Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Ammonium Chloride, fairly pure?

ripple - 8-7-2012 at 22:31

I'm helping a buddy get a Koi pond started and another pond properly conditioned. Both involve a lot of buffery type chemicules, and the Koi people charge through the nose. This filter he bought requires around 2kg of ammonium chloride, along with a bacterial culture, to "prime" the "bio-filter" and the place that sells the fish wants $35 for 500g! :o

What other industries use this in fairly pure form? I don't want to risk introducing persistent contaminants with lesser grade, but to hell with the fish peddling scum for charging analytical grade prices because they put "Koi" on the label.


woelen - 8-7-2012 at 22:57

On eBay you frequently find ammonium chloride for decent prices (at least in the EU, I only check offerings from that area). High quality ammonium chloride should not cost you more than $10 per 500 grams or so, probably less.

dann2 - 9-7-2012 at 05:48


Where in the world are you?

I know for a fact that Ammonium Chloride has been used as a feed additve for intensively fed lambs (young sheep) to stop there water works from plugging up.
It is available from some local farm stores. (UK).

hissingnoise - 9-7-2012 at 06:01

Wanting NH4Cl once, I heated, in a shallow dish, a finely powdered mixture of NH4NO3 and NACl.
The sublimed salt was allowed to precipitate on a cooled glass surface above the mix . . .


Endimion17 - 9-7-2012 at 06:04

35$ for 500 g is incredibly expensive. :O:O:O
They do it because they can, because people are stupid and they buy it, not knowing what that actually is.

You should be able to get ammonium chloride in electronic retail stores. It's used for cleaning the solder pen tips. It's like less than 2.2 american cents per gram, and it comes in blocks of almost 180 grams, as least in my country. I haven't done any specific purity analysis, but it doesn't leave residue on heating.


(BTW what's up with spelling on this site? It's ammonium chloride, not Ammonium Chloride. Geez.)

plante1999 - 9-7-2012 at 06:08

We like to put capitals letters on chem name because we are home chemist, seriously I don't know I do the same thing very often and I think it is because I write a lot of chemical equations.

[Edited on 9-7-2012 by plante1999]

hissingnoise - 9-7-2012 at 06:09

Quote:
(BTW what's up with spelling on this site? It's ammonium chloride, not Ammonium Chloride. Geez.)

Spelling?


Endimion17 - 9-7-2012 at 06:49

dude, don't even...

hissingnoise - 9-7-2012 at 06:53

What? Capitalise?

vmelkon - 9-7-2012 at 10:49

Quote: Originally posted by hissingnoise  
Wanting NH4Cl once, I heated, in a shallow dish, a finely powdered mixture of NH4NO3 and NACl.
The sublimed salt was allowed to precipitate on a cooled glass surface above the mix . . .



Makes sense. NH4Cl sublimates at 338 °C. That should produce a fairly pure salt. It gets rid of transition metal compounds, alkali metal compounds.

hyfalcon - 9-7-2012 at 12:17

I just bought feed grade ammonium chloride from a farm store. Apparently they add it to cattle feed silage. I paid $45.00 for a 50lb. bag.