H2O
2 NO + H2O2 = 2 HNO3
NO2 + H2O = HNO3
NH4OH + HNO3 = NH4OH + H2O
CAUTION: The heat decomposition of Ammonium Acetate is best performed in a fume hood or outdoor given the toxic and corrosive gases including carbon
monoxide, nitric oxides and acetamide vapors.
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phlogiston
International Hazard
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Why the H2CO3? Makining ammonium acetate will work fine without it.
When you say 'heat with oxygen', what temperature are you envisioning?
nitrogen oxides form when you heat ammonia gas with oxygen to a very high temperature and then rapidly cool the gasses again. Look up 'Ostwald
process'.
I suspect that all you will get from the second step upon heating is a ammonia gas + acetic acid vapour, which will recombine upon cooling. Mixing
NH4OH and H2O2 will give you predominantly nitrogen and perhaps a little nitric oxide. Although this may oxidise and dissolve to form nitrate ions,
the yield of NH4NO3 will be very very small and it will be contaminated with a lot of ammonium acetate.
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Polverone
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Hi AJKOER,
I am afraid that your proposal will not work. There are problems on multiple levels.
1) Ammonium acetate is formed simply by the interaction of ammonia and acetic acid. You do not need to add seltzer water. You can see that H2CO3 can
be removed from both sides of the equation without changing anything.
2) Despite what a material safety data sheet may suggest, you cannot prepare nitrogen oxides from heating ammonium acetate with air or oxygen. There
may be traces formed, but it is not suitable as a preparative method. There are many reactions that may take place to an extent that they become a
nuisance-byproduct of large scale processes or are detectable by sensitive instruments, but that are not suited for preparing macroscopic quantities
of materials. For example, ethylene in the presence of sunlight and urban air mixtures forms tropospheric ozone and other products ("photochemical
smog formation") that can negatively impact human health and damage certain polymers over time. But if you have a laboratory procedure that calls for
ozone as a reagent, you cannot make it by mixing air and ethylene in sunlight; the conversion is too slow, and the product is too dilute and impure.
3) Some of your equations are unbalanced. Atoms are neither destroyed nor created in chemical reactions.
4) Even balanced chemical equations say nothing about the conditions under which a reaction may take place. For example, CO2 + C -> 2 CO is a
balanced equation for a process that only proceeds at any appreciable rate at elevated temperatures. H2 + 3 N2 -> 2 HN3 is a balanced equation for
a process that does not proceed appreciably at any temperature.
PGP Key and corresponding e-mail address
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bbartlog
International Hazard
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If you mix household ammonia, seltzer water (why?), and vinegar, you will have something like a 2% solution of ammonium acetate (plus impurities, but
let's ignore that). Perhaps as much as 4% if you skip the superfluous seltzer and have decently strong ammonia, like 10%. The solubility of ammonium
acetate in water is very high, over 100g per 100ml; so you aren't going to 'crystallize it out' by cooling, and if you wait for it to air dry you will
be waiting a long time unless you have a desiccator.
Anyway, so then you want to heat this solid inside a sealed vessel while also adding a cold solution. While your proposed feedstock may be inexpensive
or at least OTC, you've now taken some sort of detour into the land of industrial chemistry. Why not bubble the gases through the solution? You can do
that with just a flask, stopper and tubing.
There are further issues but basically this scheme is harebrained.
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Texium
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Thread Moved
19-11-2023 at 16:31 |
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