Favorite
Email
video How to Make Potassium Nitrate
Make Potassium Nitrate from Instant Cold Packs and Potassium Hydroxide
Warning: This reaction will produce large quantities of toxic ammonia gas. Perform the reaction outside or in a fume hood. Potassium hydroxide is highly corrosive; wear gloves when working with it.
Some instant cold packs contain ammonium nitrate as their active ingredient and when mixed with potassium hydroxide will produce potassium nitrate and ammonia gas.
Get an instant cold pack that clearly says it contains ammonium nitrate, cut it open, and pour the contents into a container. If its unused there will be a water pouch that you can discard. The rest of the pack is ammonium nitrate. Usually its coated in an anti-caking agent so it'll be off-color.
If you're using an already used instant cold pack then filter out the liquid and let it evaporate until it's dry. The crystals will be ammonium nitrate.
Take 80 grams of ammonium nitrate and dissolve in 70 milliliters of hot water. This will take some time so be patient. It will take even longer in cold water so use hot water when you can.
If it has an insoluble anti-caking agent then you need to filter it off through a coffee filter.
Separately, measure out 56 grams of potassium hydroxide. Potassium hydroxide is sold online to make homemade soaps and for biodiesel.
Add just enough water to completely dissolve the potassium hydroxide.
When both solutions are clear and ready, add the ammonium nitrate solution to the potassium hydroxide solution. This step will produce large amounts of ammonia gas and must be done outside or in a fumehood.
Leave the solution in a very well-ventilated area (outside is best) for all the water and ammonia to evaporate. You can also boil the solution to dryness, just remember it is still producing ammonia.
Now you have potassium nitrate!
To test it, mix a small portion with an equal amount of sugar and set it on fire. Normally pure sugar does not burn but if the potassium nitrate works then it will flare up in a purplish pink flame.
You can also make sodium nitrate by substituting the potassium hydroxide for 40grams of sodium hydroxide and follow the same procedure as the video.
In an upcoming video we will show how to make sodium nitrate from ice packs and baking soda. This requires a slightly different procedure than this video.
Please visit our YouTube channel at: http://www.YouTube.com/NurdRage for other videos like this one.
Warning: This reaction will produce large quantities of toxic ammonia gas. Perform the reaction outside or in a fume hood. Potassium hydroxide is highly corrosive; wear gloves when working with it.
Some instant cold packs contain ammonium nitrate as their active ingredient and when mixed with potassium hydroxide will produce potassium nitrate and ammonia gas.
Get an instant cold pack that clearly says it contains ammonium nitrate, cut it open, and pour the contents into a container. If its unused there will be a water pouch that you can discard. The rest of the pack is ammonium nitrate. Usually its coated in an anti-caking agent so it'll be off-color.
If you're using an already used instant cold pack then filter out the liquid and let it evaporate until it's dry. The crystals will be ammonium nitrate.
Take 80 grams of ammonium nitrate and dissolve in 70 milliliters of hot water. This will take some time so be patient. It will take even longer in cold water so use hot water when you can.
If it has an insoluble anti-caking agent then you need to filter it off through a coffee filter.
Separately, measure out 56 grams of potassium hydroxide. Potassium hydroxide is sold online to make homemade soaps and for biodiesel.
Add just enough water to completely dissolve the potassium hydroxide.
When both solutions are clear and ready, add the ammonium nitrate solution to the potassium hydroxide solution. This step will produce large amounts of ammonia gas and must be done outside or in a fumehood.
Leave the solution in a very well-ventilated area (outside is best) for all the water and ammonia to evaporate. You can also boil the solution to dryness, just remember it is still producing ammonia.
Now you have potassium nitrate!
To test it, mix a small portion with an equal amount of sugar and set it on fire. Normally pure sugar does not burn but if the potassium nitrate works then it will flare up in a purplish pink flame.
You can also make sodium nitrate by substituting the potassium hydroxide for 40grams of sodium hydroxide and follow the same procedure as the video.
In an upcoming video we will show how to make sodium nitrate from ice packs and baking soda. This requires a slightly different procedure than this video.
Please visit our YouTube channel at: http://www.YouTube.com/NurdRage for other videos like this one.
I worked in an organometallic chemistry lab and water was a pervasive contaminant that we had to remove from just about everything. Even bottles of new solvent from our chemical supply company had trace amounts of water that would keep ruining our chemistry. It's common practice to dry solvents just before their use in certain types of chemical reactions, even if the solvent is new. How did the water get there? because the solvent absorbed the water from the environment, by definition that is what a hygroscopic substance is.
If you think i'm lying google the topics of "NMR water peak", "Karl Fischer titration", "drying solvents" and "grignard reagents".
And yes, you did imply that KNO3 is more hygroscopic by directly responding to the other poster's statement. Kinda like someone saying "Chocolate cake tastes bad, vanilla is better." Then you saying "vanilla tastes very bad". It strongly implies vanilla is worse than chocolate. Reverse the order of the statements and chocolate cake is implied to be worse.
Granted, you might not have intended your statement to mean that, although it came out sounding like that. It happens, even politicians bung things up... repeatedly. Is that what happened here?
BTW: "Hygrophobic" isn't a word, at least not in any standard dictionary i could find.
The statement that everything is hygroscopic is supposed to be an agreement with you. At first i say KNO3 not hygroscopic. Then you say KNO3 is and give evidence. So, OK, I think about it and realized you're absolutely right so i agree with you and say everything else is too realizing that my interpretation of what "hygroscopic" is was wrong.
Am i supposed to stick to a wrong opinion even though i realize it's wrong? Science doesn't work that way it changes and evolves with new evidence and theory. We'd never make any progress if I stubbornly defended something i realized wasn't true. Are you going to dig up my statement in pre-school where i said the moon was made of cheese? (mmm.. cheese....)
Yeah, I didn't intend to make it sound like KNO3 is more hygroscopic than NH4NO3, if you look at my first comment I simply said; "KNO3 is very hygroscopic" basically a statement in itself.
You made the statement of "KNO3 is very hygroscopic" as a direct response to another post. Therefore it cannot be interpreted as a "statement in itself", but in the context of the post it was made in response to. It is pretty clear in the comment log that it was made in direct response to another post by "pyrofirelighter".
Otherwise this post in itself, although posted as a response to "Tombini" has no context and is merely the ramblings of a mentally deranged gardener to his computer (not to offend the mentally ill or gardeners ) . And therefore there should be no response or comment on it., because it's only a statement in itself. In fact, there should be no responses to anything I've posted, because they're all just statements without context. And i have never asked a specific poster respond to my any of them. All my questions were just to walls.
Examples:
0/0 = 1
infinity/0 has several answers
and any number divided by zero is infinity.
If the numerator is an equation than anything is possible. Sorry about the response(expecially 9 months later) but I just hate that they teach this in school since it isn't technically true.
Maybe this should be my first instrucable.
http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Lye