clearing cloudy ammonia?

n00dle · Tue Oct 04, 2005 1:44 pm

Hey,

clear ammonia was taken off the shelves here for some unknown reason (tried to find it for hours today) and cloudy ammonia is still around.

Does anyone know what the clouding agent is?

Dumped in some HCl and am boiling it down to produce ammonium chloride, but it will be tainted with lots of detergent i can bet.

ammonium chloride isn't soluble in pure ethanol (i would assume methanol as well) so can one simply just was the xtals with methanol and filter to get rid of the detergent?
I assume soaps are soluble in alcohols, as google told me..

mountain boy · Tue Oct 04, 2005 7:34 pm

If you wash with MeOH or EtOH you will lose a fair amount of product due to the water content of these solvents. Also, I don't think this would be such an effective method even if they're dry.
[You would be mad to waste dry MeOH/EtOH on this anyhow]

Rather recrystallise from water once or twice until the crystals are white (i.e. no longer yellowish)

bio · Working Bee

NH3.HCl solubility.

Water 35g AmCl (15°C) 66g (80°C)
MeOH; 3.2g AmCl (15°C), 4g AmCl (reflux)
EtOH, 0.6g AmCl/100g EtOH (15°C)

n00dle · Wed Oct 05, 2005 6:15 am

Well, hexamine tablets are still available here (near endless supply), what about hexamine+hcl? i know that forms NH4CL and formaldehyde, any way to stop the process from continuing to methylamine?

edit: Better yet, any way to seperate and collect both NH4CL and the formaldehyde?

bio · Working Bee

................. Better yet, any way to seperate and collect both NH4CL and the formaldehyde?....................

As the chloride hardly dissolves in commercial 37% formalin inhibited with up to 15% MeOH one idea would be to keep the solution very cold then filter off most of the chloride followed by distilling off the alcohol and HCHO.

Needless to say the formic acid and amine would also be formed to some extent and separating the formic from the water and aldehyde isn't going to work by distillation. Take a look at the formic/water azeo bp.

mountain boy · Wed Oct 05, 2005 2:27 pm

n00dle:

If it is not MeAm you're after, for what other purpose do you want to synth NH₄ Cl ?

n00dle · Wed Oct 05, 2005 2:32 pm

production of ammonium formate for leuckart rxn.