Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Calcium carbonate and ammonium nitrate

Fluorite - 4-11-2020 at 00:55

I tried making calcium nitrate from calcium hydroxide and ammonium Nitrate and and it worked but I have no calcium hydroxide anymore (making calcium chloride and adding sodium hydroxide is wasteful) so how complicated is it to make calcium nitrate and ammonium carbonate from CaCO3 and NH4NO3?
By the way can copper oxide react with ammonium nitrate/sulfate to make copper nitrate?
And I noticed if this can actually work you can recycle sulfuric acid and make nitric acid without any waste over and over again! But filtering calcium sulfate is annoying af

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Ubya - 4-11-2020 at 01:11

Quote:
how complicated is it to make calcium nitrate and ammonium carbonate from CaCO3 and NH4NO3?

calcium carbonate is pretty insoluble and to drive the reaction forward you need to decompose the ammonium carbonate and free ammonia and co2 from solution, this means you need to heat the solution to boiling or near to boiling, and it will take time, hopefully hours and not days.

i've never tried this reaction tho, maybe using very fine CaCO3 will speed up the reaction considerably

B(a)P - 4-11-2020 at 01:25

Quote: Originally posted by Fluorite  
so how complicated is it to make calcium nitrate and ammonium carbonate from CaCO3 and NH4NO3?


I presume you are talking about doing this in an aqueous solution? How are you proposing to dissolve the CaCO3? CaCO3 gets less soluble in water with increasing temperature.
Quote: Originally posted by Fluorite  

By the way can copper oxide react with ammonium nitrate/sulfate to make copper nitrate?
And I noticed if this can actually work you can recycle sulfuric acid and make nitric acid without any waste over and over again! But filtering calcium sulfate is annoying af


I am not sure I follow you here. Do you mean a mixture of ammonium nitrate and sulfate to react with copper oxide? The sulfuric acid formed by electrolysis can be recycled to make nitric acid?

Fluorite - 4-11-2020 at 02:41

Quote: Originally posted by B(a)P  
Quote: Originally posted by Fluorite  
so how complicated is it to make calcium nitrate and ammonium carbonate from CaCO3 and NH4NO3?


I presume you are talking about doing this in an aqueous solution? How are you proposing to dissolve the CaCO3? CaCO3 gets less soluble in water with increasing temperature.
Quote: Originally posted by Fluorite  


By the way can copper oxide react with ammonium nitrate/sulfate to make copper nitrate?
And I noticed if this can actually work you can recycle sulfuric acid and make nitric acid without any waste over and over again! But filtering calcium sulfate is annoying af


I am not sure I follow you here. Do you mean a mixture of ammonium nitrate and sulfate to react with copper oxide? The sulfuric acid formed by electrolysis can be recycled to make nitric acid?


I have 2kg mixture of calcium nitrate, calcium ammonium nitrate and ammonium nitrate. I want to turn all these products to nitric acid most importantly and ammonium hydroxide as cheap as possible, I know adding sulfuric acid to Ca(NO3) can make nitric acid conveniently without distillation cuz I don't have any glassware expect beakers. And copper can be helpful if I can make copper nitrate or sulfate this can help me because copper sulfate can be electrolysed to yield sulfuric acid if you have any ideas please do not hesitate

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B(a)P - 5-11-2020 at 00:37

If you don't have distillation glassware then I see no other way.
It is probably worthy of note that you can acquire the equipment you need to distil HNO3 relatively cheaply, this then opens up a bunch of routes to HNO3 that would make good use of your calcium ammonium nitrate.

chornedsnorkack - 5-11-2020 at 01:01

Note that ammonium nitrate is actually miscible with water in all proportions.

Seriously. Dry ammonium nitrate melts at 170 Celsius.

Ammonium nitrate melt starts appreciably decomposing above 200 Celsius (to dinitrogen monoxide, mainly).

How liable is ammonium nitrate melt at 170...200 Celsius to react with metal carbonates like calcium carbonate? Removal of both ammonia and carbon dioxide should drive the reaction ahead.

B(a)P - 5-11-2020 at 01:27

Quote: Originally posted by chornedsnorkack  
Note that ammonium nitrate is actually miscible with water in all proportions.

Seriously. Dry ammonium nitrate melts at 170 Celsius.

Ammonium nitrate melt starts appreciably decomposing above 200 Celsius (to dinitrogen monoxide, mainly).

How liable is ammonium nitrate melt at 170...200 Celsius to react with metal carbonates like calcium carbonate? Removal of both ammonia and carbon dioxide should drive the reaction ahead.


I don't think this will work. Calcium carbonate does not appear to be particularly soluble in molten ammonia nitrate. This is just a patent though, maybe worth trialing.
https://patents.google.com/patent/US3421878A/en

Fluorite - 5-11-2020 at 02:13

So adding the ammonium nitrate to a sulfuric acid dcm mixture and decanting the dcm layer is the best option right? Ammonium sulfate isn't soluble in dcm

B(a)P - 5-11-2020 at 02:22

Quote: Originally posted by Fluorite  
So adding the ammonium nitrate to a sulfuric acid dcm mixture and decanting the dcm layer is the best option right? Ammonium sulfate isn't soluble in dcm


I think you are right, I can't see another way.
Is distillation equipment out of the question? Have you asked your secrete santa:D?
I do like your commitment to the non-distillation pathway:D. Best of luck with it.