1. Cool the Sulfuric Acid. Mix the Potassium Nitrate into the Sulfuric acid slowly, keeping fuming to a minimum. Cool if needed.
2. Cool the acid down to 15. Add the cotton in small increments. Stir during addition. Keep the temp under 35. Runaway occurs at 70.
3. Continue addition until all cotton is added. It will probably be a solid/paste at this point. This is normal. Let sit and nitrate for 45 minutes. Stir every few minutes.
4. After nitrating, drown the mixture in cold water. Stir the cotton around and decant the water. Repeat washings with water at least twice more.
5. Wash with Bicarbonate solution until neutralised. Heating will speed this process up. It will also neutralise more acid. Decant liquid off. Squeeze product to remove more liquid.
6. Add 5g Urea to the product. Add water and stir. There will probably be more bubbles forming. This removes any NOx in the product. The product should be a white to light yellow at this point.
7. Allow to air dry. When dry, the product should burn quickly with little if any residue. If appreciable residue, odor, or smoke, it's recomended to dry more or do the purification step.
8. PURIFICATION STEP Dissolve the Cellulose Nitrate in acetone. Stir to dissolve as much as possible. Scoop out any unnitrated cotton. Crash with a large amount of water. There should be a large amount of white stringy material. Stir for 5 min to be sure precipitation is complete. Scoop out product and let dry. It's recomended to at least purify a small sample of your product to get an idea on how much un nitrated cotton is left. It also ensures that proceedure worked.
YIELD:
3 HNO3 + C6O5H10 ---> C6O2H7(NO3)3 + 3 H2O
Theoretical: 4.58 g(half batch)
Actual: 3.12 g After purification
% Yield: 68.12%
This is a not to bad yield. It is a high quality product though. I lost some during purification. There were some small fibers I couldn't collect. Not all(but most) nitrated. I did testing before completely dry. I added in .2g for this. Some was probably oxidised.
