Answer to Question #285351 in General Chemistry for Nancy

Question

Starting with barium, describe how you can prepare barium nitrate

Answer 1

Barium nitrate is manufactured by two processes that start with the main source material for barium, the carbonate. The first involves dissolving barium carbonate in nitric acid, allowing any iron impurities to precipitate, then filtered, evaporated, and crystallized. The second requires combining barium sulfide with nitric acid.

It occurs naturally as the very rare mineral nitrobarite.

At elevated temperatures, barium nitrate decomposes to barium oxide:

2Ba(NO₃)₂ → 2BaO + 4NO₂ + O₂