[mnakhla]

I think there maybe a method for making nitric acid from ammonium nitrite but im not sure...here is the whole procedure.....take some house hold ammonia and heat it ,to bring the ammonia out of solution,  in a flask that has a stopper with a hose attached to it and attached to a similar flask at the other end..the second flask is in an ice chest of ethonol..or isoproyl covered dry ice so it is below -50 degrees C meaning that the ammonia will condense to anhydrous. seal off the God forsaken anhydrous and store it in the ice chest. take many 3% hydrogen peroxide and freeze of the water, hydrogen peroxide freezes well below the freezing point of water so it shouldnt be an issue untill you have a fairly concentrated h₂o₂ solution~~~ 45%-55% the highest you can obtain using this method is about 62%. mix the anhydrous and the peroxide...yeilding if done in the correct measures NH₄NO₂..now we have a moderatly concentrated ammonium nitrite soultion...now the more difficult part seperating the ammonium from the nitrogen dioxide...the soultion cant be heated...it will just realse nitrogen and the addition of an acid to the salt of ammonium nitrite also yeilds nitrogen due to the high favorablity of the nitrogen nitrogen triple bond.. Damned Pi bonds!. so some how i have to seperate....adding hcl to the soultion may will yeild ammonium chloride and unstable nitrous acid...if it doesnt decompse it to N₂..so if I then replace the solution into the dry ice alchol ice chest.... i maybe able to cool it down enough to precipitate out the ammonium chloride and maybe if this whole reaction is done in the ice chest i might be able to lower the energy of the system enough to slow the possible formation of N₂... which may also stop the other reaction from occuring  after the hypothetical removal of the ammonium chloride.. we will have nitrous acid...the heating of the nitrous acid... will yeild nitric acid and nitrogen dioxide.. the nitrogen dioxide can then be recapture in water ..making nitrous acid and then the previous couple of steps can be repeated in something akin to a distillation process.... untill we have a good amount of the nitric acid ..which then can be concentrated through evaporation of the water or an acid condenser...which I dont have...but united nuclear sells for like 40 bucks...40 bucks that im reluctant to spend..I can probably make a makeshift one...somehow...anyways,..any ideas if this will work or how i can get it to work...i once tried to make nitric out of nitromethane...and hcl ...but the nitro methane wasnt 100% and activation energy barriers needed to be over come..so i dont know what really happened with that...my parents just ended up throwing away the nitromethane because they thought it was hazordous...but yet they havent thrown away the home made bromine and alkalis?

[AWK]

Ammonium nitrite NH4NO2 is extremely unstable!

[mnakhla]

yes... i was thinking of adding sodium  or potassium metal and going that route ,,,but that makes everything very messy.... i was hoping the cold tempratures would aid in the stablity problem..i really have never played with ammonium nitrite... i just understand that it is theortically extremely unstable and eventually makes ammonium nitrate when exposed to air

[Borek]

Ammonium nitrite NH4NO2 is extremely unstable!

Wikipedia and my handbook state it can be prepared in crystalic form, so unstable - yes, extremely - no.

[mnakhla]

well thats good..all i think is that it is probably more apt to decompse then the nitrate

[hmx9123]

Please take the time to write in paragraphs.  I thought your message was spam initially and almost deleted it, especially since it is about making nitric acid.  I don't understand the reason that you would want to make nitric acid from ammonium nitrite, as it seems to be more of a pain to make ammonium nitrite than the nitric acid.

In addition, where did you get this procedure?  It seems necessarily dangerous.  I am debating whether or not to move your post to the chemist forum or simply delete it for general lack of safety.

[mnakhla]

Ha sorry about the format...when i start thinking i somtimes just loose track of things....and am generally an english dunce

well for the procedure i knew that NH₃ is oxidized by H₂O₂ to yeild ammonium nitrite, especially if the peroxide is not added in excess since i have a hunch that they may just make it into the nitrate..which isnt bad either..

 
I also knew that nitrous acid is unstable and decomposes to nitric oxide and nitric acid....I wanted the acid moderatly concentrated and the ammonium nitrite to not be dissolved in to much water so that if i wanted to store some as the salt i would not have an issue with dehydration. To do that i needed concentrated peroxide and dry or relatively dry ammonia... both the freezing temps of peroxide and ammonia are below that of water so freezing of the water was the obvious answer for concentration

then the last step was to couple both the ideas together, so adding of an acid... that hopefully would not cause the species in soultion to have the same reaction as the anhydrous nitrite salt, which would be decomp to N₂,  to form nitrous acid and ammonium chloride... then just lower the temprature till the NH₄Cl fell out of solution and preform the afore mentioned distilliation thingy to get the nitric acid...

Basically it was my own procedure...the reason why i wanted to use ammonium nitrite was because i also wanted that compund and i thought two birds one stone...since it was my own procedure i wanted to ask before doing so that i dont end up with somthing i couldnt have imagined.... and i do agree some of the things in the procedure are not for people who do not have alot of chemistry experience..

and again sorry about my grammer...it is generally a monstrousity for all my proffesors

[AWK]

Ammonium nitrite easily decompose according to the reaction:
NH4NO2 = N2 + 2H2O
Though Wikipedia says crystals of the compound can be obtained,
this cannot be done without lowering temperature to the level that can be obtained in good lab only. Usually this procedure is used in qualitative inorganic analytical chemistry for removing of nitrites from solution. When solution is warmed, the decomposition according above reaction need a quite short time.

[Borek]

Though Wikipedia says crystals of the compound can be obtained,

They are listed in "Poradnik fizykochemiczny" WNT as well.

[AWK]

I did not question ammonium nitrite crystals cannot be obtained. Moreover, up to 20 % water solution can be handled for a few months at temperature close to 0 C.
I wanted to emphasize that it is a qute difficult task.

On the other hand, H2CO3 - compound commonly known as unstable  can be easily obtained in anhydrous conditions as a solid, then sublimed at normal pressure on the condition no traces of water are present.

[mnakhla]

X_X i see the issue with the ammonium nitrite...i could easily get -80C degree tempratures...but lower then that id have to get creative...ergggg.... hmmm I could give up on it or I could take it as a challange...i usually go with the second one.. but i feel good as this was not deleted for lack of general safety  like one of the above posters said he was thinking of doing