Arthur Posted August 18, 2010 Share Posted August 18, 2010 I'm looking for a few grammes of lead nitrate for an old formulation. Is it as simple as lead metal and nitric acid? Anyone done this before? How strong an acid is best? I'm probably satisfied with a few grammes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Siegmund Posted August 18, 2010 Share Posted August 18, 2010 Nitric acid will indeed attack lead to produce lead nitrate (and release fumes of one of the medium-oxidation-state nitrogen oxides, I forget while one at the moment.) The lead nitrate will dissolve in water. If you care about efficiency, you'd want to use an excess of lead to consume all the acid, then drive off all the water to leave the crystals behind (strength of acid only changes how fast the reaction goes and how much water you have to evaporate); if you're looking for quick and dirty, using strong enough nitric acid ought to give you some precipitate (in addition to a fair bit left behind dissolved in water) while if you used dilute nitric acid, all the product might remain dissolved. [Disclaimer: textbook chemistry. Haven't tried it myself with lead. Making copper nitrate this way, you *have* to drive off the water, because the copper nitrate is so soluble.] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
50AE Posted August 19, 2010 Share Posted August 19, 2010 It's a very slow reaction if you don't have the lead powdered. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mumbles Posted August 20, 2010 Share Posted August 20, 2010 If you happen to have any copper nitrate around, a solution of it will also attack lead metal to yield copper metal and lead nitrate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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