Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Anyone willing to sell nitromethane 100-200ml?

gluon47 - 22-9-2019 at 21:42

Looking to acquire a small amount of nitromethane for an experiment. Unable to find any source so far. Need 100-200ml

I'm based in Zew Zealand, so you would have to be willing to ship to me, or live there yourself

Please U2U me if interested..

draculic acid69 - 22-9-2019 at 22:36

How much are you willing to spend on the nitromethane? I might be able to do it.

gluon47 - 22-9-2019 at 23:20

Say $18.80 USD (~30NZD) + postage (if it's not ridiculous) for 100ml (pretty sure that's all I need). Seems pretty reasonable to me.. U2U if you'd be open to this

Deathunter88 - 23-9-2019 at 08:54

If the deal doesn't work out, you can always just buy nitromethane remote control car fuel and distill it from there. Cheap and easy.

draculic acid69 - 23-9-2019 at 17:30

That's all I was going to do.gluon is RC car fuel not available to you?

gluon47 - 23-9-2019 at 23:33

Allright... look, sorry guys, I've messed up. It appears that 30% nitromethane RC fuel is available to me. It never occured to me to look for premixed fuel, had only looked for 100% nitromethane from the same suppliers, and reagent grade nitromethane elsewhere. I'm sure I could do the whole distillation and get some that way. Anyway, my apologies for starting this thread.
Quote: Originally posted by draculic acid69  
That's all I was going to do.gluon is RC car fuel not available to you?

:o Fair enougth ;)
Quote: Originally posted by Deathunter88  
If the deal doesn't work out, you can always just buy nitromethane remote control car fuel and distill it from there. Cheap and easy.

jee, thanks for mentioning ;)

Maybe thread should be moved to detritus now..

[Edited on 24-9-2019 by gluon47]

woelen - 24-9-2019 at 01:01

No need to move to detritus, little mistakes like this sometimes happen.
No problem ;)

Praxichys - 24-9-2019 at 06:29

In small quantities you can make it from trichloroethylene and sodium nitrite, a degreasing solvent and a food preservative.

Trichloroethylene is hydrolyzed via strong sulfuric acid to chloroacetic acid, distilled and neutralized cold to sodium chloracetate (useful for lots of other stuff as well, easily hydrolyzed to glycolic acid, for instance). This can be reacted with sodium nitrite in warm water, leaving nitromethane which can be distilled out, or (as I suspect but cannot verify) could potentially be salted out.

Nitromethane is useful because it can be hydrolyzed by HCl under pressure to hydroxylamine HCL or reduced to methylamine using a modified Clemmensen.


Chloroacetic acid from trichloroethylene was used industrially on an extensive basis up until recently and there is plenty of literature available. From Ullmann's:

"Hydrolysis of trichloroethylene: In this process equal weights of trichloroethylene and sulphuric acid are heated to 130-140 deg C in the reactor. A mixture of trichloroethylene and sulphuric acid is continuously fed to the bottom of the reactor. The chloroacetic acid and sulphuric acid are permitted to overflow into a cascade, where the chloroacetic acid is distilled at 20 mm Hg and the sulphuric acid is recycled. The hydrolysis of trichioroethylene yields high-purity monochloroacetic acid, but has the disadvantage of utilising a relatively more expensive starting material. [as compared to direct chlorination of acetic acid, which yields mixed chloroacetic acids that are difficult to separate on a lab scale]"

This seems quite adaptable to a batchwise bench process.

Nitromethane synth: http://www.orgsyn.org/demo.aspx?prep=CV1P0401

[Edited on 24-9-2019 by Praxichys]