Oxidative properties of nitrous oxide

A small batch of ammonium nitrate was isolated from a fertilizer. Dry sample was placed in a small Erlenmeyer flask carefully heated over a steel mesh. The salt melts and decomposes to form water vapor and nitrous oxide which was then washed with regular water and collected in beakers.
Oxidative properties of nitrous oxide are shown on a glowing wooden stick, burning sulphur, ethanol and propanone applied on cotton, and steel wool.

If you lack laboratory skills and are not familiar with the dangers of this experiment, please DO NOT attempt to reproduce it. Do not heat ammonium nitrate, do not heat fertilizers, and do not inhale the gases. It's very easy to get a corrosive mixture containing nitrogen dioxide which can cause delayed pulmonary edema.
Larger amounts of the heated salt can experience a runaway reaction, leading to a detonation.
This experiment does not show the safety measures, but that doesn't mean there were none.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• ammonium
• nitrate
• fertilizer
• nitrous
• oxide
• oxidation
• flame
• sulphur
• sulfur
• ethanol
• acetone

[spotlightman1234]

Hey man, could you tell me how you purified your ammonium nitrate? Because i have a whole setup for making N2O (the best oxidizer ever created :D) and i am amazed at the purity of your NH4NO3. normally what i do is make HNO3 from impure NH4NO3 from cold packs then neutralize the Pure NHO3 with pure NH4OH then evaporate to get very very pure NH4NO3. I'm probably going to stick with this method for safety reasons but i'm curious as to what your method is. could you tell me? Thank you in advance!!!

[endimion17]

@spotlightman1234 It was a bag of granulated dolomite powder impregnated with ammonium nitrate, so alkaline earth nitrates impurities were present. Some filtering and a few precrystalizations were needed. It's smart to eliminate impurities as much as possible, because during the decomposition alkaline earth nitrates increase their overall concentration, which eventually leads to an explosion. Basically, use more of the reagent and don't wait for it to dissapear from the flask, not even close.

[oblak989]

koja je ovo stvar u pozadini??? O.o (mislim na mjuzu)

[endimion17]

@oblak989 U međuvremenu sam saznao. Zove se Aqualight (originalni mix) od grupe Lake Leger.

[HIDEYOKIDS101]

good thing you put some good music, im showing this to the class :P

[Agentoxedo07]

Holy-Terrorist:>*=* Very cool, know this hacker and pyroman xD

I love this music!

i speaking french and little english

[oblak989]

@endimion17 - tnx

[blueduderanch]

no sulfur is english and american pronunciation. Sulphur is the english spelling and sulfur is the american spelling because they cant handle words that arent spelt phonetically. e.g. aluminium becomes aluminum.