Haifa Potassium Nitrate

[aborza]

A friend gave me a fifty pound bag of bag of Haifa Chemicals Greenhouse
Grade Multi K potassium nitrate soluble fertilizer.

The only thing on the bag that identifies the purity of its contents is the
N-P-K ratio of 13.5-0-46.2.

I have Googled the web and news groups for data on this product with little
success. The company's web site does not provide MSDS information and simply
says that the product contains less than 1,000 parts per million insoluble
contaminants and that there are no chlorides in the product.

Additional detailed information can be found here;

http://www.haifachem.com/fertilizer/multi_k_gg.html

Can someone point me to an MSDS for this product or suggest a method of
determining its purity from the data provided on the web site referenced
above?

[Alan Yates]

You can test for chlorides with a little silver nitrate solution. Any
chlorides (or other halides) will ppt out. Make sure you use distilled
water to make up the testing KN03 solution.

Insouble material is easy enough, just make a solution. Gross contamination
will be obvious, filter with some nice clean white and high quality filter
paper, examine for residue.

Calcium species can be ppt'ed out with sulfates or hydroxides. Large sodium
content would show up on a flame test. AFAIK that's about the limit of what
you can do with simple equipment and easy to get (say photographic)
chemicals, I am not much of a chemist though, others here might have better
ideas?

If its quality proves poor you can clean it up fairly easily with
filtration, potassium hydroxide, and a few cycles of recrystalisation. It
is a pain to do, but it has to beat just throwing away 25 kg of raw materials.

Post by aborza
A friend gave me a fifty pound bag of bag of Haifa Chemicals Greenhouse
Grade Multi K potassium nitrate soluble fertilizer.
The only thing on the bag that identifies the purity of its contents is the
N-P-K ratio of 13.5-0-46.2.
I have Googled the web and news groups for data on this product with little
success. The company's web site does not provide MSDS information and simply
says that the product contains less than 1,000 parts per million insoluble
contaminants and that there are no chlorides in the product.
Additional detailed information can be found here;
http://www.haifachem.com/fertilizer/multi_k_gg.html
Can someone point me to an MSDS for this product or suggest a method of
determining its purity from the data provided on the web site referenced
above?

[Greg Boyd]

Use it , it's about the best out there .
Greg

Post by Alan Yates
You can test for chlorides with a little silver nitrate solution. Any
chlorides (or other halides) will ppt out. Make sure you use distilled
water to make up the testing KN03 solution.
Insouble material is easy enough, just make a solution. Gross

contamination

Post by Alan Yates
will be obvious, filter with some nice clean white and high quality filter
paper, examine for residue.
Calcium species can be ppt'ed out with sulfates or hydroxides. Large sodium
content would show up on a flame test. AFAIK that's about the limit of what
you can do with simple equipment and easy to get (say photographic)
chemicals, I am not much of a chemist though, others here might have better
ideas?
If its quality proves poor you can clean it up fairly easily with
filtration, potassium hydroxide, and a few cycles of recrystalisation. It
is a pain to do, but it has to beat just throwing away 25 kg of raw materials.

Post by aborza
A friend gave me a fifty pound bag of bag of Haifa Chemicals Greenhouse
Grade Multi K potassium nitrate soluble fertilizer.
The only thing on the bag that identifies the purity of its contents is the
N-P-K ratio of 13.5-0-46.2.
I have Googled the web and news groups for data on this product with little
success. The company's web site does not provide MSDS information and simply
says that the product contains less than 1,000 parts per million insoluble
contaminants and that there are no chlorides in the product.
Additional detailed information can be found here;
http://www.haifachem.com/fertilizer/multi_k_gg.html
Can someone point me to an MSDS for this product or suggest a method of
determining its purity from the data provided on the web site referenced
above?

--
Alan Yates
http://www.vk2zay.net/
The Moon is Waxing Gibbous (62% of Full)

[Eirik van der Meer]

I use agro quality potassium nitrate myself and have never had to
purify it because of performance problems. I'd imagine most of it is
made from catalytic fixation produced ammonia now days, not mined or
from organic wastes, so the calcium and chlorides should be pretty
low.

Yea the source of nitrate should be OK, but what about the potassium?
Although fretilizers shouldn't contain too much sodium I suspect the plants
might be mort tolerant to it than we are. As for chlorides I know that
Norsk Hydros Krista-K was made from HNO3 and KCl so there might be some
left.
The thing I wolud pay attention to is the pH, if it's alkaline you can get
into a lot of trouble when using it with aluminium,

[Alan Yates]

Post by Eirik van der Meer

I use agro quality potassium nitrate myself and have never had to
purify it because of performance problems. I'd imagine most of it is
made from catalytic fixation produced ammonia now days, not mined or
from organic wastes, so the calcium and chlorides should be pretty
low.

Yea the source of nitrate should be OK, but what about the potassium?
Although fretilizers shouldn't contain too much sodium I suspect the plants
might be mort tolerant to it than we are. As for chlorides I know that
Norsk Hydros Krista-K was made from HNO3 and KCl so there might be some
left.

I gather they try pretty hard to get the chlorides out, they would salt up
the soil and cause the plants osmotic grief.

Post by Eirik van der Meer
The thing I wolud pay attention to is the pH, if it's alkaline you can get
into a lot of trouble when using it with aluminium,

Isn't that why you use boric acid as a buffer?

[Pyro Doug]

Post by aborza
A friend gave me a fifty pound bag of bag of Haifa Chemicals Greenhouse
Grade Multi K potassium nitrate soluble fertilizer.
The only thing on the bag that identifies the purity of its contents is the
N-P-K ratio of 13.5-0-46.2.
I have Googled the web and news groups for data on this product with little
success. The company's web site does not provide MSDS information and simply
says that the product contains less than 1,000 parts per million insoluble
contaminants and that there are no chlorides in the product.
Additional detailed information can be found here;
http://www.haifachem.com/fertilizer/multi_k_gg.html
Can someone point me to an MSDS for this product or suggest a method of
determining its purity from the data provided on the web site referenced
above?

Hiafa is much like all the agricultural brands and they make excellent black
powder, they are 98.7 to 97.8 but there is no need to get technical unless you
are making something that requires the absolute best! which most any pyro never
does so why pay extra for tech grade? use it! buy as much as you can afford
before they put a watch list in this product and ban it from pyro and special
effects etc. only used for agricultural proposes only! Hmmm?

PD