Sciencemadness Discussion Board

What to do with 5kg of ammonium nitrate?

Kagutsuchi - 24-6-2015 at 09:29

With my friend we got 5 kgs of pure ammonium nitrate. Any suggestions for pyro stuff to do with it? :D

phlogiston - 24-6-2015 at 10:01

It is too hygroscopic to be really useful for that. You could dry it well and make rocket propellants with it, but perhaps a better idea is to convert it to other nitrates that are more suitable for pyro.

aga - 24-6-2015 at 10:52

Convert it all to Nitric Acid.

Kagutsuchi - 24-6-2015 at 11:38

Aga, what method would you recommend? We thought about the HCl+NH4NO3=NH4Cl+HNO3 method, but wouldn't the NH4Cl=HCl+NH3 equilibrium interfere? Or maybe we should use sulfuric acid?

aga - 24-6-2015 at 13:08

Distill some of it with conc H2SO4.

Make some seriously conc ammonia too.

Keep some as-is for any future projects.

Edit:

Personally i'd dilute the near-pure HNO3 as i'm not too happy about storing WFNA in my shed, and have not yet needed close-to-pure Nitric Acid for any reaction i wanted to do.

[Edited on 24-6-2015 by aga]

hyfalcon - 24-6-2015 at 15:30

Add 250 grams of 5 micron Al and make one hell of a reactive target. Yeah, I'm a redneck.

That should give you a 95/5 ratio.

[Edited on 24-6-2015 by hyfalcon]

smaerd - 24-6-2015 at 15:44

I had a pound or so of ammonium nitrate at one point. I did a double whammy with it.

I added sodium hydroxide to it and a minimal amount of water and created a large amount of ammonia gas which I solvated in water (hazardous but theres posts on this).

Then with the remaining sodium nitrate I did the old nitric acid synthesis/distillation with sulfuric acid.

Not sure what else to really do with the stuff but its a nice dual source material for both those chemicals.

Tsjerk - 25-6-2015 at 00:16

Don't distill it with HCl, that will give you a big mess because of the formation of NOCl and Cl2. Google aqua regia.

idrbur - 25-6-2015 at 02:41

You can make a rocket propellant from it.
All you have to do is just add nh4no3 to water and start boiling it .after some time it will give off ammonia .as it stop giving off ammonia soak some newspapper in it and let it dry .
Now you can use this dried newspaper as propellant
[ plz do this in a well ventilated area]

Kagutsuchi - 25-6-2015 at 02:54

idrur, that way, will it devcompose to hno3 and nh3?