hey,

I'm pretty much a novice at chemistry but i was wondering how you go about calculating the amount of chemicals for a nitration. Say i wanted to nitrate cellulose ( i know there are tons of recipes but i want to figure out how to do it myself:eyebrow: ) how would i calculate how much KNO3, H2SO4 and cotton to use? (I don't have HNO3)

 

 

thanks for your time, thermonub

Well, i don't exactly understand your question. But I think its related to stiochiometry. Use the latter for calculation and you would know how much of what is need to make nitrate cellulose. Hope it helps!

Why is it that people who don't know anything about chemistry always want to do dangerous things? Oh wait, I know, it's because they don't know anything about chemistry.

 

Quoting from a Material Safety Data Sheet of Nitrocellulose:

 

Stability: Very flammable. May explode or ignite without warning when dry.

 

First convince me that you are working safely, then I might consider to explain how to make the calculations. Science is cool, but safety comes first.

why do you think i keep my five pounds of it soaking wet? . I don't need to make more NC, I just want to learn how to do what seems to be like a useful technique. I was just using NC as an example. I know during a nitration you want to keep your reaction vessel very cold so as to not create a runaway reaction. I know that with NG (I don't know about NC) you have to make sure its ph is neutral otherwise it becomes even more unstable. I'm sure i can go on.

 

thermonub

when 'novice at chemistry' and 'make nitrocellulose' come together in a post it is a sign that you shouldn't be making it at all. it runs away very easily. even if you have done the reaction 100 times before it can still run away on you.

 

i think this also comes under the hazmat section of our rules as well.