Make Potassium Nitrate from Instant Cold Packs and Potassium Hydroxide Warning: This reaction will produce large quantities of toxic ammonia gas. Perform the reaction outside or in a fume hood. Potassium hydroxide is highly corrosive; wear gloves when working with it. Also note that this video is for those interested in the chemistry, it's not cheaper/better/easier than buying it. Some instant cold packs contain ammonium nitrate as their active ingredient and when mixed with potassium hydroxide will produce potassium nitrate and ammonia gas. Get an instant cold pack that clearly says it contains ammonium nitrate, cut it open, and pour the contents into a container. If its unused there will be a water pouch that you can discard. The rest of the pack is ammonium nitrate. Usually its coated in an anti-caking agent so it'll be off-color. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iMeBxNcZf0

In this video we make formic acid from oxalic acid and glycerol. First we combine 100g of glycerol with 100g of oxalic acid in an Erlenmeyer. A distillation apparatus is assembled around the flask and the mixture is gently heated to 105-120 Celsius. I personally didn't have a thermometer so i simply raised the temperature of the hot plate by about one degree per minute until i saw refluxing in the flask. The flask was then covered in aluminum foil to retain heat and encourage distillation and decomposition. First the distillation slowed (after about 1 hour) and the bubbling eventually slowed (after about 3 hours). The mixture was then cooled an additional 100g of oxalic acid was added. The mixture was then heated again and distilled. This cycle of waiting for the bubbling to subside and then adding more oxalic acid was repeated for 2 additional times for a total of 4 additions (including the initial oxalic acid addition). After the bubbling subsided again 50mL of water was added and the mixture distilled one last time. Fractional distillation was performed to obtain formic azeotrope at 106-108 degrees Celsius. Total yield was 122g. Assuming the concentration is 77% then the formic acid yield was 94g or about 64% of theoretical. Related videos: Make Silver conductive ink: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBlqPS8boLI ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceL-I0azPH8

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In this video we purify and concentrate dilute nitric acid using a combination of fractional distillation and drying agents to produce azeotropic nitric acid and fuming nitric acid. Donate to NurdRage! Through Patreon (preferred): https://www.patreon.com/NurdRage Through Youtube Memberships: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIgKGGJkt1MrNmhq3vRibYA/join Through Bitcoin: 1NurdRAge7PNR4ULrbrpcYvc9RC4LDp9pS Glassware generously provided by http://www.alchemylabsupply.com/ Use the discount code "nurdrage" for a 5% discount. Twitter: https://twitter.com/NurdRage Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/NurdRage/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nurdrageyoutube/ ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88gbfCnrV8o