making ammonium chloride

[jordehwa]

hi i am planing on making around 50 or so grams of ammonium chloride from

31.45%HCL and ammonium hydroxide solution from walmart. What would be the best way to do this to get the best yield. also how should i dry the ammonium chloride?, and test it for purity?.

 

i do not have a PH indicator. and i do not know the %of the ammonium hydroxide.

[spin-1/2-nuclei]

Hi... I really don't think you should try this..

I certainly can't speak for other people, but I personally wouldn't feel comfortable telling someone how to make this. Chemistry can be fun but can also be very hazardous and proper training is required to do it safely. Without proper equipment and training you cannot do this safely moreover if you don't know the percent of the ammonium hydroxide you cannot get your equivalents right. This is an acid base reaction they can be very dangerous and this reaction will get very hot.

[jordehwa]

I looked this experiment up the other day, and it said all i have to do is neutralize the acid with the ammonium hydroxide.

 

so i took 40 ml of HCL i had a lot of baking soda to test if the acid was neutral, i put 50 ml of the ammonia and the solution got warm so i let it cool down then i took a drop of the solution, and put it on the soda powder and it fizzed so i put another 50 ml, tested again then more and, tested then more and tested, till i was adding about 5 ml at a time then finaly when i put a drop on the soda it did not do anything so does that mean it worked?

 

now all ineed to do is evaporate it right?

 

Just to let you know i understand why you dont want to tell me,

but i do have experience working with hcl and i am very safe.

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can some please tell me if all i need to do is evaporate the solution?

[ercdndrs]

Yes, if you evaporate it you'll get some ammonium chloride but mostly you'll get table salt because of all the baking soda you added.

 

( NaHCO3 + HCl -> NaCl + H2O + CO2)

 

If you want pure ammonium chloride you're best off buying some PH indicators, or test for acidity by taking a small sample out (so you don't contaminate your product) and add ammonia until the solution is very slightly acidic (ammonium chloride in solution is mildly acidic). You'll need a lot of ammonia cleaner because it's only something like 3% ammonia, the rest being water

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Edit: nvm, I read your procedure wrong, yes you can get the NH4Cl by evaporating, but you won't get much. It'd be much more efficient if you didn't waste your HCl by testing the solution.

Edited May 5, 2010 by ercdndrs
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[jordehwa]

ok thanks

 

I will get some ph paper, but i only lost about 5 ml of the solution for testing.

 

its evaporated about halfway, and i dont see any crystals yet but thats ok.

 

I will weigh it when its all dry, and tell you guys how much i got.

[Justonium]

To help it dry faster, you can put it in a sealed bag along with some calcium chloride pellets (in another container) which can be bought from Home Depot for absorbing moisture from inside kitchen cabinets. This works best if you added close to equimolar proportions of ammonia and hydrochloric acid, but might be more difficult if you added too much ammonia. What i would do would be to add hydrochloric acid again after I passed the equivalence point, so that there is excess acid, and then dry it using solid sodium hydroxide as a dessicant. This stuff is horrible to get on you're skin though, so don't use if you aren't trained in handling it safely. I'm not sure how hydroscopic ammonium chloride is, but if it's not hydroscopic, then you might be able to just omit the dessication bag and just leave it out in the air. The thing that peeves me then, though, is that dust is landing in the solution while it dries, contaminating it. For highest purity, use excess acid and sodium hydroxide to dessicate it.

[UC]

A *sealed* bag for an aqueous solution? That's a *lot* of CaCl2 and effort for a small amount of ammonium chloride.

 

You're better off evaporating the solution with a hot plate or just by air exposure (very slow) and then cooling it.

 

ammonium chloride is very soluble in water and when concentrated, the vapor pressure of the solution is very low.

 

About 2 years ago, I neutralized almost a gallon of 5% ammonium hydroxide with a slight excess of HCl, and left the solution in a cut-off polyethylene milk jug with paper towels over the top to keep out dust and bugs. The heat in the summer evaporated much of the liquid, and when winter came, the very gradual onset of cold precipitated out gorgeous crystals of ammonium chloride. I filtered these off and left the wet, somewhat acidic NH4Cl in a dessicator over NaOH pellets, which do double duty of trapping the water vapor and excess HCl.

 

Since I've lowered the concentration by removing crystals and increased the vapor pressure, after the coming summer, I should be able to harvest another crop. Sure, I could do it with a hotplate and be done in a day or two, but where's the fun in that

[jordehwa]

let me ask if i did this in a hot plate. how much of the ammonium chloride will decompose?

[UC]

It doesn't decompose, it more or less evaporates if you run out of liquid completely, which I don't recommend. Stop reasonably before that and chill, then filter off crystals.