Lab Notes - Failure in Making Sodium Nitrite

In this video i synthesize nitrosylsulfuric acid and isopropyl nitrite, and i tried to make sodium nitrite but i failed.

My original goal was to make sodium nitrite. Sodium nitrite sets itself apart from the more common sodium nitrate by having one less oxygen atom, which makes it quite unstable under various conditions. This particular challenge intrigued me, and I thought I'd give it a try, even though I knew it's notoriously tricky for amateur chemists like me to produce.

I wanted to develop a low-temperature method, which involved several chemical reactions. I began by crafting nitrosylsulfuric acid from fuming nitric acid and sulfur dioxide.

Having successfully created nitrosylsulfuric acid, I moved on to the next stage: generating isopropyl nitrite. The idea was to eventually use this compound to produce sodium nitrite. The formation of isopropyl nitrite was quite intricate and required careful temperature control to keep the reagents and products stable.

I attempted to break down isopropyl nitrite into sodium nitrite using sodium hydroxide and methanol but this failed. I ended up with the decomposition of isopropyl nitrite instead.

But at least i found a way to make isopropyl nitrite without starting with nitrites.

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