Great video, Zach. I never get tired of seeing a ton of homebrewed HNO3 in a receiving flask. It's like seeing a pan of cookies pulled out of the oven!😍🙌🏼🌟
@@LabCoatz_Sciencefascinating I have witnessed my chemistry teacher in high school chemistry studies add nitric acid to copper to create nitrogen dioxide gas we did of course have proper safety protocols and equipment in place but I have always assumed that nitrogen dioxide is a highly toxic gas but when I saw you mention it in this video I realised that nitrogen dioxide gas is only mildly toxic. Of course it would still be bad news to inhale nitrogen dioxide but I didn't know that it's a mildly toxic gas and not a highly toxic gas
@@craigpater6278It depends, "mildly" and "highly" are relative and imprecise concepts. Nitrogen dioxide is indeed quite toxic, and in fact it's listed as a health risk 4 in the NFPA diamond. For comparison these are the permissible levels (PEL), Immediately dangerous (IDLH), and lethal (LCt 50) of various toxic chemicals. Ammonia: PEL 50 ppm, IDLH 300 ppm, LCt50 ~100'000 ppm min Hydrogen chloride: PEL 5 ppm, IDLH 50 ppm, LCt50 ~60'000 ppm min Nitrogen dioxide: PEL 5 ppm, IDLH 13 ppm, LCt50 ~10'000 ppm min Chlorine: PEL 1 ppm, IDLH 10 ppm, LCt50 ~20'000 ppm min Phosgene: PEL 0.1 ppm, IDLH 2 ppm, LCt50 500 ppm min Hydrogen cyanide: PEL 10 ppm, IDLH 50 ppm, LCt50 1800 ppm min Sarin: IDLH 0.016 ppm, LCt50 14 ppm min Source: wikipedia.
That was pretty cool to watch but I fear what led the final product down ie concentration of 90% as opposed to what should be ideally close to 99% was using too little sulfuric acid and excessive nitrate What most people don't understand is excessive sulfuric acid both reacts all the way turning it into more concentration as well as being a dehydrating agent extracts all the water out too-you might want to do a rerun with at least 200 ml of sulfuric acid more so if your using 93% impure grade acid and you'll get close to 99% acid if you use 200-250 ml of the acid if you only used 120 ml earlier That ALSO is the reason using sodium bisulfate and a nitrate salt never gives you that concentration of acid as it's not a dehydrating agent unlike the sulfuric acid which is a strong dehydrating agent and has strong affinity for water these are facts few know about or want to reveal but I love the effort you put inside and hope you'll do 1 better next time Also as a chemist myself maybe you can attempt one on making pure perchloric acid which has never been attempted closest was chloric acid
Thank you for your time in producing these videos. It doesn't matter how many others have done a video on a process or reaction. Everyone does it slightly different and this is useful to learn technique from.
"Labcoatz, how can I make Fluoroantimonic acid?" "Why first you need a tube of fluorinated toothpaste...." Meanwhile off camera MacGyver and The A-Team breathlessly take notes...
AYOOOOO this is super cool! I have always wanted to experiment with fuming nitric acid so ima definitely try this! btw that magnesium reaction was INSANE!
You can also use a bubbler with nitrogen gas clear up the nitric acid and get rid of the yellow color, but you are going to have to store them in an inert gas in an air tight container if you want to keep it that way.
@Experimental Chemistry I haven't ever do it with oxygen, but I would think that would create even more nitrogen dioxide (the orange stuff). I have done the nitrogen bubble method before and it cleans it up to a clear solution.
The H2SO4with nitrate is best way to HNO3 bisulfate method is good, but produces an impressive volume of dark N02 vapors that even overwhelm a funnel traps with KOH. You like magnesium, you should try burning it between 2 hollowed out dry ice bricks, it uses the CO2 as an oxygen source, very primeval juxtaposition of cryogenic and blinding hot, 2278c between then.
While most people think wearing nitrile gloves is a smart idea to keep the nitric acid off of you, it is very much a bad idea to let nitric acid come in to contact with nitrile gloves. Depending on the purity of the acid, temp of it, it can take a few seconds to almost instantly bursting in to flames. Butyl gloves are what you need for that.
Thats why i took off the nitrile gloves when working with it (reagent for identity testing of pharmaceuticals). Rather acid burns than molten nitrile burned into my skin😂
for people who live in Canada you should still be able to get magnesium nitrate from farm fertilizer suppliers without them looking oddity at you or questioning you too much. It's still pretty cheap too... around $60 for a 25kg bag... and the magnesium sulfate that's produced is easy to clean out of the glassware, unlike with calcium.
Great work. Well explained and good warnings. Chemical reactions are things that should not be attempted with out complete knowledge of effects. Stay safe and advance knowledge every chance tou can.
Perhaps the fumes from sulfuric acid are reacted with potassium nitrate to produce NO2 gas and this gas is condensed into liquid and collected into a container to produce a fuming nitric acid concentration without direct contact with water.
I don't think I have seen anyone else give alternatives for the starting chemicals. Thank you so much for doing so. A lot of people just say to use ammonium nitrate, but that's literally impossible to get where I live. I also don't know if sulfuric acid is possible to get here. (Of course both are possible to get with a license, but I assume that even with a license, it's gonna be quite difficult to get it shipped.)
Actually, using NH4NO3 and concentrated H2SO4 is a terrible idea. The reaction is so exothermic it will often cause unreacted NH4NO3 to detonate! P. S. Where I live one can buy NH4NO3 from fertilizer stores, but cold packs are virtually unheard off, no matter they are made with NH4NO3 or urea, lol!
note: bisulfate method will go out of its way to try and kill you, being said by someone who has tried this method you will get a literal 4 inch stream of nitrogen dioxide gas from the distillation apparatus and the nitric acid you get over will be green from all of the N2O3 formed, it will explode your bottle if you try to cap it and no matter how much you try to purify it, enough NO2 is dissolved that it still will burst the cap
@Regal potassium bisulfate does not form hydrates, sodium does, and indeed the acid is closer to 70-80% typically which matches with the stuff by distilling sulfuric acid with stock KNO3 that hasnt been dried in an oven for a few hoirs
In a 1983 college chemistry class, we synthesized something that had NO2 as a byproduct.The instructor told the class that she'd fail anyone who let the reaction get out of control. Thanks to my lab partner heating it up too fast, it got way out of control. The room was cleared out until the reddish fumes were gone. Fortunately, she didn't fail us. 😆
Can i also boil the nitric acid collected in the receiving flask with the same distillation apparatus to remove some of thr water to make it more conc upto98%
You could distill it, but you won't remove any of the water. If you distill 90% nitric acid, the distillate will be the more concentrated acid, and the stuff in the boiling flask will contain most of the water. You'd have to monitor the temperature though, because the distillate will gradually become more dilute until it eventually becomes azeotropic (68%).
what's the best way to clean up the fuming nitric produced in this way to WFNA? i did it the same way but used lab grade reagents, 98% sulfuric and lab grade kno3, and what i got wasn't exactly red but pale yellow which is pretty good
When distilling, pull a vacuum on your apparatus and you'll get water clear NA at around 97-98%. Nobody ever pulls a vacuum when doing this but the product is vastly superior. Dumping ammonium nitrate into the RFNA will also clear it up but you will lose purity because of the water in the AN.
@@MaxfieldMED true. It's just kinda crazy how the government puts bans and restrictions on things that can be used to make or as drugs more than they do things that are or can be immediately harmful. You can buy gunpowder with little issue. Or the chemicals to make your own. But you need tons of info or checks to buy Sudafed, spray paint or glue for model rockets. (The former because you can make meth with it, even though new formulas have things that make it where you can't. And can only even be sold in certain counties without a prescription. The latter ones because you can huff it to get high apparently? Even though you can do the same with gasoline?) I'm just saying the standards and rules they make for things, much like most of the US government, makes no sense and follows no obvious logic.
What can one recommend as a substitution for potassium nitrate or ammonium nitrate? It's pretty much unavailable/banned here, the only thing you can get is Ammonium Sulphate Nitrate, which contains about 7% nitrate. Would that work?
Don't know how I missed this, I guess RFNA is pretty easy to make at home! That's both interesting, comforting and scary. edit, finished the video, I only watched the basic nitric acid synthesis, technically in from a rocket standpoint RFNA is HNO3 with dissolved NO2 in it, which is why it fumes. Still very a interesting watch!
Could anything useful come from nitroglycerin pills used for heart attacks is my real question. Also, I don't recommend cold packs. Meth cooks use those and might draw unwanted attention.
Do the enhanced air burning process next. N2 + O2 -[electric arc]-> 2 NO 2 NO + O2 -> 2 NO2 2 NO2 -> N2O4 N2O4 + O3 -> N2O5 + O2 N2O5 is nitric anhydride, “130%“ nitric acid is achievable with this. *The N2O4 oxidation might be just liquified NO2 at 10C reacting with ozone via a radical-mediated reaction: NO2 + O3 -> [NO3](-) + O2(+) First ozone creates a nitro radical that acquires a negative charge and the remaining oxygen turns into an dioxygenyl radical with a positive charge. NO2 + [O2](+) -> [NO2](+) + O2 Then the dioxygenyl positive charge is immediately exchanged for a nitronium ion which then forms the ionic solid anhydride: NO2(+) + NO3(-) -> N2O5
Always nice to see a simple synthesis done professionally. Except--seeing you handling capfuls of 90% nitric acid with your bare hands was a bit surprising.
I don't actually have any major plans for it currently, besides mixing it with ammonia borane to get a hypergolic reaction. I also might try making some hydroxylamine nitrate, the "impossible to make yourself" chemical Integza mentioned a while back that can be made into electrically-responsive rocket fuel. But we'll see what happens!
@@LabCoatz_Science that would be really cool for you to try that rocket propellant. I'm sure it would be hard to make at any useful scale like they do (or sell/market without violating patent or something) but I would have to believe you could make something with similar results yourself. (If you have chemicals, apparatus and experience. Of which I definitely do not currently.) I sent a message to Explosions and Fire about it, as it seems like something he would definitely attempt. But never heard back, so don't know if he got or not.
What happens if you put magnesium inside of a dissolvable capsule kind of like a paintball without the paint and then you dropped it into A large concentration of nitric acid and the capsule had time to dissolve I wonder what would happen if it was submerged when the two came in contact😅 also awesome fiery chemical things that can kill you lol
You get better results if you purify the Spectricide via recrystallization. Also, boil the drain cleaner to consume organic additives and evap slightly more water. The fuming nitric I make this way sets nitrile gloves on fire almost immediately.
The Spectricide was already listed as 100% pure (although I'd assume it's more like 99%), so I wouldn't worry too much about recrystallizing. I would boil the sulfuric acid to up the concentration though, although the MSDS for this brand (Kleen Out Drain Opener) claims it is just 93-99% sulfuric and water with no additives.
@LabCoatz Yeah Spevtracide is more like 98-99%. Loads of contaminants. I've done both ways... purifying Spectracide and slightly concentrating H2SO4 drain cleaner produces superior HNO3. Definitely worth the extra effort. Without purification HNO3 is about 84%-86%. With purification, WFNA concentration is usually above 89%.
Once I concentrated drain cleaner to 98% via distillation and reacted with purified, 100% KNO3 crystals. This made some amazing 94%-97% WFNA. Oxidized kerosene instantly.
I so hope you are not going to store it the way you showed in the video. No sealed vessel containing RFNA should be filled more than a third of the volume, otherwise the gas build-up from the acid decomposition could cause an explosion. Also, make sure to vent the vessel every 1 month or so, to keep the pressure build-up in check! Oh, and please do not try making HNO3 from NH4NO3 and conc. H2SO4, that reaction is very exothermic, so unreacted ammonium nitrate can easily go boom!
@Experimental Chemistry or a glass stopper (I am thinking a screw cap might allow pressure build-up while a stopper is simply pushed up if the gases accumulate), but in deed no plastic should be used with concentrated nitric acid.
There is no specific temperature, since the nitric acid itself forms automatically. Basically, just heat it as hard as you want and collect whatever distills!
Is there any way to avoid the disolved N02 in the acid (probably what's giving it that orange color)? Considering the cost of buying nitric acid and the shipping issues, making it this way if you don't need a huge amount makes a lot of sense.
It doesn't make a huge difference to the acid, but you can get rid of the nitrogen oxides by adding a small amount of peroxide to it. I have heard you can get similar results by bubbling dry air through the acid, but I'm not sure how well this works.
If you don't need fuming HNO3 just use dilute H2SO4 which produces much less NO2. If you need fuming nitric acid you could try to cool the reactants before mixing and distill under reduced pressure to prevent decomposition. Dry air or a slight vacuum also remove some dissolved nitrogen oxides. There are also other methods like urea or NH3 but they are more difficult
That is stupidly easy to make. I will say and I have never seen why this is or how to fix it but it seems like instant cold pack makers put some kind of oil or chemical on their ammonium nitrate. I tried using it for rocket fuel and it gave me all kinds of problems where pure ammonium nitrate didn't, and you can just feel it on there like a greasy film. Probably some safety thing. Wasn't good as my oxidizer but I had a bountiful garden that year lol
What will you do next? Nitrocellulose? Freezing Fuming Nitric Acid? Also, I'd be interesting in seeing how you reuse the byproducts in such reactions. Its one thing to make the stuff you need on a budget; +1 if you can use the byproducts for something else as well.
Well, the potassium bisulfate byproduct can be thermally decomposed into sulfur trioxide, but this didn't really work well when I tried it. I might try again though! And as for the nitric acid, I don't really have any big plans for it yet, besides reacting it with ammonia borane in a hypergolic fireball, lol!
after some research I found iron oxide on silicone could produce a 77% conversion of 25% s02 to s03 for anyone interested. Would love to see a video of sulphuric acid produced in this way! @LabCoatz
I've made several attempts to distill HNO3 using potassium nitrate and sodium bisulfate and no amount of heating would generate a meaningful amount of acid. My only guess is that using bisulfate requires NaNO3
I also tried NaHSO4 and KNO3. It kinda worked but not as good as with NaNO3 like NurdRage showed. It probably has to do with the far worse solubility of KNO3
@hantrio4327 what kind of yield did you get with NaNO3? Cause I have a lot of it and NaHSO4 is far cheaper than H2SO4. Even if the yield is lower than with H2SO4 the cheap chemicals will make it worth it.
I'd assume anyone actually performing this reaction will know what precautions to take, but your warnings seemed to give a different impression of NO2 toxicity than I've been led to believe. Going by NIOSH IDLH standards, per Wikipedia, it's not quite phosgene (2ppm), but it's basically as bad as chlorine gas (10ppm, vs 13ppm for NO2). Not sure I'd give the advice that it's "mildly toxic". 500mg set loose in, say an average size spare room (2.5x3x4m=30m^3, x1.2kg/m^3=36kg atmosphere, 0.5/36000=~14ppm) would seem to be considered "Immediately Dangerous to Life and Health". Love your videos though!
I appreciate your concern, but I was simply quoting what most reputable sources say. You're right, nitrogen dioxide is more like chlorine than phosgene, but in more ways than you might think. Like chlorine, nitrogen dioxide's toxicity mainly comes from its corrosive properties: it doesn't typically poison you in the traditional sense. While a quick breath of concentrated phosgene or hydrogen sulfide could render you unconscious in under a minute, nitrogen dioxide and chlorine would mostly cause extreme discomfort, coughing, and potentially lung damage. Essentially, if the dose is high enough to be harmful, you'll be feeling it in a very unpleasant way. That being said, chronic low-level exposure can lead to asthma-like symptoms though, so it's still best to avoid breathing it. I typically use a respirator while working around it.
Not really, but you can get "nitromethanes", which would be mostly nitroform (trinitromethane) and tetranitromethane. I don't think you'd get much, if any, ordinary nitromethane (mononitromethane) from nitric acid and acetone!
As long as the lid isn't made of plastic. Only teflon and glass should be in contact with the acid and its vapors, everything else either degrade or ignites. I put a link in the video description to the bottle I used, which has a Teflon (PTFE) stopper.
I've noticed the warning labels are becoming almost useless because the tendency to overstate the danger leading people to ignore them completely. Question, nitrogen dioxide... how bad is it???
Like I said in the video, it's moderately toxic. Breathing it in isn't a death sentence, but if you inhale a bunch of it directly, you can suffer lung damage and other issues (although with one accidental breath at high concentration, you'd probably just cough). Repeated exposure can cause respiratory issues like asthma though. Overall, it's more like chlorine than cyanide: it causes damage, but it's not a serious poison.
You can easily google MSDS for nearly every chemical to get base line safety information. PS. MSDS stands for Material Safety Data Sheet. A MSDS is required to be easily available for every chemical used by a business in many countries.
Touching the bottle of 90% fuming nitric acid that looks like it could easily drip without gloves and doing a potentially violent reaction nearby the open nitric acid bottle makes me nervous.... Noting bad happened, but if poor safety protocols are adopted long term, something bad will be statistically likely.
@@psykosis101 Does it not also cause your hands to burst into flames? According to the university of Maryland, proper procedure is to use a heavy-duty chemical resistant glove in a compatible material, such as neoprene.
@@psykosis101 So you're telling me to not use gloves because they burst into flames. Then you tell me gloves aren't needed because there's enough time to wash your hands first. Don't use gloves with fuming nitric acid? You're out of your fucking mind.
Just a word of warning for hobby chemists living in the EU If you are a resident of ANY EU country this process is illegal. Explosives laws have outlawed most nitrates, chlorates sulfuric acid and nitric acid ( most of these are allowed in low concentrations ). What you do with this information is up to you.
Great video, Zach. I never get tired of seeing a ton of homebrewed HNO3 in a receiving flask. It's like seeing a pan of cookies pulled out of the oven!😍🙌🏼🌟
Grandma's freshly baked nitric never fails to delight!🤤
@@LabCoatz_Science 😂😂
@@LabCoatz_Sciencefascinating I have witnessed my chemistry teacher in high school chemistry studies add nitric acid to copper to create nitrogen dioxide gas we did of course have proper safety protocols and equipment in place but I have always assumed that nitrogen dioxide is a highly toxic gas but when I saw you mention it in this video I realised that nitrogen dioxide gas is only mildly toxic. Of course it would still be bad news to inhale nitrogen dioxide but I didn't know that it's a mildly toxic gas and not a highly toxic gas
@@craigpater6278It depends, "mildly" and "highly" are relative and imprecise concepts. Nitrogen dioxide is indeed quite toxic, and in fact it's listed as a health risk 4 in the NFPA diamond. For comparison these are the permissible levels (PEL), Immediately dangerous (IDLH), and lethal (LCt 50) of various toxic chemicals.
Ammonia: PEL 50 ppm, IDLH 300 ppm, LCt50 ~100'000 ppm min
Hydrogen chloride: PEL 5 ppm, IDLH 50 ppm, LCt50 ~60'000 ppm min
Nitrogen dioxide: PEL 5 ppm, IDLH 13 ppm, LCt50 ~10'000 ppm min
Chlorine: PEL 1 ppm, IDLH 10 ppm, LCt50 ~20'000 ppm min
Phosgene: PEL 0.1 ppm, IDLH 2 ppm, LCt50 500 ppm min
Hydrogen cyanide: PEL 10 ppm, IDLH 50 ppm, LCt50 1800 ppm min
Sarin: IDLH 0.016 ppm, LCt50 14 ppm min
Source: wikipedia.
That was pretty cool to watch but I fear what led the final product down ie concentration of 90% as opposed to what should be ideally close to 99% was using too little sulfuric acid and excessive nitrate
What most people don't understand is excessive sulfuric acid both reacts all the way turning it into more concentration as well as being a dehydrating agent extracts all the water out too-you might want to do a rerun with at least 200 ml of sulfuric acid more so if your using 93% impure grade acid and you'll get close to 99% acid if you use 200-250 ml of the acid if you only used 120 ml earlier
That ALSO is the reason using sodium bisulfate and a nitrate salt never gives you that concentration of acid as it's not a dehydrating agent unlike the sulfuric acid which is a strong dehydrating agent and has strong affinity for water these are facts few know about or want to reveal but I love the effort you put inside and hope you'll do 1 better next time
Also as a chemist myself maybe you can attempt one on making pure perchloric acid which has never been attempted closest was chloric acid
I can't tell you how many times I've done this synthesis lol. It's engrained into my brain.
Epic as usual
Great job on video.
Love your channel. It doesn't matter if others have done the same. You are giving more insight into over the counter options
Yes. Going to OTC makes it more relatable
Thank you for your time in producing these videos.
It doesn't matter how many others have done a video on a process or reaction. Everyone does it slightly different and this is useful to learn technique from.
"Labcoatz, how can I make Fluoroantimonic acid?"
"Why first you need a tube of fluorinated toothpaste...."
Meanwhile off camera MacGyver and The A-Team breathlessly take notes...
Pretty awesome! Great information. Question is sulfuric acid from a car will ok to use?
I watch alot of chemistry videos and this is one of the good ones, reminds me of nilered and nurdrage. Good quality!
Use sulfuric acid as the grease for your lab glass joints.
These reactions looked really interesting, especially the ones with sulfur chloride and magnesium!
Keep up the good work!
AYOOOOO this is super cool! I have always wanted to experiment with fuming nitric acid so ima definitely try this! btw that magnesium reaction was INSANE!
You can also use a bubbler with nitrogen gas clear up the nitric acid and get rid of the yellow color, but you are going to have to store them in an inert gas in an air tight container if you want to keep it that way.
Just heat can drive off the no2 to get white fuming nitric
@Experimental Chemistry I haven't ever do it with oxygen, but I would think that would create even more nitrogen dioxide (the orange stuff).
I have done the nitrogen bubble method before and it cleans it up to a clear solution.
The H2SO4with nitrate is best way to HNO3 bisulfate method is good, but produces an impressive volume of dark N02 vapors that even overwhelm a funnel traps with KOH. You like magnesium, you should try burning it between 2 hollowed out dry ice bricks, it uses the CO2 as an oxygen source, very primeval juxtaposition of cryogenic and blinding hot, 2278c between then.
While most people think wearing nitrile gloves is a smart idea to keep the nitric acid off of you, it is very much a bad idea to let nitric acid come in to contact with nitrile gloves. Depending on the purity of the acid, temp of it, it can take a few seconds to almost instantly bursting in to flames. Butyl gloves are what you need for that.
safety.fsu.edu/safety_manual/OSHA%20Glove%20Selection%20Chart.pdf butyl will work, but neoprene rubber is better.
bare hands whenever i use concentrated fuming nitric acid
Thats why i took off the nitrile gloves when working with it (reagent for identity testing of pharmaceuticals). Rather acid burns than molten nitrile burned into my skin😂
If it's azeotropic nitric acid or lower, nitrile is fine, just change them often. It's the fuming stuff that puts gloves on fire.
for people who live in Canada you should still be able to get magnesium nitrate from farm fertilizer suppliers without them looking oddity at you or questioning you too much. It's still pretty cheap too... around $60 for a 25kg bag... and the magnesium sulfate that's produced is easy to clean out of the glassware, unlike with calcium.
The MgSO4's quite a handy thing to have around anyway.
@@EddieTheH yep... it's good when the waste product doesn't have to go to waste.
Great vid good sir! Looking forward to the special!
I am somwhat obsessed with nitric acid. What a tasty video.
Great work. Well explained and good warnings. Chemical reactions are things that should not be attempted with out complete knowledge of effects. Stay safe and advance knowledge every chance tou can.
I'd love to see the alternitive ingredient method as well.
Perhaps the fumes from sulfuric acid are reacted with potassium nitrate to produce NO2 gas and this gas is condensed into liquid and collected into a container to produce a fuming nitric acid concentration without direct contact with water.
I don't think I have seen anyone else give alternatives for the starting chemicals. Thank you so much for doing so. A lot of people just say to use ammonium nitrate, but that's literally impossible to get where I live. I also don't know if sulfuric acid is possible to get here. (Of course both are possible to get with a license, but I assume that even with a license, it's gonna be quite difficult to get it shipped.)
Actually, using NH4NO3 and concentrated H2SO4 is a terrible idea. The reaction is so exothermic it will often cause unreacted NH4NO3 to detonate!
P. S. Where I live one can buy NH4NO3 from fertilizer stores, but cold packs are virtually unheard off, no matter they are made with NH4NO3 or urea, lol!
you can try phosphoric acid 85% its easier to find
note: bisulfate method will go out of its way to try and kill you, being said by someone who has tried this method you will get a literal 4 inch stream of nitrogen dioxide gas from the distillation apparatus and the nitric acid you get over will be green from all of the N2O3 formed, it will explode your bottle if you try to cap it and no matter how much you try to purify it, enough NO2 is dissolved that it still will burst the cap
@Regal potassium bisulfate does not form hydrates, sodium does, and indeed the acid is closer to 70-80% typically which matches with the stuff by distilling sulfuric acid with stock KNO3 that hasnt been dried in an oven for a few hoirs
@@SuperAngelofglory no it most definitely won't detonate. You have no idea what you speak of.
In a 1983 college chemistry class, we synthesized something that had NO2 as a byproduct.The instructor told the class that she'd fail anyone who let the reaction get out of control. Thanks to my lab partner heating it up too fast, it got way out of control. The room was cleared out until the reddish fumes were gone. Fortunately, she didn't fail us. 😆
GREAT VIDEO!!
cant wait to watch this tomorrow
Very nice video..keep up the good work
Can i also boil the nitric acid collected in the receiving flask with the same distillation apparatus to remove some of thr water to make it more conc upto98%
You could distill it, but you won't remove any of the water. If you distill 90% nitric acid, the distillate will be the more concentrated acid, and the stuff in the boiling flask will contain most of the water. You'd have to monitor the temperature though, because the distillate will gradually become more dilute until it eventually becomes azeotropic (68%).
what's the best way to clean up the fuming nitric produced in this way to WFNA? i did it the same way but used lab grade reagents, 98% sulfuric and lab grade kno3, and what i got wasn't exactly red but pale yellow which is pretty good
When distilling, pull a vacuum on your apparatus and you'll get water clear NA at around 97-98%. Nobody ever pulls a vacuum when doing this but the product is vastly superior.
Dumping ammonium nitrate into the RFNA will also clear it up but you will lose purity because of the water in the AN.
Last part of igniting the mixture of Mg and Mg(NO3)2 was best
Good to see positive comment
gotta specify this is american OTC chemicals lmao
Indeed. Nitrates and sulphuric acid is not very easily obtained everywhere
Yeah, here is America, they seem to only care and limit chemicals you can make drugs with, lol.
@@justinbanks2380 too true
@@justinbanks2380 You have to also be very careful making any amount of energetics in terms of making sure you’re fully legal!
@@MaxfieldMED true. It's just kinda crazy how the government puts bans and restrictions on things that can be used to make or as drugs more than they do things that are or can be immediately harmful.
You can buy gunpowder with little issue.
Or the chemicals to make your own.
But you need tons of info or checks to buy Sudafed, spray paint or glue for model rockets. (The former because you can make meth with it, even though new formulas have things that make it where you can't. And can only even be sold in certain counties without a prescription. The latter ones because you can huff it to get high apparently? Even though you can do the same with gasoline?)
I'm just saying the standards and rules they make for things, much like most of the US government, makes no sense and follows no obvious logic.
I bet the city will be super happy to see you making good use of their manhole cover! hahaha
_(yea, I'd probably be doing the exact same thing...)_
thanks bro u helped me so much
What can one recommend as a substitution for potassium nitrate or ammonium nitrate? It's pretty much unavailable/banned here, the only thing you can get is Ammonium Sulphate Nitrate, which contains about 7% nitrate. Would that work?
So I have quite a bit of ammonium Nitrate, reagent grade. If I understood you, I can use this in a distillation to get high grade fuming HN03?
What are the white deposits that collect on the lid of the nitric acid storage container?
Don't know how I missed this, I guess RFNA is pretty easy to make at home! That's both interesting, comforting and scary.
edit, finished the video, I only watched the basic nitric acid synthesis, technically in from a rocket standpoint RFNA is HNO3 with dissolved NO2 in it, which is why it fumes. Still very a interesting watch!
Could anything useful come from nitroglycerin pills used for heart attacks is my real question.
Also, I don't recommend cold packs. Meth cooks use those and might draw unwanted attention.
Do the enhanced air burning process next.
N2 + O2 -[electric arc]-> 2 NO
2 NO + O2 -> 2 NO2
2 NO2 -> N2O4
N2O4 + O3 -> N2O5 + O2
N2O5 is nitric anhydride, “130%“ nitric acid is achievable with this.
*The N2O4 oxidation might be just liquified NO2 at 10C reacting with ozone via a radical-mediated reaction:
NO2 + O3 -> [NO3](-) + O2(+)
First ozone creates a nitro radical that acquires a negative charge and the remaining oxygen turns into an dioxygenyl radical with a positive charge.
NO2 + [O2](+) -> [NO2](+) + O2
Then the dioxygenyl positive charge is immediately exchanged for a nitronium ion which then forms the ionic solid anhydride:
NO2(+) + NO3(-) -> N2O5
Can you make the nitric acid from the air? (by using electricity to force nitrogen to react with oxygen)
Always nice to see a simple synthesis done professionally. Except--seeing you handling capfuls of 90% nitric acid with your bare hands was a bit surprising.
Oh, that wasn't nitric acid, lol. That was the methanol and acetone, the nitric acid was in the pipette!
@@LabCoatz_Science Oh, lol, my bad!
Planning on making some nitrocellulose with this? Or something else?
I don't actually have any major plans for it currently, besides mixing it with ammonia borane to get a hypergolic reaction. I also might try making some hydroxylamine nitrate, the "impossible to make yourself" chemical Integza mentioned a while back that can be made into electrically-responsive rocket fuel. But we'll see what happens!
@@LabCoatz_Science that would be really cool for you to try that rocket propellant.
I'm sure it would be hard to make at any useful scale like they do (or sell/market without violating patent or something) but I would have to believe you could make something with similar results yourself. (If you have chemicals, apparatus and experience. Of which I definitely do not currently.)
I sent a message to Explosions and Fire about it, as it seems like something he would definitely attempt. But never heard back, so don't know if he got or not.
3:31 Can you name the book you used here?
Awsome video, but I was wondering, what solvent you would use, when you swap the sulfuric acid for a bisulfate-salt?
Nurdrage goes into a lot more detail with this method, but essentially, you use sodium bisulfate monohydrate and it just melts.
Don't forget NurdRage used NaNO3, KNO3 doesn't work that well in my experience.
How long does the potassium nitrate last can you use it a few times or only once
As a reactant in this reaction, it can only ever be used once, since it becomes the nitric acid. Once it is used up and distilled, it's gone forever.
What happens if you put magnesium inside of a dissolvable capsule kind of like a paintball without the paint and then you dropped it into A large concentration of nitric acid and the capsule had time to dissolve I wonder what would happen if it was submerged when the two came in contact😅 also awesome fiery chemical things that can kill you lol
You get better results if you purify the Spectricide via recrystallization. Also, boil the drain cleaner to consume organic additives and evap slightly more water. The fuming nitric I make this way sets nitrile gloves on fire almost immediately.
The Spectricide was already listed as 100% pure (although I'd assume it's more like 99%), so I wouldn't worry too much about recrystallizing. I would boil the sulfuric acid to up the concentration though, although the MSDS for this brand (Kleen Out Drain Opener) claims it is just 93-99% sulfuric and water with no additives.
@LabCoatz Yeah Spevtracide is more like 98-99%. Loads of contaminants. I've done both ways... purifying Spectracide and slightly concentrating H2SO4 drain cleaner produces superior HNO3. Definitely worth the extra effort. Without purification HNO3 is about 84%-86%. With purification, WFNA concentration is usually above 89%.
At least these are the results that I have been duplicating for the past few years.
Once I concentrated drain cleaner to 98% via distillation and reacted with purified, 100% KNO3 crystals. This made some amazing 94%-97% WFNA. Oxidized kerosene instantly.
Everybody gets shit if they're not pulling a vacuum on the distillation... NA decomposes at boiling temps at atmospheric pressure.
I so hope you are not going to store it the way you showed in the video. No sealed vessel containing RFNA should be filled more than a third of the volume, otherwise the gas build-up from the acid decomposition could cause an explosion. Also, make sure to vent the vessel every 1 month or so, to keep the pressure build-up in check!
Oh, and please do not try making HNO3 from NH4NO3 and conc. H2SO4, that reaction is very exothermic, so unreacted ammonium nitrate can easily go boom!
@Experimental Chemistry or a glass stopper (I am thinking a screw cap might allow pressure build-up while a stopper is simply pushed up if the gases accumulate), but in deed no plastic should be used with concentrated nitric acid.
@@SuperAngelofglory The stopper is made out of Teflon, a better choice than glass cause it seals better and does less damage if it shoots out.
to what temperature should you heat these two ingridients?
There is no specific temperature, since the nitric acid itself forms automatically. Basically, just heat it as hard as you want and collect whatever distills!
Is there any way to avoid the disolved N02 in the acid (probably what's giving it that orange color)? Considering the cost of buying nitric acid and the shipping issues, making it this way if you don't need a huge amount makes a lot of sense.
It doesn't make a huge difference to the acid, but you can get rid of the nitrogen oxides by adding a small amount of peroxide to it. I have heard you can get similar results by bubbling dry air through the acid, but I'm not sure how well this works.
If you don't need fuming HNO3 just use dilute H2SO4 which produces much less NO2. If you need fuming nitric acid you could try to cool the reactants before mixing and distill under reduced pressure to prevent decomposition. Dry air or a slight vacuum also remove some dissolved nitrogen oxides. There are also other methods like urea or NH3 but they are more difficult
That is stupidly easy to make. I will say and I have never seen why this is or how to fix it but it seems like instant cold pack makers put some kind of oil or chemical on their ammonium nitrate. I tried using it for rocket fuel and it gave me all kinds of problems where pure ammonium nitrate didn't, and you can just feel it on there like a greasy film. Probably some safety thing. Wasn't good as my oxidizer but I had a bountiful garden that year lol
What will you do next?
Nitrocellulose?
Freezing Fuming Nitric Acid?
Also, I'd be interesting in seeing how you reuse the byproducts in such reactions.
Its one thing to make the stuff you need on a budget; +1 if you can use the byproducts for something else as well.
Well, the potassium bisulfate byproduct can be thermally decomposed into sulfur trioxide, but this didn't really work well when I tried it. I might try again though! And as for the nitric acid, I don't really have any big plans for it yet, besides reacting it with ammonia borane in a hypergolic fireball, lol!
@@LabCoatz_Science Cool stuff. Keep up the great content. Great video as always :)
after some research I found iron oxide on silicone could produce a 77% conversion of 25% s02 to s03 for anyone interested. Would love to see a video of sulphuric acid produced in this way! @LabCoatz
Nicee brooo😮
I've made several attempts to distill HNO3 using potassium nitrate and sodium bisulfate and no amount of heating would generate a meaningful amount of acid. My only guess is that using bisulfate requires NaNO3
I also tried NaHSO4 and KNO3. It kinda worked but not as good as with NaNO3 like NurdRage showed. It probably has to do with the far worse solubility of KNO3
@hantrio4327 what kind of yield did you get with NaNO3? Cause I have a lot of it and NaHSO4 is far cheaper than H2SO4. Even if the yield is lower than with H2SO4 the cheap chemicals will make it worth it.
@@Atomic_Chemist I haven't tried it yet but NurdRage got up to 90% yield I think. You should watch his video it is very informative
Safe to drink right?
Definitely...if it's only a few milligrams diluted in a glass of water!
im a complete layman at this, but enjoy watching....
why does my stump remover not look like yours....lol
Can you use muriatic acid?
How much potassium bisulfate is needed
I'd assume anyone actually performing this reaction will know what precautions to take, but your warnings seemed to give a different impression of NO2 toxicity than I've been led to believe. Going by NIOSH IDLH standards, per Wikipedia, it's not quite phosgene (2ppm), but it's basically as bad as chlorine gas (10ppm, vs 13ppm for NO2). Not sure I'd give the advice that it's "mildly toxic". 500mg set loose in, say an average size spare room (2.5x3x4m=30m^3, x1.2kg/m^3=36kg atmosphere, 0.5/36000=~14ppm) would seem to be considered "Immediately Dangerous to Life and Health".
Love your videos though!
I appreciate your concern, but I was simply quoting what most reputable sources say. You're right, nitrogen dioxide is more like chlorine than phosgene, but in more ways than you might think. Like chlorine, nitrogen dioxide's toxicity mainly comes from its corrosive properties: it doesn't typically poison you in the traditional sense. While a quick breath of concentrated phosgene or hydrogen sulfide could render you unconscious in under a minute, nitrogen dioxide and chlorine would mostly cause extreme discomfort, coughing, and potentially lung damage. Essentially, if the dose is high enough to be harmful, you'll be feeling it in a very unpleasant way. That being said, chronic low-level exposure can lead to asthma-like symptoms though, so it's still best to avoid breathing it. I typically use a respirator while working around it.
Wait, you can make nitromethane like this?
Not really, but you can get "nitromethanes", which would be mostly nitroform (trinitromethane) and tetranitromethane. I don't think you'd get much, if any, ordinary nitromethane (mononitromethane) from nitric acid and acetone!
@@LabCoatz_Science I think there was an E&F video about doing something like this to synthesize nitroform.
good
Can i store fuming nitric acid in transparent glass bottle?
As long as the lid isn't made of plastic. Only teflon and glass should be in contact with the acid and its vapors, everything else either degrade or ignites. I put a link in the video description to the bottle I used, which has a Teflon (PTFE) stopper.
I've noticed the warning labels are becoming almost useless because the tendency to overstate the danger leading people to ignore them completely. Question, nitrogen dioxide... how bad is it???
Like I said in the video, it's moderately toxic. Breathing it in isn't a death sentence, but if you inhale a bunch of it directly, you can suffer lung damage and other issues (although with one accidental breath at high concentration, you'd probably just cough). Repeated exposure can cause respiratory issues like asthma though. Overall, it's more like chlorine than cyanide: it causes damage, but it's not a serious poison.
thanks for the response. It would be nice to have a source for "low noise" safety information.
You can easily google MSDS for nearly every chemical to get base line safety information.
PS. MSDS stands for Material Safety Data Sheet. A MSDS is required to be easily available for every chemical used by a business in many countries.
why i dont see the shop of backyardscience2000 😓😓😭
cool. here's one for the algo
NO2 is so toxic that it needs a specific warning? I thought it was a regular component of gasoline engine exhaust.
Make hypochlorite esters like t-BuOCl
wtf is the incompatibility of nickel and dioxane
No clue, lol. They also said not to mix nitric and sulfuric acid, so evidently not all of these are unstable/dangerous incompatibilities.
Touching the bottle of 90% fuming nitric acid that looks like it could easily drip without gloves and doing a potentially violent reaction nearby the open nitric acid bottle makes me nervous.... Noting bad happened, but if poor safety protocols are adopted long term, something bad will be statistically likely.
You're actually better off NOT wearing gloves when handling fuming nitric as it will cause them to burst into flames
@@psykosis101 Does it not also cause your hands to burst into flames? According to the university of Maryland, proper procedure is to use a heavy-duty chemical resistant glove in a compatible material, such as neoprene.
@@scottm2553 eh, you have enough time to rinse off and dilute before any serious damage occurs
@@psykosis101 So you're telling me to not use gloves because they burst into flames. Then you tell me gloves aren't needed because there's enough time to wash your hands first. Don't use gloves with fuming nitric acid? You're out of your fucking mind.
Well,next buy some hexamine tablets and nitrate them and get RDX😂
mix it with glycerin :D
Hype
Just a word of warning for hobby chemists living in the EU
If you are a resident of ANY EU country this process is illegal.
Explosives laws have outlawed most nitrates, chlorates sulfuric acid and nitric acid ( most of these are allowed in low concentrations ).
What you do with this information is up to you.
No one cares about stupid laws
Can you drop the magnesium into the acid, or drop the acid on a bar of magnesium, like those solid magnesium black camping lighters?