zeppelin69
February 18th, 2007, 07:20 PM
Today I had an urge to make some N2O. I wasnt intending to breath it or anything, I just wanted to make it just to say i made it, you know?
So I mixed some ammonium nitrate with manganese dioxide (because I have heard this is a good catalyst for N2O production), and I bubbled the gases though water to attempt to removes impurities.
The process worked great and I got plenty of nitrous oxide, but now I'm curious what happened to the water I used. After the original experiment I tested the water with a PH meter and found that it was very acidic, and smelled similar to nitric acid. So to see if it was I poured some into a smaller container and put a piece of copper wire in with it, but i got no NO2 from it.
Does anyone have any idea what acid this is? Could it be nitrous acid? I thought the only products of heating ammonium nitrate were N20 and water, with small amounts of NO.
So I mixed some ammonium nitrate with manganese dioxide (because I have heard this is a good catalyst for N2O production), and I bubbled the gases though water to attempt to removes impurities.
The process worked great and I got plenty of nitrous oxide, but now I'm curious what happened to the water I used. After the original experiment I tested the water with a PH meter and found that it was very acidic, and smelled similar to nitric acid. So to see if it was I poured some into a smaller container and put a piece of copper wire in with it, but i got no NO2 from it.
Does anyone have any idea what acid this is? Could it be nitrous acid? I thought the only products of heating ammonium nitrate were N20 and water, with small amounts of NO.