Uses of Non-Anhydrous Nitric Acid

[3287]

While there seems to be a small degree of conflict on the matter, I'm gathering that RDX production is impossible without anhydrous nitric acid, and that producing anhydrous nitric acid is time- and equipment-intensive. So, my questions are:

What is the reasonable concentration limit with regards to home-made nitric acid (via the substitution reaction occurring when sulfuric acid and a nitrate are mixed)?

What high explosives can be produced with nitric acid in the 50-90% range, if it is impossible to home-produce anhydrous nitric acid?

[Emil]

I'm not sure if your post really needed an entirely new thread, but we'll let the mods decide that.

I'm not to sure about the concentration of the Sulfuric and nitrate mix, but it has to be relativley high. It mainly depends on your grade of sulfuric acid.

RDX is the most awkward really. I would only recommend making it if you really have some decent equipment, for the simple reason it is so picky on your nitric acid. For the hassle it is worth, I would be more inclined to make something like PETN. The good thing about PETN is you can use 98% Sulfuric acid and 60-70% Nitric acid. The latter being much easier to get hold of than fuming Nitric. I think there is even a method which involves Sulfuric and a nitrate, however I wouldn't use that route unless it was the last option. Of course Pentaerythritol can be a real pain to get hold of, where as hexamine is dead easy. You just have to weigh the situation up.

If your only planning on making a smallish amount just to experiment with, then RDX could be worth the hassle. The damn problem with it on a bigger scale, is that the synthesis drinks Nitric acid like it is going out of fashion. PETN's yields are FAR superior, which for the ametuer home chemist, makes it much cheaper to make.

UTFSE and you will find so many more explosives that can be synthesised using lesser grade nitric. After all, you are on the best explosives site on the entire internet, the answers are only a few clicks and letters away...

[3287]

PETN would be great if there were a ready source of pentaerythritol, but the difficulty of acquisition makes it unappealing for me.

I've read books that call for only 90% nitric for the nitration of hexamine, but given that the publisher of the books is usually Paladin Press I'll have to assume that they're wrong when both mega and the folks at Sciencemadness call for 100%.

I'm only making a thread because of the particular situation - obviously there are many explosives that will employ nitric acid of various concentrations, but rather than seeking out whatever I can find I wonder what people here think best balances cost and ease of material acquisition.

[Alexires]

but rather than seeking out whatever I can find I wonder what people here think best balances cost and ease of material acquisition.

Which reads to me:

but rather than UTFSE I wonder if other people will spoonfeed me the answers.

Enjoy your 2 week vacation.

[megalomania]

You can use a lower concentration of nitric acid, but your yield will drop sharply. This is the general result of nitrating a large variety of organic compounds. You would not get similar yields using double the volume of 50% acid either, it does not work like that. Lower acid strength means a higher pH, reduced chances of molecular interaction, different solvent effects, take your pick.

If you increased the time of the reaction, say days or weeks instead of hours, you may eventually get the kinds of yields a concentrated acid would give. May, not will.

I provide many specifics of acid concentrations in the procedures on my website at roguesci.org. Invariably the vast majority of explosive preparations use 98% or greater nitric acid. This is not a coincidence, it is not something I made up, it is something emphasized in many scientific journals. Typically the presence of water interferes with the reaction to the extent that yields drop with decreasing acid concentration.

All you had to do was use the search engine I set up just for the Chem Lab procedures, looking for nitric acid. You would easily have found a list of every explosive using nitric acid, and a quick scan of the pages would have shown you what the percentages are. A whole 15 minutes to answer that question. You could instead have made a post with actual examples of what explosives you found through your own research, and then asked your question. This is the proper way to do it and it would have made for a far more interesting and useful new thread. Doing this would have increased your standing, now you are flushed down the toilet for wasting everyone's time.