btw, do any of you use our Search facility?

 

http://www.scienceforums.net/forums/showthread.php?t=5944

 

is a good link all about HNO3, the search facility is there for a reason

"eh. if you purchase HNO3, the government will watch you very closely"

 

Heheh, indeed. If a purchase even can be done, an individual purchasing HNO3 for no apparent reason gets a Megasuspicious/Terrorist-stamp on his files in the government archive.

There are many, many, many viable reasons for purchasing HNO3. The photography industry uses a lot of it to clean plates and whatnot, anybody who does home gold refining will need it as well. There are plenty of valid reasons to buy it. Now if you buy it along with conc. sulfuric acid, some phenol/toluene/glycerine, then you'll be watched. ;-)

yeah, we all do home gold refining...really, more people blow things up. plus, the government isnt going to notice if you purchase toluene at a hardware store

Sulfuric,

 

Understood. To each his own I suppose.

 

I guess I have difficult understanding such motive because I'm professionally biased and think in terms of practicality using an economic mindset. From that POV, I can't imagine spending many hours of time and money for precursors cooking up something I can buy for cheap (but that's my issue).

 

I do some experimenting, but my synths usually involve many steps, and I will tend to focus my efforts on those processes I have to do or for those that aren't available or where it isn't practical or economical to buy the precursor or process chem.

 

So, we just approach from 2 entirely different perspectives I suppose.

 

So, off you go, and good luck.

 

At one time I was really into pyrotechnic chemistry and getting color from different chems during the burn (like color bursts and delayed color displays, etc).

if you use ammonia nitrate with sulphuric acid and heat it in a retort and condense it with out a vacuum will the nitric acid be contaminated with ammonia or something?

would making a solution of sodium nitrate and electrolyze with magnesium electrodes make magnesium nitrate?

The nitric acid would be contaminated with a whole mess of different NOx gasses, as well as some ammonium nitrate and water. The ammonium nitrate would come from ammonia reacting with nitric acid.

 

To synthesize magnesium nitrate, you might just want to mix magnesium sulfate (epsom salt) and sodium nitrate, and then cool the mixture, so that sodium sulfate precipitates out.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnesium_nitrate

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_sulphate

ammonium nitrate should work great...

 

rdx can be made fairly simply from ammonia, nitric acid, methane... not that i'm into making illegal explosives