Making KNO3

[BurritoBandito]

http://www.oocities.org/capecanaveral/campus/5361/kno3/ammnit.html

Is this an efficient process for making KNO3? KCL and NH4NO3 are both dirt cheap and come in 30-40# bags.

 

Edit: Thanks

Edit Edit: Im sorry. I somehow accidentally double posted this thread. Could one of the admin please delete this for me? Thanks and sorry again.

Edit Edit Edit: had to fix that typo... Even if it is deleted.

Edited May 5, 2013 by BurritoBandito

[BurritoBandito]

http://www.oocities.org/capecanaveral/campus/5361/kno3/ammnit.html

Is this an efficient process for making KNO3? KCL and NH4NO3 are both dirt cheap and come in 30-40# bags.

 

Edit: Thanks

Fixed typo (NH3NO4).

Edited May 5, 2013 by BurritoBandito

[Seymour]

It can be efficient, depending on your equipment and experience. However on a hobby scale this kind of process is generally done more out of curiosity than necessity.

 

Potassium nitrate is also commonly sold in 25kg/55lb or so bags, and while I know regionally NH4NO3 and KCl may be considerably cheaper than KNO3 (though for me KNO3 is cheaper), as soon as you've added the labor it will stop making financial sense. A lot of people here will read that you are considering Ammonium nitrate dirt cheap and expendable to make Potassium nitrate who have difficulties getting AN and would probably gladly trade, and possibly even feel some jealousy!

 

Essentially, it works, but anyone who is seriously considering making their own Potassium nitrate to fully supply their hobby either is a painstaking purist, who works with very small quantities, or should keep shopping around. Potassium nitrate, while often sold at a premium, is at the end of the day one of the most available and low cost materials we use in pyro.

 

It's like sugar, you can extract it from cane, beets and other materials that are very easy to get, but not nearly as easy as a trip to the grocers to get pure, refined white crystals for a few dollars a kilo.

[BurritoBandito]

I appreciate your analogy. I can buy KNO3 from the feedstore down the road for pretty cheap compared to skylighter (5$/1.5#, yeah, I put the $ sign after the amount... I know it's odd but it's five dollars, not dollars five. I'm gonna convert the world to doing it my way , but I digress) I have seen some pretty decent prices on the net as well. I partially just want to do it for fun, but also I can't locally find bulk KNO3, don't want to pay 4$/# from skylighter, and don't trust eBay vendors. I guess I could just go price the KCL and NH4NO3 and do the math to determine price per pound of KNO3, but I was really just curious as to how pure of a product this procedure would make before making trips to the hardware/feed stores to price chemicals. I don't know how I'd feel about mailing NH4NO3 right now though. Maybe i'll go price it and if it's cheap enough and I can find out how to legally mail it without drawing unwanted attention I'll post some on the AGORA. To be honest, it may be difficult to acquire here now too. I'm not sure who the primary supplier is for my area, but I live in central Texas, so it may have been that fertilizer plant in West Texas that exploded. Now I'm curious. Edited May 5, 2013 by BurritoBandito

[Seymour]

NH4NO3 I believe.

 

You can make it this way, and as anyone else who has done recrystallization of double decomposed salts can tell you, it's quite straightforward.

 

However depending on your reasons, it could be a considerable waste of time and resources.

 

For curiosity it could be a good project. I like making chemicals too, usually pyro ones, and usually un-necessarily. I guess if you are a hard core purist who wants to make as many chemicals as you can, then I can't argue with that.

 

However, remember that while KCl and AN are widely available in bulk for a low cost, the same is very true about KNO3. In fact, I would go so far as to say that KNO3 is usually cheaper to get than AN and perhaps even KCl. With very cheap, mass produced chemicals however, market forces can do strange things and localised price differences are a reality, and I'm sure in places KNO3 costs more than the sum of an equivalent quantity of both AN and KCl. Once you include labour though, it's just not going to work out economically.

[BurritoBandito]

You're right it is NH4NO3, my bad I fudged that one. At least I got it right in the tags associated with this thread.

[Seymour]

"Edit Edit: Im sorry. I somehow accidentally double posted this thread. Could one of the admin please delete this for me? Thanks and sorry again."

 

I've done that too, I'm sure a lot of us have.

 

I managed to reply to both threads. I think that's much more of an achievement (fail)

[Mumbles]

Any place that sells bulk ammonium nitrate probably also sells bulk potassium nitrate. At the very least they should be able to get it for you.

[BurritoBandito]

That's not to bad an idea Mumbles. I didn't even consider asking them to order it for me. I still may have a go at he process though. I already have some NH4NO3 and plan on getting some KCl so I can take a stab at a perchlorate cell. Assuming I can make a decent anode. Thanks for merging the threads for me. I'll try not to double post anymore.

[Arthur]

In the UK NH4NO3 is MUCH harder to locate than KNO3.

 

If you could produce and document a way of making the NO3- ion that would be great. Though I suspect the Bourne-Haber cycle is not quite DIY friendly in a residential area.

[TheExplosionist]

"anyone who is seriously considering making their own Potassium nitrate to fully supply their hobby either is a painstaking purist, who works with very small"

 

Don't forget the EU/US is threatening to regulate almost all chemicals in the near future as liberties continue to be eroded in the name of preventing terrorism.

Making your own ensures nothing can be traced back to you and when suppliers are shut down you won't be affected.

 

I used to get KNO3 from a blue or red fertiliser (60-80% yield) using fractional crystallization.

[taiwanluthiers]

If you need ammonium nitrate to make potassium nitrate, then when this ban comes into effect ammonium nitrate is going to be much more regulated than potassium nitrate. That is unless you can leech it from the soil (keep a dung pile, etc.) or use the Haber process...

[schroedinger]

TheExplosionist

 

How did you do that with the fractional crystalisation? Could you maybe tell a little bit about this? Sounds easier than using Sulfuric Acid and distilling off Nitric acid

[BurritoBandito]

@Shroedinger: Is your cat alive or dead damnit? Can it be it's own observer to collapse the wavefunctuon of probability for the poison vial breaking? What about te Geiger meter, is it considered an observer? It DOES make a measurement afterall.

[taiwanluthiers]

@Shroedinger: Is your cat alive or dead damnit? Can it be it's own observer to collapse the wavefunctuon of probability for the poison vial breaking? What about te Geiger meter, is it considered an observer? It DOES make a measurement afterall.

 

The cat is alive AND dead... and it wants BRAAAIIINNNSSSSS!!!

[BurritoBandito]

Must be on bath salts.

[TheExplosionist]

TheExplosionist

 

How did you do that with the fractional crystalisation? Could you maybe tell a little bit about this? Sounds easier than using Sulfuric Acid and distilling off Nitric acid

 

The larger the crystals the higher the purity. You need a boiling saturated solution to cool down as slowly as possible. It's a lot of work.

[schroedinger]

Ok, i think i got an idea what you did.

 

Cooked you`re fertiliser with KCl or pottash (probably the better one), into a saturated solution, boiled down half untill first crystalls appears (probably chloride). Filteres/decant and cooled down in an insulated vessels. Right? Should be working quite god.

 

Also with pottash you won`t get any problems with contained Calcium or Ammonia nitrate. Calcium just precipates immediatlie and ammonia carbonate just evaporates.

 

An other easy way is to mix with with sulfuric acid, and distill of HNO3 into around 1-3% H2O2. 50% sulfuric acid is god and dirty cheap as ph-low. Less then 2$ per litre

[Sinken]

In countries where KCl is hard to obtain(like Norway, haven't seen it here), you can also use K₂CO₃ and Ca(NO₃)₂

I wrote the equation:

 

 

2K₂CO₃+Ca(NO₃)₂ --->2KNO₃ + 2CaCO₃

 

1 mol K₂CO₃ * 2 = Ca. 280g

 

1 mol Ca(NO₃)₂ = 164g

 

Which will yield around 200g Potassium Nitrate.

 

Haven't tried it myself yet though, but as far as I know it should be pretty easy, and Calsium Nitrate ("Norway salpeter") is one of the most sold feritilizers in Norway, so obtaining it should be both easy and cheap.

Edited May 21, 2013 by Sinken

[BurritoBandito]

@Sinken: Thanks. No KCL in Norway? Wow, that sucks.

[Sinken]

Yeah. They might sell it at the farmacy though, but that's generally overpriced anyway (18 dollars for 90g), and as far as I've seen, it's not sold as a NaCl substitute in grocery shops etc. Edited May 21, 2013 by Sinken

[BurritoBandito]

What do you guys use as water softener, just NaCL?

[Sinken]

Water softener? I've never actually heard about people using that. As far as I know, everything is done by machine. And it's not impossible to get your hands on, it's just that it's either really expensive, or you'll have to order from abroad, which would just make more problems with PST(The norwegian polices secuity deparment).

[BurritoBandito]

I see... In America (at least where I am) you can get 40# bags of KCL for water softener systems for like 20 USD. It is extremely common at grocery stores such as Walmart. You may try asking around your home and garden type stores and see if they carry it. I'd be willing to bet it is sold as a water softener there as well.

[Sinken]

I'll check, but the water in Norway is generally quite soft (2.2 dH). I'll see what I can find.