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Alright everyone, welcome back to Cody's Lab
So today I'm going to show you an easy way to make ammonium hydroxide, very cheaply.
So the reagents I'm gonna use are ammonium sulphate as the source of ammonia
and agricultural lime, this is calcium hydroxide. Now, most other channels I've seen do this
have used ammonium chloride and sodium hydroxide
and, well, you really can't buy those 50 pounds at a time from the hardware store.
So without further ado, let's mix up an ammonium hydroxide solution.
So first, let's add a few heaping tablespoons of slaked lime to this beaker here.
Next I'm gonna add some ammonium sulphate to this other, smaller beaker.
And I'm gonna add enough water to completely dissolve it.
Okay, so now that that is mostly dissolved,
I'll take some hydrochloric acid here
Put it next to the container,
you see: no white clouds of ammonium chloride forming.
I'm just gonna take the solution of ammonium sulphate and pour it into the calcium hydroxide.
This should create ammonia, as the calcium forms calcium sulphate; which is mostly insoluble.
So now I should be able to see
Lots of ammonium chloride forming with the hydrogen chloride vapor,
indicating that ammonia has formed.
Now we can let this settle out, you'll have a solution of ammonium chloride . It'll be a little bit contaminated with
calcium sulphate as it is slightly soluble,
But, this would be perfectly adequate for cleaning or whatever else you need that isn't bothered by a little bit of calcium.
Okay, so what if that small amount of calcium is causing your glass to streak or you want a stronger solution?
Well you're gonna need some distillation equipment, so I'm going to add 80 grams of
calcium hydroxide to a bit of water to make a slurry,
and this, I'll add to a round bottom boiling flask
Along with around 120 grams of ammonium sulphate.
This will make it so the calcium will be a slight excess.
So, I'll just add a little bit of extra water to thin things up a bit,
and to make sure it stays mixed, I'm gonna throw in some magnets.
Okay.
Set this into my heating mantle...
Turn on the stirring....
Now, I'll just hook up my glassware.
As the solution heats up, the ammonia boils out, along with some
water vapour.
So, up here I have a condenser with some cold water running through it where the water vapor is condensing and probably absorbing most of the ammonia
That ammonium hydroxide solution then drips down into this flask here and any remaining ammonia can travel along...
into this flask where I've got some water. You can see the ammonia is being dissolved into it.
In fact, if you look at that real close...
Yeah, you can see the bubbles of ammonia don't actually make it all the way to the surface
I mean, some small bubbles do, but I think that's mostly trapped air.
Because the ammonia is being absorbed into the liquid.
Very nice.
As long as I keep that rather cold...
That should absorb just about all of the ammonia.
But, just in case, I've also got the room well ventilated.
So I actually had a little bit of a boil over, you can see my solution over here is a bit murky.
So I think once this is done boiling out the ammonia
I'm gonna clean it out and put this stuff back in and redistill it.
Okay, so here's my
ammonia solution that I've produced. Just for kicks, let's get the specific gravity to see how well I did.
There we go, looks like we're at about .9 grams per cubic centimeter
Keep in mind, that's at the temperature that we've got which is 0°C,
I'd say that's pretty good.
Let's see what the commercial 28% stuff is - at the same temperature.
It actually has a higher density than what I was able to produce.
Awesome!
So that's the amount of concentrated ammonium hydroxide I was able to produce. It had a higher concentration than what I can buy.
You know because right now, I've got it oversaturated.
When this warms up to room temperature, that ammonia might boil out.
[[LAUGHS]]
Anyway, hope you enjoyed. I'll see you next time.
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