oneup
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nitric acid from vinegar and ammonium nitrate
I've heard this once, does anyone know if it works or not?
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chemoleo
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No, it won't, because vinegar, or rather acetic acid, is not strong enough to displace nitric acid from ammonium nitrate.
Never Stop to Begin, and Never Begin to Stop...
Tolerance is good. But not with the intolerant! (Wilhelm Busch)
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unionised
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And the organic trash in the vinegar is likely to reduce the ammonium nitrate- possibly violently.
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oneup
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does anyone know any other acids that are strong enough?
I know sulfuric acid is, and I made Nitric acid this way several times, but sulfuric acid is expensive for me and I'm looking for another acid to do
the job.
thx in advance
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Chris The Great
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Hydrochloric should work, I read someone had success making dilute nitric acid with it, but I'm not sure of quality or anything.
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Duster
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For what its worth, I found a few sources of H2SO4 online. In fact, I couldnt find a single bottle of sulfuric acid drain cleaner in town, but ordered
12 quarts (12x1qt bottles) of the stuff online for about $60 shipped. The company kinda cheated and sent it UPS and unlabled as such, but it didnt
really bother me as it wouldnt have been my fault. Saved me on shipping though.
Also, you might want to look at a thread going on now about making nitric acid from... well air. I dont know what sort of lab you have setup, but it
may be worth a shot....
Duster
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12AX7
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HCl(aq) + NaNO3 <--> HNO3 + NaCl
If one is less soluble in the solution, you could get an impure yield just by metathesis. Similar to Ca(NO3)2 + H2SO4 --> CaSO4 + HNO3, but CaSO4
is less soluble so the equilibrium goes heavily to that side.
In this vein, you could use silver or lead nitrate to precipitate the chloride ions, leaving a purer nitric acid, but then you need one of those in
the first place.
Distillation is impossible because HCl (or rather, the HCl-H2O azotrope) has a lower boiling point than HNO3.
Phosphoric acid isn't particularly strong, but I've got to imagine it's solid enough to distill nitric off. I mean, something has to happen, and
H3PO4 is solid to glassy, damned if it's going anywhere.
For that matter, I wonder if H3BO3 could distill any mineral acids? It really does melt too hot to be of any use to nitric or sulfuric manufacture,
but I think it could do HCl (3NaCl + H3BO3 --fusion--> Na3BO3 + 3HCl), among other volatile elemental acids.
Tim
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garage chemist
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Phosphoric acid is considered a strong mineral acid and together with its extremely high boiling point, it is perfect for the production of other
mineral acids.
From a mix of phosphoric acid, KI and water, HI-H2O azeotrope can be distilled in high yield, which is pretty impressive considering that HI is a much
stronger acid than H2SO4.
HNO3 from H3PO4 and a nitrate will of course work, too.
The only problem is that H3PO4 is sold as maximum 85% strength, making the production of fuming HNO3 impossible. Only HNO3-H2O azeotrope (68% HNO3)
can be prepared with H3PO4.
Boiling down H3PO4 leads to formation of di- and polyphosphoric acids under production of water even before all of the water is gone.
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unionised
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I have a feeling the HNO3 will oxidise HCl if you try to distill the mixture.
H3PO4 may work. Does hot H3PO4 attack glassware?
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neutrino
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It certainly does. This might not be so much of a problem at these temperatures, but I still wouldn't use any expensive glassware for this
distillation.
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oneup
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it would be cool to make nitric acid without sulfuric acid, i can do H3PO4 + NH4NO3 method as I can get it €1/Kg in my country, and it's pure.
and after using the nitric acid for an explosive I can recover the sulfuric acid by boiling it down 
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YT2095
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you`de have to Very carefull of your stoichometry in that mix though, as Diammonium phosphate will decompose back into ammonia and phosphoric acid
again upon heating, sadly it`s a nitrate that isn`t idealy suited for making HNO3 from phosphoric with.
done improperly and you`ll likely end up with just a mixture of the 2 that you can do little with.
better sticking to a Metal nitrate instead.
and I`m sure you can get garden lime from the same place and probably for much less per kilo 
\"In a world full of wonders mankind has managed to invent boredom\" - Death
Twinkies don\'t have a shelf life. They have a half-life! -Caine (a friend of mine)
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