Ammonium Acetate - Uses and Distinctive Properties

Uses and Distinctive Properties

As the salt of a weak acid and a weak base, ammonium acetate has a number of distinctive properties.

• NH₄C₂H₃O₂ is occasionally employed as a biodegradable de-icing agent.
• It is often used with acetic acid to create a buffer solution, one that can be thermally decomposed to non-ionic products
• Ammonium acetate is useful as a catalyst in the Knoevenagel condensation and as a source of ammonia in the Borch reaction in organic synthesis.
• It is a relatively unusual example of a salt that melts at low temperatures.
• Can be used with distilled water to make a protein precipitating reagent.
• Is often used as an aqueous buffer for ESI mass spectrometry of proteins and other molecules.

Ammonium acetate is volatile at low pressures. Because of this it has been used to replace cell buffers with non-volatile salts, in preparing samples for mass spectrometry. It is also popular as a buffer for mobile phases for HPLC with ELSD detection for this reason. Other volatile salts which have been used for this include ammonium formate.