• Technical Data Sheet (download  pdf file)

General Chemical's Solvay, New York sodium nitrite plant is an ISO 9002 registered facility. General Chemical Corporation offers sodium nitrite in three convenient forms to meet the industry's specific and growing needs: granular, flake and liquid. All three forms are low in metallic impurities, chloride, and carbonate. The granular and flake products dissolve readily in water. Over many years General Chemical has been a reliable source of high quality sodium nitrite.

Commercial sodium nitrite in granular or flake form is a pale straw-colored material, soluble in water with absorption of heat.

Bulk shipments of sodium nitrite solution are available in 20,000 gallon tank cars and 4000 gallon tank trailers.

Sodium nitrite is an active oxidizing agent and is employed as such in corrosive inhibition, alkaline detinning of scrap tinplate, and in phosphating of metals. Sodium nitrite functions as a reducing agent toward such powerful oxidizing agents as dichromate, permanganate, chlorate, chlorine, etc.

In the presence of acids sodium nitrite forms nitrous acid. Since nitrous acid is not commercially available due to its instability, sodium nitrite serves as the principal source of nitrous acids in a number of organic syntheses. Two of the more important uses of nitrous acid in organic syntheses are in the diazotization and nitrosation of organic amines.

In an acid medium sodium nitrite reacts with organic alcohols and amines to form organic nitrites such as amyl nitrite and amine nitrite (cyclohexylamine nitrite). These derivatives have interesting properties, and are utilized to some extent as diesel fuel additives and volatile corrosion inhibitors.

Many industrial applications of sodium nitrite are based on its oxidizing properties and its decomposition in an acid solution to nitrous acid. Some of the principal applications of sodium nitrite are in:

1. Organic synthesis and production of azo dyes
2. Rubber industry
3. Corrosion inhibition
4. Alkaline detinning of scrap tinplate
5. Heat transfer salts
6. Metal coatings
7. Blowing compounds
8. Textile dying
9. Meat curing

Pure sodium nitrite melts at about 284 °C . It starts to decompose at about 320 °C into sodium oxide, nitrogen oxides and nitrogen. Its crystal structure is body-centered orthorhombic with the unit cell of sides a = 3.55, b = 5.56 and c = 5.57. Variations in specific heat are exhibited between 60 and 200 °C with the largest change at 161 °C.

Sodium nitrite is hygroscopic and very soluble in water, but relatively insoluble in most organic solvents. The heat of Solution has been reported as 14.9 kJ/mole at 20 °C and 15.3 kJ/mole at 14 °C.

At —19.5 °C the solution of sodium nitrite in water forms a eutectic containing 28.1% sodium nitrite. In the temperature range of —19.5 °C to —5.1 °C a hydrate, NaNO₂•½H₂O, has been reported to exist; at the higher temperature, sodium nitrite exists as the anhydrous salt.