I dissolved Dinitrogen Pentoxide in Nitric Acid and obtained NitroOleum!

[00:00:00]Hey guys, in my videos I usually add chemicals to other chemicals, but today I'm going to add an ad. For the first time in over 200 videos, I'm finally doing an ad on my channel. And the sponsor of today's video is my own book, The Beauty of Chemical Reactions. This book contains unique photographs of chemical reactions that were specially carried out and filmed for it. Each reaction comes with a QR code. Just point your camera at it and you'll be taken to the mail where you can watch a video of the reaction.

[00:00:34]This book is really awesome and as proof the entire first edition sold out with not a single return. Uh, by the way, here are some reviews from happy readers who got the book.

[00:00:51]So, getting this book is not just a cool gift for yourself or someone else. It's also your huge support of this channel and future videos. And maybe if I sell a few thousand copies, we'll get a camera as good as the slow-mo guys. So, all the details in the link in the description.

[00:01:08]And now, let's get to the video about D nitrogen penttoxide.

[00:01:21]All right, the first thing we need to do is get some fresh nitric acid. To prepare it, I'm going to heat dry potassium nitrate with sulfuric acid in a sand bath. I've measured out the required amount of potassium nitrate and I'm now adding the necessary amount of sulfuric acid to it.

[00:01:43]After that, I stop the distillation flask and start heating the sand bath.

[00:01:49]I'm using a thermometer as a stopper for our flask.

[00:01:57]Once the temperature reaches about 85° C, the nitric acid will start distilling over. The nitric acid produced this way is always yellow since some of it decomposes into nitrogen dioxide but stays dissolved in the acid.

[00:02:13]You can clearly see the pale yellow drops of nitric acid here.

[00:02:21]Once the synthesis was finished, we got this flask of yellow fuming nitric acid.

[00:02:27]Just look at how much this acid fumes in the air.

[00:02:38]But this acid won't work for producing ditrogen penttoxide. We need colorless nitric acid. So to remove the yellow color, I am going to pour it into a two neck flask and bubble as anated oxygen through it.

[00:02:58]This takes quite a long time, but once the reaction is complete, we end up with perfectly colorless nitric acid.

[00:03:05]Bubblingated oxygen through it, makes the acid colorless because part of it dissolves nitrogen dioxide gets oxidized into d nitrogen penttoxide while the rest just dissors out of the liquid.

[00:03:19]After that, we need to do vacuum distillation in order to obtain nitric acid with a concentration as close to 100% as we can. To do this, I put together the setup you can see on the screen. It's a regular vacuum distillation apparadus with a capillary tube connected to a reflux condenser where then hydroitric acid vapors will condense. And on the left there is a safety flask with wet alkali to protect the vacuum pump from acid vapors. Under this vacuum, nitric acid is able to distill even at room temperature.

[00:03:52]However, I decided to use a water bath.

[00:03:55]Anyway, the nitric acid distills at slightly below 25° C as a clear liquid.

[00:04:01]Take a look. Unlike the previous synthesis where we used ordinary distillation and the acid turned out yellow, this time it distills as a perfectly colorless liquid, just the way pure hydroitric acid should look.

[00:04:18]And now take a look at the setup for producing d nitrogen penttoxide. So first we need very very dry oxygen. For that the oxygen passes through a wash bottle with sulfuric acid and then through a tube packed with phosphorus penttoxide before entering the ozen generator. From the ozen machine the dry ozonated oxygen enters a flask containing a mixture of nitric acid and phosphorus pentoxide. Next, the sim gas flow carries the vapors of the nitrogen penttoxide and nitric acid through a glass tube packed with phosphorus penttoxide. The nitrogen penttoxide condenses in a small receiver flask called away with dry ice. So, I'm pouring the freshly distilled clear nitric acid into our main reaction flask.

[00:05:10]After that, I begin slowly adding phosphorus pentoxide to the cold nitric acid.

[00:05:17]As phosphorus pentoxide is added, the nitric acid slowly begins to turn yellow and give off brown fumes of nitrogen dioxide.

[00:05:27]I add phosphorus pentoxide gradually until the contents of a flask turn into a thick dough-like paste.

[00:05:41]After that, I put a bent tube filled with phosphorus penttoxide on the flask.

[00:05:46]This is actually the most important part of the setup for synthesizing the nitrogen pentoxide.

[00:05:55]And then I'll use a mix of dry ice and acetone to cool down the receiver flask.

[00:06:00]To do that, I pour some acetone into a Teflon container and then start adding dry ice in small portions, waiting each time of the liquid to stop boiling after each addition.

[00:06:20]Next, I replace the ice bath with a warm water bath. This helps with the nitrogen penttoxide vapors leave our reactor flask more actively and condense in the receiving flask which is cooled away of dry ice for the reaction to proceed well. 80° C is the ideal temperature. After a short while, white needle-ike crystals of ditrogen penttoxide start growing on the walls of the receiver flask. I did my best to find the perfect angle so you can all see what the crystals of pure ditrogen penttoxide look like. I hope a photo of these crystals will soon appear on Wikipedia. At room temperature, ditrogen penttoxide quickly turns yellow as it decomposes into oxygen and orange brown nitrogen dioxide.

[00:07:17]Now, let's look at our first experiment with ditrogen penttoxide. I'm going to sprinkle a small amount of these crystals onto a latex glove. When these crystals come into contact with water, they form pure nitric acid, which easily ignites the latex.

[00:07:54]If you put these crystals on a hot surface, they'll quickly turn yellow and just evaporate away.

[00:08:15]Like nitric acid, the ditrogen penttoxide easily ignites many inorganic reducing agents. Here's a nice reaction with borazine, the brain ammonia complex.

[00:08:54]By the way, I filmed this reaction separately for my book. And here is how it looks in it. Pretty good in my opinion.

[00:09:03]Now I'm going to add a few drops of unhydro hydro into the d nitrogen pentoxide.

[00:09:37]And here is the reaction of anhydro hydroine with fumin nitric acid for comparison.

[00:10:12]Interestingly, d nitrogen pentoxide dissolves in an hydro nitric acid and turn it yellow. I've poured a small amount of this code acid into a test tube. And now I'm adding some ditrogen pentoxide. As more ditrogen pentoxide dissolves into the nitric acid, the yellow color becomes more intense.

[00:10:33]Now let's repeat the experiment with hydroine, but instead of nitric acid, we'll use what is called nitric oium.

[00:11:12]It's not surprising. that hydroin behaves completely differently with such a super concentrated acid. The latex glove ignited slightly faster than with regular fuminitric acid.

[00:11:29]You probably remember how decaborane reacts with nitric acid. But what happens if we add d nitrogen penttoxide dissolved in nitric acid to decaborane?

[00:11:38]I'm doing this experiment on a fixed ceramic tile.

[00:12:04]I'm sure you'll share your thoughts on this reaction in the comments below. I just want to thank you for watching and give a big thank you to my patronons who support me in making these videos. It's thanks to you that I've been able to publish many of these reactions on YouTube for the very first time and honestly you even helped me get my book published. In short, your contribution to our community is truly invaluable.

[00:12:29]Thanks for watching. See you in the next video.