Ammonium nitrate

Ammonium nitrate is an interesting compound used in the explosives industry and as a fertilizer. It's a major component of the industrial explosive ANFO. Ammonium nitrate is also used in some coldpacks. I plan to use ammonium nitrate to make nitroguanidine, and eventually aminotetrazole. The cheapest way to obtain ammonium nitrate is to extract it from fertilizers or coldpacks, however, I didn't do this.

I tried making some ammonium nitrate from potassium nitrate.

To a 1000ml beaker I added a solution of 46g of sodium bisulphate in water. Then I added 34g of potassium nitrate in solution. I stirred the mixture well. The pH of the mixture was acidic and I added ammonia solution untill the pH became neutral. I transferred the mixture to a hotplate and boiled it down until I could see crystals forming. This was potassium sulphate. The mixture was chilled down in the freezer and more potassium sulphate crystals precipitated. I filtered all the precipitate off and collected the clear filtrate.

The filtrate was allowed to evaporate, yielding 65g of slightly wet ammonium nitrate.

NaHSO4 + KNO3 ==> HNO3 + KNaSO4   //   HNO3 + NH3 ==> NH4NO3

Chlorbutol

Trichloro-tert-butyl alcohol, commonly called chlorbutol is a mild local anaesthetic. Its also a hypnotic and a sedative. Pure chlorbutol is a white solid and smells a lot like menthol. Care should be taken when handling this compound as it is highly toxic to the liver. It can be synthesized from chloroform and acetone. I tried making some.

To a beaker I added 45ml of acetone. I chilled the beaker of acetone in the freezer for 30 minutes then took it out and added 9ml of chloroform and 1g of sodium hydroxide to it. I placed the mixture back into the freezer for 2 hours, stirring every 30 minutes. After this the mixture had turned quite cloudy with fine precipitate. I filtered the mixture and collected the clear filtrate. I poured the filtrate into a flask then placed the flask on a hotplate and added a thermometer. I gently boiled the liquid down, until it stopped boiling and the temperature rose to 80 C.

I then then poured the mixture in 30ml of ice cold water. The mixture separated into 2 layers, and after a bit of stirring the bottom layer solidified into nice white clumps of chlorbutol. I filtered off the chlorbutol and dried it. I got 3g which is a 23% yield.

(CH3)2CO + CHCl3 ==NaOH==> C4H7Cl3O

Chloroform

Trichloromethane, commonly known as chloroform, is a halogenated hydrocarbon used as a solvent.
It reacts with alkali hydroxides yielding dichlorocarbene, a highly reactive compound. Dichlorocarbene reacts with amines yielding isocyanides via the carbylamine reaction. Chloroform is mainly used as a nonpolar solvent in the lab.

The easiest route to chloroform is the haloform reaction. I tried this out.

To a 1000ml conical flask I added 500ml of 5% sodium hypochlorite bleach. I placed the flask in an ice bath and slowly added 10ml of acetone (other ketones work as well). The mixture turned cloudy and the temperature rose to 40 C (acetone addition is very exothermic). I left the mixture to stand for 1 hour. By this time the cloudiness had gone and a small amount of immiscible chloroform had formed at the bottom of the flask. Using a syringe, I collected the chloroform which was quite dirty.

I carried out 3 more runs and received more dirty chloroform. To clean my chloroform up, I distilled it over anhydrous calcium chloride, collecting the fraction boiling at 60-63 C. This yielded 9ml of very clean pure chloroform.
It is advisable to add 1% ethanol to the chloroform to stabilize it. The ethanol stabilizer is very important as it neutralizes any phosgene (very toxic, sometimes deadly) formed by the chloroform. I did not do this because I don't plan on storing the chloroform for long.

This was my product:

3 NaOCl + (CH3)2CO + H2O ==> CHCl3 + CH3COOH + 3 NaOH

Phenol

Phenol, also known as carbolic acid, is an aromatic compound. It exists as volatile clear-white crystals. It acts as a very weak acid, but is about 1 million times more acidic then most straight-chain alcohols. Phenol can be used to prepare picric acid and bisphenol A, which I intend to make at some point.

Phenol itself can be made via the decarboxylation of salicylic acid. I decided to try this out.

I added 3g of salicylic acid to a round-bottom flask. To the flask I attached a condenser and under the setup I placed a hotplate. I heated the salicylic acid until it began to melt and give off carbon dioxide. Soon after this, crystals started forming on the sides of the flask. I kept heating until carbon dioxide stopped forming, at which point I left the phenol to cool and solidify. I collected the phenol. It was slightly brown in colour so I think I may have burnt it a bit. Fortunately this was minimal and the product still seems fairly pure. I recrystallized the phenol from acetone and dried it. I received 2g of phenol, which is a 98% yield.

C7H6O3 ===> C6H6O + CO2

Salicylamide

Salicylamide, or 2-hydroxybenzamide, is an uncommon painkiller similar to aspirin.
It's mainly used as a precursor to the antihypertensive drugs Medroxalol and Labetalol.
I'm interested in using salicylamide to make benzoxazolone and salicylonitrile.

Crude salicylamide can be made from salicylic acid and urea. I tried this out:

To a 250ml conical flask, I added 10g of salicylic acid, 13g of urea and 1g of boric acid. I heated the mixture until everything was molten. I kept heating the mixture at around 180 C for 1 hour 40 minutes. Then I added 55ml of 18g/L ammonia solution and boiled the mixture for 5 minutes. I placed the mixture in an ice bath to cool it. After 10 minutes in the ice bath, I took the mixture out and added 40ml of 33% hydrochloric acid. Immediately an off-white precipitate of salicylamide formed. I filtered off the salicylamide and dried it. I got 11g, which would be a yield of 94% if the product was pure.

After a few tests, I found it was contaminated with salicylic acid, but that's ok for my purposes.

here's a link to the reaction mechanism
http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/files.php?pid=416184&aid=42721

Erythritol tetranitrate

Erythritol tetranitrate (ETN) is a secondary explosive derived from erythritol. Although a secondary, it is slightly sensitive to shock, and with a detonation velocity of 8000 m/s it's quite a dangerous chemical. Unlike its cousin pentaerythritol tetranitrate, ETN possesses a perfect oxygen balance.
ETN has almost no uses, except as an explosive.

I synthesized a small amount a while ago.

First I chilled a beaker containing 9ml of 98% sulphuric acid down to -1 C using an icebath. To the sulphuric acid, I added 5g of potassium nitrate slowly in portions. The nitrate addition is exothermic and if the temperature gets too high, it could cause a runaway reaction. Once the temperature had gone back down to -1 C, I added 3g of erythritol. I then let the mixture stand for 30 minutes with occasional stirring. After this, the mixture had turned quite thick. 50ml of water was added slowly, and at once the ETN precipitated.

I filtered out the ETN and dried it. This was my product:

HNO3 + 2 H2SO4 <==> H3O+ + 2 HSO4- + NO2+

Unfortunately I failed to detonate it. My silver fulminate primer didn't seem to be powerful enough. I'll try again sometime and may upload a picture of the explosion.