Turning Fertilizers Into Pure Chemicals

In this video I convert the fertilizer calcium ammonium nitrate to pure calcium nitrate.
I then purify urea fertilizer and ammonium sulfate fertilizer using a few basic techniques.
This was done on a patreon request, and by request of a few people in the comments of my ammonium nitrate video who wanted a pure source of calcium nitrate for one of the methods I showed.

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[FullModernAlchemist]

Very cool dude. I’ve always been fascinated with the efflorescence phenomenon. It is curious that more salts don’t do this but quite a few can. Evaporation pools for mineral milling can grow some wacky crusts and things.

[LabCoatz_Science]

Very nice! Personally, if I was working with calcium ammonium nitrate, I would boil it with crystal lye to get sodium nitrate, which should crystallize a lot more easily (or maybe KOH, since potassium nitrate has an even sharper solubility curve). Or I'd just add sulfuric acid and distill off the nitrate as nitric acid. Either way, great video!

[IRico_chetI]

This will come in handy, greetings from Ireland

[chemistryofquestionablequa]

I love this kind of stuff, I recently got a bag of “muriate of potash” and purified it for a chlorate cell. Read the labels on products, there’s a lot of cool stuff available that way. I tend to convert CAN to AN which is more useful for the kind of stuff I do though.

[tomlutman]

For urea, you might look at def ( diesel exhaust fluid). It’s urea and water, and simply evaporating the water will give you crystals

[Jonodrew]

Back in thw day I used to like performing the double displacement reaction between Ca(NO3)2 & K2SO4 - I even found a use for the plaster paris once washed several times to remove the more useful salt present

- but found a good use for the CaSO4 as a dosing agent in The Thermoaluminium reduction of SiO2 to pure silicon -as a trace amount of oxidiser is still present and Plaster of Paris is a compound of sulphur, makes it easier to initiate.

[LibraHammer]

I love the time-lapse shots. You should see if you can get a very close-up time-lapse of the crystals. 😮

[AwdeInho]

For everyone that wants to do the first reaction, you should cover the beaker with some aluminum foil and poke a small hole so any gases can escape and, but not bug enough so that co2 can go in, if too much co2 goes in, the ca(oh)2 turns into caco3, which is useless in this reaction, and to test if the reaction is done, you should add a pipette full to a test tube and add some NaOH to it, if any ammonia smell is present, then the reaction needs to run longer, and you should add some sparkling water (unflavoured) to the reaction mix before filtering to turn all the slightly soluble ca(oh)2 to insoluble caco3 and have a more pure product

[LalaLa-ldgs]

Didn't even know that efflorescence thing existed, very cool and educational videos ❤

[Because_Race_Car]

wow. ich staune über ihre Einstellung und die sehr offenen, kritischen Worte (mit denen Sie meiner Meinung nach absolut richtig liegen).
weiter so! Sie haben inzwischen eine gute Reichweite und bewirken evtl. etwas 👍

[PyroRob]

I have recrystalized KNO3 on a regular basis. It comes as prills, and getting rid of the mud makes a huge difference, then you can boil it and crash it out

[highlandlab]

I thought i was the only one who does this. You get different crystals at different concentrations and temperatures. Also fire extinguishers have near pure mono Ammonium phosphate.

[DangerousLab]

Fertilizer-grade chemicals are really way more impure than I thought would be, I definitely need to purify them too before putting them to any reaction. The residue in the filter paper is absolutely gross!

[jtbmetaldesigns]

Could you create a separate video with just the urea crystallizing with that soft music and loop it?

[AnonymosAnthropos]

You could try next to use the Ca(NO3)2aq -solution to sediment out calcium sulfite CaSO3 and produce HNO3 by letting SO2 (from burning sulfur) into that solution.

[TheDcline]

i think the last reaction is actually very interesting with the flowering, you're silly

[rajimsaleh]

Bro is the chemistry teacher I wished for in 10th grade

[lashlarue]

WTF this was pushed to me by the algorithm and now I clicked on it by accident and now I'm on the watch list. Dear Agent friend, I didn't mean to click on this and I'm not watching the rest of it, thanks.

[erikisberg]

Anybody remember a crystallizing trick using a boarder of paint around the crystallizing pan? I remember doing that decades ago, worked really well to stop efflorescence. Can not remember what paint it was, perhaps silicone or similar hydrophobic material that will not wet could work.

[col]

Wonder what happens when you mix CAN with ammonium sulfate and purify the solution?