[Method]Sodium nitrite extraction from curing salt

[letmejoindeath]

-Basic summary of extraction-

Curing salt is made from 6-7% sodium nitrite and 93% sodium chloride.

Sodium nitrite is soluble in ethanol but sodium chloride has next to no solubility in ethanol.

If you mixed a bunch of ethanol with curing salt and ran it through a filter enough times, then let the ethanol evaporate you would be left with almost pure sodium nitrite.

One 50G bag of curing salt should yield approximately 3g of sodium nitrite.

You would need about 20oz of curing salt to yield the PPH recommendation of 35g.

-Step-by-step method for sodium nitrite extraction-

1)I would buy a gallon of ethanol and the 2.5 lb jar of curing salt on Amazon. This will give us more than enough sodium nitrite.

2) Pour the curing salt into a large Pyrex dish

3)Fill the Pyrex with ethanol until almost full to see how much will fit.

4)dump the curing salt and ethanol into a large mixing bowl and mix thoroughly. This is to dissolve the sodium nitrite into the ethanol mixture while the sodium chloride should stay mostly stable.

5)filter the contents through a couple of coffee filters into the cleaned Pyrex dish. You can do this multiple times to further purify it.

6)place the Pyrex dish in front of a fan somewhere until all of the ethanol has evaporated and the dish is completely dry.

7)Scrape up the left over residue and you should be left with almost pure sodium nitrite.

8)Find everlasting peace

 

[mehdone]

Gonna need some verification on this.
My googling says sodium chloride will dissolve in ethanol, albeit not well- and sodium nitrite is also soluble in ethanol, but not well. I don't think this is a suitable method for separating the two, but, I'm not a chemist.

 

[letmejoindeath]

Gonna need some verification on this.
My googling says sodium chloride will dissolve in ethanol, albeit not well.

even if it dissolves slightly the final product should still be of fairly good strength. Someone needs to test it out.

Even if we got it closer to 50/50 won't that make SN a more viable method again?

 

[mehdone]

We're not gonna get 50/50 if we're starting with a 7%/93% product and they're both equally soluble in ethanol.

As I said, I'm not a chemist- I would love to know a good, viable, easy method to extract SN from curing salts or to synthesize SN from sodium nitrate- but I don't think this is it. I would love to be proven wrong, because the method you explained is actually feasible and doable- but, I really don't think it's accurate, or going to be capable of achieving the goal.

My research makes me think it's not that simple, and I don't want to give people false hope.

 

[Jorms_McGander]

Gonna need some verification on this.
My googling says sodium chloride will dissolve in ethanol, albeit not well- and sodium nitrite is also soluble in ethanol, but not well. I don't think this is a suitable method for separating the two, but, I'm not a chemist.

How neat I can just past a screenshot into forums in 2023.

Here's what I've been looking at, and this thread motivated me to do a little bit more research.

Basically, the answer is that the solubilities are too close together to separate the two salts as a layperson.

The below is discussing making sodium nitrite out of sodium nitrate and purifying from there, and it still seems unnecessarily difficult. The solubility bit isn't included, but I also read similar information.

[edit: swapped the screenshot to remove buddy's 13 year old username lol]

 

[mehdone]

How neat I can just past a screenshot into forums in 2023.

Here's what I've been looking at, and this thread motivated me to do a little bit more research.

Basically, the answer is that the solubilities are too close together to separate the two salts as a layperson.

The below is discussing making sodium nitrite out of sodium nitrate and purifying from there, and it still seems unnecessarily difficult. The solubility bit isn't included, but I also read similar information.

[edit: swapped the screenshot to remove buddy's 13 year old username lol]


View attachment 121549

Yup, that's pretty much what I've found.

Using lead isn't ideal, for multiple reasons.
Random useful YouTube video I've found on the subject (someone should probably record and archive this before it gets taken down so that we've got it as a resource):