I once purified 37% ammonia by adding it dropwise (I even used a syringe pump!) to some sodium hydroxide granules, to convert it to the gaseous ammonia, and bubbling the output in pure water. (I wanted it to be free of carbonates). It worked great. So something similar with household ammonia could work too. ^^
@@kevino6416 That was in my old lab, I don't work there anymore, and I don't have a use for that stuff in the foreseeable future. But I _do_ plan to make more chemistry videos! ^^
I'll admit: I only understand about 10% of the content. But I still find chemistry fascinating. And the videos are still interesting to watch. Like ASMR for a nerd/enthusiast.
The reaction between NaOH and NH4NO3 can be run more "gently" by pre-cooling both in the freezer, then just adding an ice cube as the "catalytic" water.
Ostwald process! Yeaah!!! I would love to see a video series about the Ostwald process, like you did with sodium production. OTC nitric acid production for amateur chemists is the next level. Astral Chemistry proved, that it´s possible. And i think you can bring this to perfection!
I am not a trained Chemist however, I worked in the QC lab at a Ink Manufacture where we used Aqueous Ammonia in solution to liquify Acrylic Resin chip. When added to solution it never created suds. All Ammonia sold in the Grocery stores have surfactants. If your Ammonia forms suds when added into H2o then it's not pure....Your Urea process created Ammonia solution at the concentration we used for liquifying resin so congrats on that. ..Oh and for some reason I miss the smell of Ammonia, To this day 25 years later I can directly smell a bottle of store Amm. and not even flinch.
FYI, if you're looking for larger amounts of Urea than what you find in cold packs, Diesel Exhaust Fluid is just a fairly saturated solution of 45% Urea & 55% water. I would imagine that you can make some fairly concentrated ammonia using DEF & Crystal drain opener without really concentrating or modifying either product. The DEF would contain a little more than the preferred amount of water, and sometimes the drain opener is a mix of KOH & NaOH, but it would be super quick in a pinch... 🤷♂️
One thing I thought was unusual was researcher saying you don't want to let urine degrade into ammonia before applying to a crop, yet, farmers side dress corn crops with anhydrous ammonia. So, I am guessing, you can side dress crops with straight urine.
Urea can also be bought as Diesel exhaust fluid in an aqueous solution of 32.5% urea and 67.5% deionized water. Not sure how the prices compare to coldpacks or fertilizer, though.
Hello NR, I actually done succesfully this type of acquiring ammonia. Here's a tip, don't dissolve urea in water and don't use NaOH. Simply heat up the urea. During the process the ammonia gas is formed and urea condenses to form biuret.
Hey NurdRage, you could try the ammonium nitrate method by not using an NaOH solution. Instead, you could try just mixing the two ingredients dry in your reaction flask, and adding an addition funnel with a minimal amount of water. As you said, it is less controllable than the urea method, but it will produce relatively drier ammonia with minimal additional drying steps, as heat is not needed, and will not bring over any extra water. Additionally, with this method you can also produce sodium nitrate as a byproduct, with minimal contaminants, which is an added bonus.
I usually add saturated ammonium chloride solution to solid potassium hydroxide or sodium hydroxide, which works pretty good. And the heat produced lowers the solubility.
Another potential useful source of urea is pet safe sidewalk salt. $10-$12 for a gallon jug of the stuff. The downside is that it is often colored (usually blue).
The only time I’ve ever gotten a strong ammonia solution (around 24%) by heating household ammonia was using ace hardware janitorial ammonia solution as my starter, Walmart ammonia sucks it’s barely even good for cleaning lol although I agree urea and sodium hydroxide is the best route
Whenever I want quick ammonia gas I just slowly dampen a finely ground mixture of the two substances. I've noticed it takes a while for the reaction to go to completion, but with cheap starting materials I've had pretty good yields. Is the release really that uncontrollable? Did you try dropwise addition of water?
I think using ammonium carbonate (which is sold as baking powder) could be also an option. Either by decomposing it at 50°c or by reacting it with calcium hydroxide.
You can add ammonium nitrate in a egg timer fashion to a slurry of calcium hydroxide and collect the gas with crushed ice. The formed calcium nitrate can then be reacted with sulfuric acid to form nitric acid. In the end that would decompose ammonium nitrate into ammonia and nitric acid and leave a residu of calcium sulfate also called gypsum or ordinary plaster.
Thank you for your vids, so well understood. Do you have any compilation videos that can be purchased. It’s difficult to always search back to find what I’m looking at.
I'm here for the chemistry, but I can't help notice the name Mettler Toledo on one of the scales. They make a few QA instruments used at the place I work (now, I don't work on them as I'm a mechanic and not an electrician.. yet, but I've seen that name quite a lot where I work).
So, the urea + propylene glycol + catalyst (I use zinc oxide) => propylene carbonate reaction generates lots and lots of ammonia. Feed it through a gas washer or your other preferred bubbler ... you get a twofer. Also note that the solution becomes less dense as the concentration of ammonia increases, so more room than you might expect is needed.... There might be (probably is) some non-ammonia passing through the bubbler, but I think a lot of it winds up as ammonium carbamate (almost certain) deposited in the reflux condenser and vacuum tubing etc. I'm assuming that something in the mixture is decomposing into something that includes CO2....
I was able to get a better yield by saturating a solution of household ammonia with an excessive amount nacl and applying low heat @ 50c. After the reaction quit bubbling and most of the salt was dissolve the solution had almost no ammonia smell and a ph of 7
90 grams urea, + 120 grams NaOH, then slowly drip water into the solution while heating, ammonia gas is released without foaming, also water can be added all at once, but to stop foaming, add anti-foaming agent (2-octanol, polysiloxane or dimethylpolysiloxane) or I use a teaspoon of silicone or mineral oil which can reduce foaming quite a bit.
Household ammonia path: what if saturate it with some salt to knock down solubility of NH3. Preferably NaOH/KOH, they also should bring ton of -OH ions and shift the equilibria towards free ammonia (same as nitrate path, but w/o nitrate, depends what is cheaper to use).
ash cooked at an extremely high temperature to form a hydroxide, ideally in the abscence of air. something like a clay pot with ash and coals choked off from the air under another fire or conditions similar to a high quality charcoal kiln is what you need, since you dont want the hydroxide to absorb carbon dioxide and form carbonates, you want monoxide-hot level temps. then you simply mix it with urine which is loaded with urea.
May I suggest Ammonium Sulfate and Calcium Oxide (aka Lime). Cheap 25 pound bags in the fertilizer section of Stores. I also used that with acetone to make 2,2,6,6 tetramethyl 4 piperidone. Calcium Hydroxide also works as CaSO4 absorbs water.
@@SheikhN-bible-syndrome he said basically make ammonium chloride with ammonia and HCl then use the ammonium chloride with a base and make ammonia but it would be much easier and skip the first step and just buy ammonium chloride
Can get 25# bags of lime and ammonium sulfate at the garden/hardware store. React in glycol, Calcium Sulfate byproduct dehydrates. Bakery supply has Ammonium Carbonate sold as residue free baking powder. It sublimes at STP as Ammonia and CO2.
Awesome video! One question, and one suggestion. Question: Can the solution in a used instant cold pack really be used as fertilizer as is? Can I literally dump ammonium nitrate onto my kale plants? Suggestion: Please, please, please be more specific when talking about heat. You always say you are heating some random solution, but hardly ever say at what temperature! I have a heat plate, but it only reaches 100C, so I need to know which projects I am capable of doing. Other than that, your videos are amazing, I always feel smarter after watching them!
The temperature is up to the solution. The hotplate has very little to say about it. I'm guessing you think your hotplate only goes to 100 C because you tried it with water. Try it with a can of sand and you'll see what it can really do.
I've accidentally mixed urea and sodium hydroxide by pissing into a toilet after it was cleaned and the cleaner was still in the bowl. Caught me off guard when I got hit by a strong whiff of ammonia.
Urea is the same stuff they use to burn nitrous oxide to nitrogen and water in modern cars. I believe it is first converted to ammonia somehow before injecting into the converter chamber.
@@andrewmackenzie2638 Oh they use it all right. VW had this huge scandal because their new diesel cars were emitting too many nitrous oxides due to them not spraying enough urea into the exhaust system. It's the only way for diesel cars to keep NO emissions below the requirements and it's also coming for gas cars.
@@Electroblud that may be an EU thing. To clarify, I'm not /aware/ of any cars in /Australia/ that use it. My knowledge of Adblue is limited to the basic science behind how it works; I work for a company that produces urea primarily for fertiliser and is also licensed to produce and sell urea solution under the Adblue name
@@andrewmackenzie2638 Interesting.... thanks for the insight! I thought this was a worldwide thing. US measured the emissions and proved they were too high, so I just assumed if they use AdBlue for cars in the US and in the EU, it must be everywhere. Foolish thought. 😅
It's easy to make ammonia gas, take one used bag of cat litter, leave it out in the bin for a few weeks forgetting to put it out to be emptied, accidentally burst the bag, instant cloud of nose-burning ammonia gas, and yes, our cats really take the piss... :P
Plz make video on how to handle glass equipment properly for heating Bcoz i cracked my some beakers but now i have costly borosilicate glass which i afraid to test on heat .
Extractions&Ire devised a much better suckback trap utilizing an aquarium air pump to provide positive pressure on the whole system. Also, I've found that for many purposes (such as the precipitation of silver metal from AgClxNH3 complex) I can simply mix ammonium sulfate fertilizer and alkali together in solution without the need for percolation at all.
What about adding a dehydrating salt to the ammonia solution? Seems hydroxide gets way to hot, unless added REALLY SLOWLY. Chlorides or aulfates? Not feeling chlorides. P205? How about pouring through charcoal? Itll capture the ammonia, perhaps. Then release by heat or place in ice water after ammonia enriched and crush to powder.. idk..
If you have a ace hardware near you they have 10% ammonia that’s very pure so you can boil it into another flask of ace ammonia so your starting with 10% instead of water. You can easily make 30% like this
I did a little reading and i noticed a flaw in the reaction. apparently some amounts of CO2 would be generated by this, potentially tainting the end product with ammonium carbonate, when hydrolizing urea with sodium hydroxide. were you aware of this? or is the contamination negligible?
Ammonium carbonate is extremely soluble in liquid. I’ve made ammonia like this many times and it’s never given me an issue when using the ammonia in other reactions
@@cherrybaderry500 but you cant distill it out. certainly sure, you can use it as an ammonia source for making ammonia salts no problem, but what if you are going with a more efficient approach, meaning you produce a large amount of ammonium hydroxide solution to then distill to a higher concentration. the carbonate wont distill out and represents loss
The Sodium Carbonate may act as a bit of a dessicant too. It's rather hydroscopic itself so may reduce the soluability of NH3 in the reaction mixture. That's pretty good in all honesty. Oh yeah, if you see 25%+ NH3 on Ebay, Don't buy it. Most sellers will not use ADR shipping and will send it in a non-sealed PP container. Had the displeasure of nearly gassing myself when openning a package I ordered with Conc NH3. Not nice, especially when you're not expecting it and aren't wearing your respirator or doing so in a fume hood!
I captured my ammonia in a round bottom flask receiver soaking in a bath of dry ice cooled acetone. It worked very well until I accidently let some water distill over. It was still strong enough to burn my skin on contact as I fumbled to remove the flask. Not a proud moment for me.
for NH4NO3/NaOH method I would try to disolve onely NaOH in water and then dripping it to NH4NO3 powder in a flask. It uses a lot less water so it should give higher yield.
I think you should bubble the gas to the receiving solution by using a taller container. I recommend using a graduated cylinder as your receiving container and inserting the tube at the very bottom of the cylinder. This improves contact between the ammonia gas and the water - increasing your yield significantly.
Could you bubble the gass into a non polar solvent like MEK or toluene so that you can later use it with sodium metals or lithium metals to produce solvated electrons without having having two deal with pure ammonia in order to complete a birch reduction? For people that cant properly have the setup needed for properly using anhydrous ammonia and lithium easily?.
What about thermal decomposition of Ammonia Carbonate? I have been wanting to try it, but since it decomposes into Carbon Dioxide and Ammonia Gas, I am worried bubbling this into distilled water will just yield more Ammonia Carbonate. From research, I have also found Ammonia Carbamate and Urea may also form
IMO, there is a much simpler method. Just mix lime (either calcium oxide or even slaked lime i.e. calcium hydroxide) with ammonium nitrate (fertilizer granules). Needs to be done in a much larger sealed container with a gas tube coming out (to collect the ammonia) and another tube going in (to add the water). Then slowly add just a little water. Both materials are relatively inexpensive and can be bought in large quantities at the local hardware store, so you shouldn't worry about yield. The trick is to add only a little water at a time as the lime will heat up. The remaining calcium oxide will absorb the excess water so you get relatively pure ammonia.
Also calcium carbonate is not soluble in water, so you will have a precipitate that doesn't dissolve in it like sodium carbonate, you have to be careful tho, because it could be so alkaline ammonia could be forced out of the solution
Fun fact: Ammonia actually *liquifies* when its dissolved in the water. Its unstable hence its volatility but is meta stable due to strong hydrogen bond formarion. It's super easy to prove; the math is super easy to do. Find the density of anhydrous liquid ammonia at room temp, then add it in parts, for instance 25% ammonia solution would be (ammonia density) + 1g/mL (water) + 1 + 1 and then you will get the density of your liquid. GUESS WHAT it's the exact same density as you'll find for ammonia solution densities. Math: Anyhydrous Ammonia(liquid) density at 60°F (aprox.) .608g/mL Water density at 60°F(aprox.) 1g/mL 25% Ammonia-Water solution ((.608g/mL + 1g/mL + 1g/mL + 1g/mL)/(4)) This equals a density of .902g/mL which is the density of ammonia solution at 60°F
Just like to add that potassium hydroxide is not that much more expensive than sodium hydroxide. With potassium hydroxide and urea you get a useful byproduct of potassium carbonate. Just wash the carbonate with alcohol to remove any potassium hydroxide and you can still make potassium salts with it
For a next experiment you could try using an ice bath of ice and calcium chloride to produce pure liquid ammonia, I'm pretty sure it can get cold enough but i haven't seen anyone doing it because dry ice it's easier, even tough I'm italian and ithink there isn't a piece of it in my entire nation so I'm curious about alternative methods
