The Decomposition of Oxalic Acid in Nitric Acid

The rate of decomposition of oxalic acid in strong nitric acid solutions increases with increasing acidity and temperature with the rate of reaction following pseudo-first-order kinetics with respect to oxalic acid. The order of nitric acid on the overall reaction has been shown to be 2.7, although this result should be treated with some caution due to scatter in the results at different temperatures. The activation energy was determined to be 116 ± 7 kJ·mol−1.