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not_important
International Hazard
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Registered: 21-7-2006
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Indeed, plain old ammonium sulfate is often sold as a fertiliser, no need to examine labels in detail. Urea is another, although I think it is
becoming less common.
Purity isn't too much of an issue if you are using it to make NH3, as the gas phase part of the process does a decent job of cleaning things up. If
you want it as a source of ammonium ions then solution, filtration, and crystallisation is needed. Ammonium sulfate's solubility curve isn't great,
reuse the mother liquor several times to get better overall yields.
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entropy51
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Quote: Originally posted by agorot  |
I'm also concerned that I wouldn't get something very pure, but if it's mostly ammonium sulfate then I could just add a base and probably wouldn't
have problems.
Any way to easily identify an ammonium sulfate fertilizer? Or does it say it on the bag. I'm a little scared to browse the fertilizer section so I'm
unfamiliar with the products, but maybe I'm just being unreasonable. |
The stuff I buy says "Ammonium Sulfate"
and is definitely not pure. It has small rocks in it, but if you heat it with base it makes NH3 just fine. I recrystallize it after filtering the
dirt out, but it's not necessary at all.
You won't be arrested for buying the fertilizer your mom sent you to buy for her roses, will you?
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watson.fawkes
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If it's not labeled
explicitly (and as others have pointed out, it often is), you can often infer the chemical from the NPK designation. The trick is that there are a
relatively small number of common, commercial fertilizer chemicals, and if the bag is not blended, the NPK designation is usually de facto
unique. Here's a table with a few common ones. That one's not that extensive. I thought I had a better one bookmarked, but I can't find it. Expect some deviation
from the "ideal purity" NPK number because you're dealing with fairly crude product in most cases.
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agorot
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@watson.fawkes
According to your link http://www.fertilizer.org/ifa/Home-Page/STATISTICS/Conversio...
the ammonium sulfate is only 21% of fertilizers....that's got to be wrong or this is talking about just one specific product, right?
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dann2
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Ammonium Sulphate contains 21% Nitrogen and 24% Sulphur. Look up its formula and do a molar calculation.
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agorot
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Oh  . Misread the table then, I thought it was talking about the amount of
ammonium sulfate in a bag. That makes sense.
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MagicJigPipe
International Hazard
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Why would you even have to make up that story if persecution doesn't exist? Just walk in (wearing a tanktop and cutoff shorts) and say, "HEY!
Anybody up in this b**ch know where I can get dat 'monium sulfurate so I can gas out some annie?" (don't forget to spit right afterwards)
Then they will say, "Sure you nice young man, would you also like a few boxes of cold medicine and a few truckloads of ammonium nitrate on us? Have a
good day and enjoy!"
On a lighter note, I agree that adding cheap ammonium salt (chloride, sulfate etc...) to cheap base (Ca(OH)2, NaOH etc...) and heating is by far the
best way to produce concentrated or liquid ammonia (if you have solid CO2). It is so soluble in water that the smell shouldn't be a huge problem (as
long as you pay attention). I have tried this on a small scale once and the smell was virtually non-existent at first.
Good luck.
[Edited on 3-13-2010 by MagicJigPipe]
"There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry ... There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any
question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors. ... We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it and
that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. And we know that as long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think,
free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost, and science can never regress." -J. Robert Oppenheimer
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