Sciencemadness Discussion Board
Not logged in [Login ]
Go To Bottom

Printable Version  
 Pages:  1  2
Author: Subject: Synthetic route to tetrazoles from urea & ammonium nitrate
maxidastier
Hazard to Others
***




Posts: 118
Registered: 3-4-2010
Member Is Offline

Mood: No Mood

[*] posted on 29-7-2010 at 07:30


Well, actually, there are a few more things, that need to be updated, nice work anyway Engager, but:
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/4390726/description.html
This patent is my favourite and it talks about how difficult it is to regenrate that silica gel.
They say, it has to be vacuum dried at over 200°C to convert all byproducts into gas.
So I would be interested in how you regnerated your silica gel and how often, be honest, you could use it again working smoothly. Because the water you used won't actually do the job.
Reading it is better, but to sum it up: the catalyst has to be molten in pure Ammonium Nitrate with up to 20% urea to "drive the byproducts aways from the catalyst into the slurry" 3x times.
Then you have to drie it at 30 torr and 80°C and then at 200°C to remove byproducts.
I died it at normal pressure in my oven. At least I got a clean cataylyst with a clean, shiny surface mostly free of byproducts.

Sry, I have to add another point: You say: 340g of ammonium nitrate (Note #2), 200g urea and 80g of tempered dry silica gel
The patent says: urea:AN 1:2, because this is the best method to avoid byproducts.
So it would be e.g. 120 g:240 g. Because convertion to Guanidinitrate at the beginning of the reaction is higher, after an hour on has to add 20 g urea to keep the 2:1 ratio.
At the end of 3,5-4,5 hours reaction the ratio will change to 1:6, urea stopping to be converted.
So you have alot of AN to reuse or to slurry it with the catalyst.

Another point is the preparation of Nitroguanidin which you claim to be finished in ca. 15 mins.
A description I read says, it needs to be aged at least 15 hours to convert all Guanidinitrate.
I tried both ways and strongly recommend to age your mix at least 8 hours (over night).
View user's profile View All Posts By User
Engager
Hazard to Others
***




Posts: 295
Registered: 8-1-2006
Location: Moscow, Russia
Member Is Offline

Mood: Lagrangian

[*] posted on 29-7-2010 at 11:15


Quote: Originally posted by maxidastier  

Sry, I have to add another point: You say: 340g of ammonium nitrate (Note #2), 200g urea and 80g of tempered dry silica gel
The patent says: urea:AN 1:2, because this is the best method to avoid byproducts.
So it would be e.g. 120 g:240 g. Because convertion to Guanidinitrate at the beginning of the reaction is higher, after an hour on has to add 20 g urea to keep the 2:1 ratio.
At the end of 3,5-4,5 hours reaction the ratio will change to 1:6, urea stopping to be converted.
So you have alot of AN to reuse or to slurry it with the catalyst.


It may be that process described in patent may be better, please try it - if you will find your method more advantageous - it will be only better. Personally i see ratio mentioned in my article as a good idea since worse F/O ratio lowers explosion hazard.

Regarding regeneration of catalyst - personally i never used it so many times, since procedure was tested extensively by my friend from Russian forum - guy who is actually mentioned as second author of article. I trust him in his experience with this catalyst and trust other members of our community who tried it, so i take possibility of regeneration as experimental fact.

Quote: Originally posted by maxidastier  

Another point is the preparation of Nitroguanidin which you claim to be finished in ca. 15 mins.
A description I read says, it needs to be aged at least 15 hours to convert all Guanidinitrate.
I tried both ways and strongly recommend to age your mix at least 8 hours (over night).


Timings of aging in H2SO4 are widely described in explosive related literature and found to be appropriate on practice. Watch this:



This is actually from Russian book on chemistry and technology of high explosives and it says that at 30C 10 min is ideal timing, while higher temperatures and longer time causes increased decomposition of nitroguanidine.

[Edited on 29-7-2010 by Engager]




View user's profile View All Posts By User
maxidastier
Hazard to Others
***




Posts: 118
Registered: 3-4-2010
Member Is Offline

Mood: No Mood

[*] posted on 30-7-2010 at 02:34


Well, actually I tried both aging times with the same amounts and got better results when agin more hours.
Decomposition of Nitroguanidin starts only after 20 hours as says this source:
http://www.lambdasyn.org/synfiles/nitroguanidin.htm

Another route to Guanidinitrate is the melting from Ammonium Nitrate and calcium cyanamide, both readily availabe fertilizers WITHOUT any catalyst at even better yields.
View user's profile View All Posts By User
Engager
Hazard to Others
***




Posts: 295
Registered: 8-1-2006
Location: Moscow, Russia
Member Is Offline

Mood: Lagrangian

[*] posted on 30-7-2010 at 10:46


Calcium cyanamide is not readily available in many countries, for example here in Russia mass production of cyanamide was stopped many years ago and chemical is actually banned one. If you can get your hands on calcium cyanamide it can be converted to aminoguanidine in single step by reaction with hydrazine sulphate or to 5-ATZ by reaction with hydrogen azide. I know this route for a long time and some people tried it, production of calcium cyanamide require access to high temperatures, but source products are very cheap - urea and lime. I was experimenting with cyanamide production for quite a while and will post article on this route some time soon.



View user's profile View All Posts By User
Engager
Hazard to Others
***




Posts: 295
Registered: 8-1-2006
Location: Moscow, Russia
Member Is Offline

Mood: Lagrangian

[*] posted on 31-7-2010 at 15:05






View user's profile View All Posts By User
Engager
Hazard to Others
***




Posts: 295
Registered: 8-1-2006
Location: Moscow, Russia
Member Is Offline

Mood: Lagrangian

[*] posted on 31-7-2010 at 15:13


Quote: Originally posted by Taoiseach  
@497

There's several problems: Reducing 100g NQ would take over 40h at 5 amps. Higher currents are possible but they're operating at quite high a voltage (to overcome additional resistance of the diaphragm I guess) which produces considerable heat. The 300A cell was operated with active cooling. Temperature has to be kept below 30°C otherwise only nitrosoguanidine is formed. The best yield is obtained at 5°C cell temp. At such temperature solubility of NQ is neglible (only 4.4g dissolve in 1000cc water at 25°C) This is probably why they're using rotating electrodes. Near the cathode, concentration of NQ will drop due to reduction to well soluble aminoguanidine. The rotation helps to quickly supply NQ and minimize the gradient in concentration.

I dont see how such electrodes could be improvised easily.

[Edited on 26-10-2009 by Taoiseach]


Industrial Electric reduction of nitroguanidine is described in following paper:

PROCESS for AMINOGUANIDINE
R. Norris Shreve and R. P. Carter
PURDUE UNIVERSITY, LAFAYETTE, IND.

It's attached to this message.

Attachment: ie50413a015.pdf (260kB)
This file has been downloaded 3163 times





View user's profile View All Posts By User
Rosco Bodine
Banned





Posts: 6370
Registered: 29-9-2004
Member Is Offline

Mood: analytical

[*] posted on 2-8-2010 at 21:19


Quote: Originally posted by Engager  
Calcium cyanamide is not readily available in many countries, for example here in Russia mass production of cyanamide was stopped many years ago and chemical is actually banned one. If you can get your hands on calcium cyanamide it can be converted to aminoguanidine in single step by reaction with hydrazine sulphate or to 5-ATZ by reaction with hydrogen azide. I know this route for a long time and some people tried it, production of calcium cyanamide require access to high temperatures, but source products are very cheap - urea and lime. I was experimenting with cyanamide production for quite a while and will post article on this route some time soon.


It can be inconvenient if there is a need for a banned chemical :D

It may be possible to use any guanidine salt and react with hydrazine sulfate in corresponding molar proportion to produce either mono aminoguanidine, di-aminoguanidine, or tri-aminoguanidine derivatives. The reaction is similar to the reaction of nitroguanidine with hydrazine to produce nitroaminoguanidine. The mechanism is mentioned in a patent primarily related to production of triaminoguanidine salts. I will have to look it up, but it is posted in the tetrazole thread.

Your interest regarding cyanamide is parallel to some isolated discussions which were taking place here, about experiments for producing pure calcium cyanamide to be used for synthesis of guanidine and aminoguanidine derivatives including tetrazoles. Calcium cyanurate can be thermally decomposed in the absence of air, by moderately high temperature, a low red heat, to produce 100% pure calcium cyanamide as the result. The precursor is easily made by precipitation from calcium chloride solution and sodium cyanurate. Cyanuric acid is available as a chlorine stabilizer for swimming pools, or may be easily synthesized from heating together urea and ammonium chloride. Alternately, reaction between urea and ammonium chloride at different temperature and in the presence of silica gel catalyst produces guanidine hydrochloride instead, and this involves no explosive danger as would occur with ammonium nitrate conversion to guanidine nitrate. The guanidine nitrate can (probably) subsequently be gotten from the guanidine hydrochloride, via double decomposition. Certainly guanidine perchlorate can be gotten easily enough from double decomposition of guanidine hydrochloride and sodium perchlorate, or probably from sodium perchlorate formed in situ from a basification of ammonium perchlorate with sodium hydroxide or sodium bicarbonate, with boiling away of the ammonia. Guanidine perchlorate should nicely crystallize out from the residual byproduct sodium chloride solution.

These interesting materials and methods certainly make urea an interesting subject for experiments. Attached are a couple of relevant patents.


Attachment: US2783276_SUBSTITUTED_GUANIDINE_SALTS.pdf (129kB)
This file has been downloaded 1976 times

Attachment: US2527316 Cyanuric Acid via Urea and Ammonium Chloride.pdf (129kB)
This file has been downloaded 1071 times

[Edited on 3-8-2010 by Rosco Bodine]
View user's profile View All Posts By User
Polverone
Now celebrating 21 years of madness
Thread Split
3-8-2010 at 14:22
maxidastier
Hazard to Others
***




Posts: 118
Registered: 3-4-2010
Member Is Offline

Mood: No Mood

[*] posted on 11-8-2010 at 00:11


I'm only interested in the step of producing Guaninidinitrate and further Nitroguanidin.
Is there another thread?
In Germany we have tons of Calcium Cyanamide as fertilizer. Strange, that many countires have banned it, because Germany is one of the "TOP" countries to ban chemicals...

[Edited on 11-8-2010 by maxidastier]
View user's profile View All Posts By User
 Pages:  1  2

  Go To Top