Does the amount of water matter?

Topic created by BrewNovice
on Wed, 29 Sep 2021 at 16:55

BrewNovice said on Wed, 29 Sep 2021 at 16:55...

Does the amount of distilled water used during nitrite synthesis matter?

The Professor said on Wed, 29 Sep 2021 at 17:20...

TO a certain extent, no. NOt knowing what method you are intending (dropping acid and dropping NaNO2 are two popular methods), it's hard to be more specxific than that.

In the dropping acid approach, water is the medium in which the entire preparation takes place. This is an ion swap prep; put reactants into a solvent; the reactants fall apart into their respective cations and anions, and then recombine into the yield.

The solvent in this case is water. Water also acts as mass for the heatsink ; the more mass, the colder you can get (to a point).

When the reaction is done, you'll see a yield phase (on top) and a waste phase (water and salt if you use HCL acid).

So you want to have enough solvent for the reactants to do their thing, and the cooling bath to chill nicely, but not so much that the ions have a hard time finding each other (that would take several gallons, but the point is there's a spectrum.

I've found that a 40% w/v solution of NaNO2 is just about right, along with diluting the 37% HCL down a bit.

http://poppersguide.com/forum/11682

BrewNovice said on Thu, 30 Sep 2021 at 14:48...

Thank you @Professor for the thorough response, I really appreciate the guidance!

The Professor said on Thu, 30 Sep 2021 at 18:28...

No problem, enjoy!