Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Ghetto Nitric Acid

highpower48 - 14-4-2020 at 14:29

Has anyone made what I call Ghetto Nitric Acid? It's made just by mixing a proper amount of Potassium Nitrate, Water and Sulfuric Acid. Let react,then filter off the Nitric Acid without distillation. It is low % and a bit contaminated but a quick source low % Nitric....

arkoma - 14-4-2020 at 14:43

pray tell what you filter it through? A $30 chinese distillation kit will enable 68% azeotropic pretty easily.

highpower48 - 14-4-2020 at 15:20

Quote: Originally posted by arkoma  
pray tell what you filter it through? A $30 chinese distillation kit will enable 68% azeotropic pretty easily.


I usually do a distillation but sometimes I just need a small amount quickly. A decant is more what I meant than a true filtering. But you could use a glass frit style filter funnel..I wonder if a coffee filter would work for this low % acid....

SWIM - 14-4-2020 at 19:51

Ca nitrate would give you a better product.

Still not great but better.

Maybe economically depressed suburb nitric acid.

Fulmen - 15-4-2020 at 00:27

Quote: Originally posted by SWIM  
Ca nitrate would give you a better product.

Maybe, but it also produces a shitload of other problems. The precipitated gypsum is so fine it's almost impossible to filter, so expect a mess and poor yields.

mackolol - 15-4-2020 at 01:20

Quote: Originally posted by Fulmen  
Quote: Originally posted by SWIM  
Ca nitrate would give you a better product.

Maybe, but it also produces a shitload of other problems. The precipitated gypsum is so fine it's almost impossible to filter, so expect a mess and poor yields.


Precipitated gypsum is not that bad to filter, as long as you have any vacuum pump. With mine I could filter it quite well, worse are heavy metals carbonates, these suck in every manner.
Quote: Originally posted by highpower48  
Let react,then filter off the Nitric Acid without distillation. It is low % and a bit contaminated but a quick source low % Nitric....


If you don't distill it, I dont really know how much nitric acid will be there, it will be still mostly unreacted H2so4, because nitric acid is formed during the distillation as it has lower boiling boint and higher volatility, it is removed by distillaton from equilibrium of acids. If you dont distill it it will be mostly sulfuric acid, especially, when you dilute it with water, becuse the more diluted H2SO4 is, the less it reacts with strong acid salts in normal temp.

Fulmen - 15-4-2020 at 01:28

Gypsum is bad enough once you start working with larger quantities. I made 3l of 10% HNO3 yesterday, and it took forever even with an aspirator and a buchner filter.

draculic acid69 - 15-4-2020 at 08:51

Filter through a white t shirt first to remove the larger sized bulk first.just gravity filtration works fine for the shirt.shirt-> decant/let settle for a day or three then filter thru buchner.ideally celite.

highpower48 - 15-4-2020 at 14:04

Well gave this a try today. 101g of Potassium Nitrate 20 ml water and 35 ml Sulfuric Acid. Mixed water with Potassium Nitrate then slowly added Sulfuric acid. Was able to filter off about 5ml of very contaminated nitric acid did react with copper. This is definitely not worth the time or waste of reagents. Better just to distill. Clean up just as much trouble....oh well good try, sometimes YouTube vids are for crap, lol

RogueRose - 15-4-2020 at 22:01

Quote: Originally posted by draculic acid69  
Filter through a white t shirt first to remove the larger sized bulk first.just gravity filtration works fine for the shirt.shirt-> decant/let settle for a day or three then filter thru buchner.ideally celite.


I have some polyester or nylon cloth that I found works very well for filtering the CaSO4. I've used old track shorts, gym shorts (old "Champion" brand with small holes in the fabric) and it works really well and you can squeeze and wring the liquid out of it. IDK how it would work with HNO3 as the liquid, I've always gone from cal nitrate to sodium or copper nitrate for the most part. It's really easy to tell when the sulfate is clean of copper nitrate though, no more blue tint!!