You can make nitrous oxide or laughing gas quite easily in the lab or at home. However, there are reasons why you might want to forego the preparation unless you have chem lab experience.What Is Nitrous Oxide or Laughing Gas?
Nitrous oxide (N2O) is also known as laughing gas. It is a colorless sweet-smelling and sweet-tasting gas that is used in dentistry and surgery because inhaling the gas produces analgesic and anesthetic effects. The gas is also used to produce the engine output of automotive vehicles and as an oxidizer in rocketry. Nitrous oxide gets the name "laughing gas" because inhaling it produces euphoria.How to Make Nitrous Oxide or Laughing Gas
Joseph Priestley first synthesized nitrous oxide in 1772 by collecting the gas produced from sprinkling nitric acid over iron filings, however, nitrous oxide usually is produced using Humphry Davy's method of gently heating ammonium nitrate to decompose it into nitrous oxide and water vapor:NH4NO3 (s) → 2 H2O (g) + N2O (g)
The key here is gently heating the ammonium nitrate to between 170°C and 240°C, because higher temperatures may cause the ammonium nitrate to detonate. People have been doing this without incident for over 150 years, so they key is to be careful. Next, the hot gases are cooled to condense the water. The best way to do this is using a pneumatic trough, which involves a tube leading from the ammonium nitrate container that bubbles the gases up through water into a collection jar. This removes the water from the reaction as well as smoke from impurities in the ammonium nitrate. The gas in the collection jar is your nitrous oxide or laughing gas, plus lesser amounts of other nitrogen oxides, including nitric oxide or nitrogen monoxide. Nitric oxide is oxidized to nitrous oxide upon exposure to oxygen, although acid and base treatments are used to remove impurities for commercial-scale production of nitrous oxide.
Diagram of Nitrous Oxide Preparation
Comments
How can nitric oxide be oxidized to nitrous oxide? That is a reduction reaction.
My understanding is that nitric oxide reacts with oxygen to form the peroxide which then reacts to form nitrous oxide.
dont know but sounds fun
Dis was a gud experiance………..thnk u
its help s to know about laughing gas
Nitric Oxide disappears in the body via the interraction of the Body’s (manufactured) First line of defense “SOD” or SuperOxide Dismutase, which plays a role in converting Nitric Oxide into Hydrogen Peroxide. An overabundance of Nitric Oxide in the body can be a concern, because if the body does not have enough SOD (best supplemented form: gliadin), then the remaining Nitric Oxide can convert to Peroxynitrate, which is the precursor to all forms of cancer. So…the message for all of you people who are taking L-Arginine and L-Ornithine to increase NO2 in the body (because NO2 is also very good as a “carrier”, increasing the delivery of Nutrients, etc throughout the body), or all of you “huffers” out there who whiff cans of whatever to get high, you could be opening the door to getting cancer in 10-20 years. There is no clinical research that has been done on this subject, but the 1998 Nobel Prize was for the discovery of NO2. So what is the answer if you have MORE NO2 than your body than normal? Supplement SOD Gliadin, found in GNC and online. Good Tip. FYI TV
sounds funny