Thank you!aliquis hat geschrieben: Montag 10. März 2025, 12:54 @Andrew:
Entertaining and educational at the same time - nice!
But in my case I won't make black powder from it because unfortunately it's illegal to do so here (since 2008 it's handled as a crime!) without a special explosives license or carrying it out small scale as a chemistry teacher in school or university. But potassium nitrate itself is for example very useful as a melt to clean glassware from charcoaled residues or as an electrolyte in aqueous solution. I also made nitrite from it by reduction with calcium formate or sulfite, as well as potassium ferrate by oxidation of pure (!) iron powder.
The crystals are quite small when the hot satured solution is chilled too fast and strong. My crystals grew a little slower by cooling down the solution at room temperature and therefore became larger.
To optimise the yield I boiled down the decanted mother liquor to about two-thirds of the previous volume and let it cool down slowly again. The process was repeated several times until the crystal groth wasn't regular anymore (looked kind of bushy then), so that the rest with all the impurities had to be discarded.
I completely understand your point. We can make only small amounts and everything must be used up. Nothing is stored. It's very impressive that you have managed to synthesize quite a lot of other products. Excellent work!
The crystals are small again just for filming purposes. I had another beaker with crystals similar to the ones you showed made months before the filming, but I cannot find any photos...
