Tonight I saw an outstanding episode of Mythbusters. The myth was ‘did the Confederate army create a two stage liquid fueled rocket that was fired 200 miles’. Sounds cool but if you know anything about the history of rockets this is way on the incredible side. Anyway, the result of the build session was a hybrid rocket made from a paraffin and carbon tube that had nitrous oxide shot through it. All using technology that would have been available during the civil war. Well maybe the TIG welders were in short supply back then, but the N2O was made the traditional way at M5. They did however censor the ingredients so you can’t go out and get high from it. Oddly, they in trying to make liquid oxygen Grant heated up mercury oxide. I guess that’s safe to show because you can’t find mercury oxide at the local hardware store. Not that you should do that, you do get O2 but you also get mercury metal. Fun stuff by the way but real bad to have around the house if your not careful. BTW, I had about 1/8 cup of it decades ago. And yes, I did make a tiny bit of it from the decomposition of mercury oxide.
Anyway, it was a great episode to watch and makes me want to know what they used to make the N2O. The actual rocket used a commercially bought cylinder of N2O just to save time but if they had wanted to they could have done it on their own.
They also made gun cotton ( nitrocellulose ) in a kid safe way but that you can’t make a rocket out of, just things that go boom. And we don’t want that. Not that it’s hard to make, its actually pretty easy. You just take… Oh wait, I don’t want to tell you that do I. 😛
Howdy, John.
Yeah, I thought that Mythbusters ep was top-drawer too.
Dunno why they edited out the tiniest bit possible for “safety” when there’s so much stuff on the net.
Anyhoo, if you wanna make nitrous, you can go classical and use iron filings as a catalyst, like
Priestley the chemist did – who discovered the stuff…
Or you could use a phosphate – calcium, potassium, whatever – and some water to get it all together.
Remember: heat *GENTLY*! Texas City ring a bell?
Dang, I can hardly wait for the next ep.
From the looks of it, they made the nitrous in a well-known way. They used ammonium nitrate fertilizer NH4NO3, the white-pellet stuff, heated up in an rubber-enclosed erlenmeyer flask on a hot plate, with a rubber tube leading to the filtering pipe filled with water and baking soda. It (ammonium nitrate) HAS to be in between 180 degrees CELCIUS to 200 degress CELCIUS to produce 2 parts water one part dinitrogen oxide, aka, nitrous oxide. Otherwise, if it’s not at that exact right temperature, you’ll produce either ammonia if its too low, or nitric acid if its too high, both of which will kill you quite quickly. Not only that, but other nitrogen acids will be produced, which, when inhaled, can be deadly. When it’s being produced on the 190 degrees CELCIUS hotplate, you have to filter it from the airtight erlenmeyer flask through Grant’s water-pipe setup (a tube coming from the enclosed erlenmeyer flask, leading to a pipe laying on its side filled with water and baking soda, slanted upwards to direct the flow of the nitrous oxide that comes through, which then leads to a balloon or other aparatus to hold the final product, nitrous oxide) to filter out any ammonia and nitrogen oxides (acid gas, which will condense and dilute in the water/baking soda) as its heating up (below 180 degrees celcius) and any other impurities that may be present in the fertilizer, or ammonium nitrate. Make sure to add baking soda to the water in the pipes (that the nitrous oxide gas flows through out of the erlenmeyer flask to be somewhat purified) to ensure extended capabilities for filtering. BTW, this is ONLY for rocket use, as the impurities would most definately KILL YOU if you were to try to actually inhale this gas; it’s almost 100% chance of death. So use it for a hybrid rocket! Remember Adam inhaling it and saying “it burns!”… Nitrous Oxide isn’t supposed to burn! That was most definately a nitrogen oxide such a Nitric Acid. Had he inhaled enough, he would have been seriously injured, and would have irreparable lung damage.
GO TO THIS SITE FOR MORE HELP:
http://groups.google.ca/group/alt.drugs/browse_thread/thread/6bb0db0a607f0922/5345bfcdcd85cef4?lnk=st&q=how+to+make+n2o+with+fertilizer&rnum=5&hl=en#5345bfcdcd85cef4
…remember, ALWAYS find out EVERYTHING you can about something like this before doing it, as any little misinformation can prove deadly.
And remember, do it outside (outdoors) if you do it at all. Always do everything you can to help with safety.
In regard to the comment about nitrocellulose not being used as a rocket propellant that’s incorrect in fact most smokeless military rocket propellants are made of nitrocellulose mixed with nitroglycerin…I know for a fact that the ”hellfire” missile is propelled this way.