Beryllium nitrate is an
inorganic compound
In chemistry, an inorganic compound is typically a chemical compound that lacks carbon–hydrogen bonds, that is, a compound that is not an organic compound. The study of inorganic compounds is a subfield of chemistry known as '' inorganic chemis ...
with the idealized
chemical formula
In chemistry, a chemical formula is a way of presenting information about the chemical proportions of atoms that constitute a particular chemical compound or molecule, using chemical element symbols, numbers, and sometimes also other symbols, ...
Be(NO
3)
2. The formula suggests a salt, but, as for many beryllium compounds, the compound is highly covalent. Little of its chemistry is well known. "When added to water, brown fumes are evolved; when hydrolyzed in sodium hydroxide solution, both nitrate and nitrite ions are produced."
Synthesis and reactions
The straw-colored adduct Be(NO
3)
2(N
2O
4) forms upon treatment of beryllium chloride with
dinitrogen tetroxide
Dinitrogen tetroxide, commonly referred to as nitrogen tetroxide (NTO), and occasionally (usually among ex-USSR/Russia rocket engineers) as amyl, is the chemical compound N2O4. It is a useful reagent in chemical synthesis. It forms an equilibrium ...
:
:BeCl
2 + 3N
2O
4 → Be(NO
3)
2(N
2O
4) + 2NOCl
Upon heating, this adduct loses N
2O
4 and produces colorless Be(NO
3)
2. Further heating of Be(NO
3)
2 induces conversion to basic beryllium nitrate, which adopts a structure akin to that for
basic berylium acetate.
Unlike the basic acetate, with its six lipophilic methyl groups, the basic nitrate is insoluble in most solvents.
References
Beryllium compounds
Nitrates
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