Need help extracting nano3 in fertilizers

[Pyrophoric30]

Hello pyros, i need some help to extract sodium nitrate (NaNO3) in this fertilizer if possible or atleast make it a pure mix of kno3 and nano3 without the 15% anticake etc. Im thinking of recrystallizing but im unsure. 

[cmjlab]

Are you sure that anticake is tge only impurity?  15% seems like a LOT of anticake.

That would probably be the quickest method to get the most reduction in impurities if you don't mind your KnO3 and NaNO3 being mixed in your final product since both are both pretty soluble in water.  

What do you plan to make where you don't mind the potassium and sodium nitrates being combined?  

Edited August 21 by cmjlab

[Pyrophoric30]

5 hours ago, cmjlab said:

Are you sure that anticake is tge only impurity?  15% seems like a LOT of anticake.

That would probably be the quickest method to get the most reduction in impurities if you don't mind your KnO3 and NaNO3 being mixed in your final product since both are both pretty soluble in water.  

What do you plan to make where you don't mind the potassium and sodium nitrates being combined?  

I forgot to add the photo of it. Well yeah if theres no way to separate KNO3 and NaNO3 so be it. I just want to remove the impurities.
 

im planning on making stars that calls for nano3 like sunrise yellow and modified n1/d1 glitter to make it golden. Much better if i can extract the NaNO3 alone. 
 

ps. Theres no readily available NaNO3 here so the only options is a little bit of experimentation😬

Edited August 21 by Pyrophoric30

[cmjlab]

I'll give the same warning I do to everyone else, I'm just a hobbyist who reads a lot of stuff because I'm interested by chemistry  (most the responses i provide ive read about from Mumbles or someone simillar, not all, but most!  🙂 ) - but I don't recall reading about how to easily separate the two.  I'm sure it's possible, just not by exploiting solubility. 

[Mumbles]

By recrystallizing from water, you'll enrich the potassium nitrate in the solid, and enrich the sodium nitrate in the filtrate.  Potassium nitrate has a lower solubility at low temp, and also a sharper solubility curve or drop between hot and cold.  It would probably take a couple of cycles to begin getting something resembling a pure form of either.  

The first crystallization you'd want to filter a hot solution of the fertilizer to remove any insoluble materials, binders, colorants, etc.  Hopefully after that you can skip the filtration and just do temperature cycling, but without knowing what's in there, it's hard to guess.

You might be able to tell them apart by their crystal form.  Potassium nitrate tends to form rectangular crystals, or needles I believe.  Sodium nitrate tends to form rhombus or trigonal shaped plates or needles.  I wouldn't use this as a definite test of purity or identity though.  Flame test will be easy enough for potassium, by checking for the absence of sodium yellow.  

[cmjlab]

Out of curiosity did you give @Mumbles suggestion a try? 

With that large percentage of Sodium Nitrate in there, it makes sense that after the initial hot water filter, leveraging the temperature vs. solubility to separate some of the Sodium Nitrate from the Potassium Nitrate should work to get you closer to what you want.  

[Soloserly]

Do you want to end up with a supply of NaNO3 or KNO3?  If you're in the U.S., either of them can be purchased much more easily than they can be made, and probably purer.  If you are in a place that Amazon delivers to, (Philippines?), you can order through them fairly cheaply.   I've even tried the generic bulk "stump killer granules" from Amazon as a source of KNO3 and it made very serviceable lift and burst after I milled it down to a fine powder.

That being said, I'm very curious to see if you figured out an efficient way to separate the KNO3 and NaNO3 out of the Mega Bloom you were working with.  Did it work?