Mononitronaphthalene (MNN) Synthesis

MNN is simply naphthalene that has been nitrated in only one position - hence the mononitro. It is not explosive itself, but can be used as a sensitizer or it can be nitrated further. This is basically just a nitration and doesn't require any materials particularly hard to obtain. All that I used was sulfuric acid, ammonium nitrate, and naphthalene. Naphthalene can be purchased as mothballs or flakes, used to keep moths away from clothing. If you go out to by some, make sure you get naphthalene and not the ones that are p-dichlorobenzene (that's for another time). The actual procedure isn't very hard either. So here's what I did.

I first mixed 30 ml of H2SO4 and 15 grams NH4NO3 and let it cool. I then took 37 grams of naphthalene and added it in portions to the mixture. (NOTE: The 37 grams was what I had there with me and was too much for this amount of mixed acid. A proper amount should probably be closer to around 15-20 grams of naphthalene, but adding more won't hurt the reaction.) The pure white naphthalene became a molten yellow/orange layer on top of the spent acids. You can see it in the pictures.



I stirred a bit and let it cool over time. After a while the MNN became a pretty solid layer. I took this and neutralized it with sodium bicarbonate and water and washed again with water. Then I left it to dry.



I lost some while neutralizing and filtering, but the final yield was around 40 grams (of MNN + un-nitrated naphthalene). Like I said before, it's not explosive on its own but it can used as a sensitizer for things like ammonium nitrate (around 85:15 should work well) or for making cheddites with chlorates.
It can also be further nitrated up to tetranitronaphthalene but as far as I know, conc. HNO3 is need for the fourth nitro group. Dinitronaphthalene (and apparently also trinitronaphthalene) can be made by renitrating the MNN with H2SO4/xNO3. I will put up some more info on this another time.

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