fallout - 27-12-2005 at 17:05
What is the best way to synth KNO3?
chemoleo - 27-12-2005 at 17:15
I have moved this to beginnings now, instead of detritus, because I am feeling kind 
Search. you need nitric acid, which can be made (with difficulties) in multiple ways.
Then react it with i.e. KOH or K2CO3, potassium hydroxide or potassium carbonate.
Easier to buy it. Stump removers and so on.
DeAdFX - 27-12-2005 at 18:01
Or an ionic nitrate with a potassium salt.
NaNO3 + KCl --> KNO3 NaCl
Doesn't help much but its another way shrug...
chloric1 - 28-12-2005 at 07:09
The metasynthesis synthesis from sodium nitrate and potassium chloride would be the safest, cheapest and most
satisfying way to isolate KNO3. Nitric acid is too expensive/difficult to make to waste on making potassium nitrate. Garden shops sell muriate of
potash(KCL) and Nitrate of soda in four or five pound containers. These are rather impure but can be dissolved in pure boiling water and filtered
through a coffee filter or a fine linen cloth.
Start with hot concentrated solutions of sodium nitrate and potassium chloride. On mixing a deposit of sodium chloride may or may not separate
depending on the concentration of your reagents. This mixture is then cooled to 0 degrees C. THe potassium nitrate should deposit as needle like
shards. If you are a stickler for purity then take your shards and dissolve in the absolute minimum boiling water and cool in ice to reprecipitate
the KNO3. A couple of recrystallizations maybe necessary to remove most of the sodium chloride.
Does that help? Try to find inorganic chemistry books written before 1960 to get a better grasp of the technical details.