On Sun, 09 Nov 2003 18:00:08 -0700, my_2¢
wrote:

,;Please excuse this question; I realize this must seem elementary but I
,;am quite stymied and it entails a work related situation.
,;
,;Cleaning out a acid cupboard where I work there are several bottles of
,;technical grade HNO3 which would be approx 70% but there are others
,;which are marked as "Fuming" (current date). My question is does there
,;exist a simple method to determine the percentage of acid if no
,;specific gravity info is present (i.e. 1.43, 1.50. etc, etc) ?

From the American Chemical Society Specifications Reagent Chemicals
Eighth Edition

Assay....69.0-71.0% HNO3

Assay (By acid-base titrimetry) Tare a small glass-stoppered flask
containing about 15 mL of water. Quickly pipet about 2 mL of the
sample under the water surface, stopper, cool, and weigh accurately.
dilute with about 40 mL of water, add 0.15 mL of methyl orange
indicator solution and titrate with 1 N sodium hydroxide. One
milliliter of 1 N sodium hydroxide corresponds to 0.06301 g of HNO3.

I can verify that it is a good procedure as I was a member of the ACS
Committee for Analytical Reagent Chemicals that wrote the book.
Whether or not it is simple depends on your skills and access to some
elementary lab equipment.

My advice is dilute it and get rid of it.
,;
,;There are some other bottles that are student's from last semester
,;that have a variety of information dealing with temp...can HNO3 be
,;"cooked" to a higher percentage (exposed to heat, thus reducing the
,;water content? I was told that under no circumstances to get rid of
,;the higher percentage grades as they cost quite a bit more money. But
,;if they can be reduced, why pay for a higher percentage? I am quite
,;aware of the "kitchen" methodologies of extraction w/ methylene
,;chloride and destilation but I always wondered why a higher percentage
,;was simply not produced via evaporation?
,;
,;
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