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maliveline
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homemade KNO3
I was reading that you can make potassium nitrate by taking manure and urinating on it and then adding water and sealing the container and letting it
react for like 10 months. You then would drain liquid out of the bottom onto drying sheets and let the moisture evaporate.
Is this a viable method for synthesizing potassium nitrate? Has anyone here ever tried this? My issue is it seems pretty nasty but the best deal to
get potassium nitrate around here is stump remover and at 5 bucks a pound its really not that great of a deal. Also how would you even go about
figuring the correct ratio of urine manure and water lol.
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Marvin
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Not really. There are better methods that involve building towers of straw and earth but you will be able to find fertiliser grade potassium nitrate
if you search.
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phlogiston
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http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=13904#...
IMO you'd be have to be quite desperate.
Just spend the time delivering newspapers and spend the money on stump remover. Be thankful can just be bought OTC.
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"If a rocket goes up, who cares where it comes down, that's not my concern said Wernher von Braun" - Tom Lehrer |
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j_sum1
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Yeah but if you are chasing 250 euros in a nitric acid comp then it might be worth it.
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macckone
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An easier method is making the nitric acid
By burning ammonia or even a electric arc
From atmospheric nitrogen.
Then react the nitric acid with potassium carbonate.
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Bert
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| Quote: |
I was reading that you can make potassium nitrate by taking manure and urinating on it and then adding water and sealing the container and letting it
react for like 10 months.
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The process is aerobic, a sealed jar will not allow the organisms required for the creation and then oxidation of ammonia to function
It's not a viable method for anyone who does not live on a farm/have a large enough area for a good sized compost pile without neighbors objecting...
Even then, it would make your $5.00/lb. potassium nitrate seem like a good value.
I am going to merge this thread into THIS THREAD, see the information provided by The WiZard is In on use of peat for saltpetre production...
Rapopart’s Rules for critical commentary:
1. Attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly and fairly that your target says: “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it
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2. List any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).
3. Mention anything you have learned from your target.
4. Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.
Anatol Rapoport was a Russian-born American mathematical psychologist (1911-2007).
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Bert
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Threads Merged
27-11-2014 at 18:10 |
maliveline
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ya sounds like a nightmare. i still say 5 bucks a pound is a joke though, and its probably gone up since last time i went to buy it.
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Little_Ghost_again
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Fish make it quickly, in my tanks they excrete ammonia, the filter turns this into nitrite then nitrate, what kind I have no idea but if it starts
with ammonia then surely it end with ammonium nitrate?
Just a thought
Dont ask me, I only know enough to be dangerous
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Amos
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Old resources that I've looked at for making homemade potassium nitrate state that the nitrates produced from fermenting human urine are largely
calcium nitrate, allowing one to precipitate calcium carbonate by addition of potassium carbonate(from wood ashes) and crystallize out the KNO3.
Oh, and look, the french method says so too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium_nitrate#French_method
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nlegaux
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Around here they used to mine bat guano for making gun powder 
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Bert
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Quote: Originally posted by Little_Ghost_again  | Fish make it quickly, in my tanks they excrete ammonia, the filter turns this into nitrite then nitrate, what kind I have no idea but if it starts
with ammonia then surely it end with ammonium nitrate?
Just a thought |
There was an ongoing thread regarding just this process on a pyrotechnic list a few years back. Organisms required for each stage of the conversion
were identified, and some preliminary investigation was done on replacing the traditional manure pile with a large drum of water/waste byproducts with
an aerator- I do not recall a final effective design emerging from this work. I do seem to recall that the organisms had a maximum level of ammonia
they would tolerate which was fairly low, but a maximum tolerance for dissolved nitrate (final product) that was quite high-
This could be "fertile ground" for an amateur to explore...
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Anatol Rapoport was a Russian-born American mathematical psychologist (1911-2007).
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Zephyr
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I don't know if this has been covered already, but why bother with extraction from freces when it is mush easier and *slightly less gross to extract
potassium nitrate from urine?
This was publish on request of the Chief of the Department of the Military in 1862, and can be easily and very cheaply be replicated on a small scale.
"SWISS METHOD.
The method practiced by the small farmers in Switzerland is very simple, requires little or no care, and is admirably adapted to the hilly
portions of our State.
A stable with a board floor is built on the slope of a hill (a northern slope is best), with one end resting on the ground, while the other is
elevated, several feet, thus allowing the air to circulate freely below. Beneath the stable a pit, two or three feet deep, and conforming to the slope
of the hill, is dug and filled with porous sand, mixed with ashes or old mortar. The urine of the animals is absorbed by the porous sand, becomes
nitrified, and is fit for leaching in about two years. The exhausted earth is returned to the pit, to undergo the same process again. This leached
earth induces nitrification much more rapidly than fresh earth; so that after the first crop the earth may be leached regularly every year. A
moderate-sized stable yields with every leaching about one thousand pounds of saltpetre."
http://docsouth.unc.edu/imls/lecontesalt/leconte.html
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chinchilla
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Use a substrate comprising 25-35kg garden soil, peat moss and bone meal in no particular proportion. Innoculate the substrate with the macerated root
of a legume. Spread it out on the garage floor in a disk approximately 80cm diameter and 10cm thick. Each day throughout the summer thoroughly disturb
the pile and sift 30-40g wood ashes on it and sprinkle a solution of 4g urea dissolved in a few deciliters of water. At the end of the summer
lixiviate the pile with approximately 30 liters of water. Concentrate the eluate to approximately 3 liters and isolate the salt peter with potassium
carbonate. Obtain 700-900g potassium nitrate.
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Bert
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The organisms that fix atmospheric Nitrogen in legumes are not the organisms creating ammonia, nitrite and finally nitrate in compost.
Rapopart’s Rules for critical commentary:
1. Attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly and fairly that your target says: “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it
that way.”
2. List any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).
3. Mention anything you have learned from your target.
4. Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.
Anatol Rapoport was a Russian-born American mathematical psychologist (1911-2007).
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chinchilla
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I would submit to that, Bert. I figured the nitrosomonas and the nitrobacter would be close by the nodules. What i am not aware of is the bacteria
that actually pull dinitrogen out of the air and fix it as ammonia.
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chemrox
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If it worked it would be quite and achievement in recycling and green chemistry. You'd have a cheap source of HNO3 but you might have to take a lot of
shit! (This has surely become a scatological thread my friends).
"When you let the dumbasses vote you end up with populism followed by autocracy and getting back is a bitch." Plato (sort of)
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chinchilla
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I should not have made reference to the root of a lugume. It is the root of sweetclover that i use. This manufacture does work. I have conducted it
for seven summers. The fascination lies in seeing earth, air and a bit of urea transformed into beautiful, white crystaline spars of potassium
nitrate.
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