Lately I have been reading about biochemistry, the most recent is ATP and cell respiration. I am preparing for a course on biochemistry, biology and
biotechnology. I was doing research on the first scientist to study such things.
William Prout lived through the first half of the 19 century, discovered the composition of gastric juices and the components of urine along with the
classification of proteins, fats and carbohydrates. Most of you already know this just introduction.
Yields would not be good than. For a litter of urine only a max of .750g of potassium nitrate could be collected?
Whats about cat urine? More nitrogen than human urine.
Storage of the urine would be difficult, sterile and concentrated. Boiling it down to a concentrated solution until I was ready to evaporate? And
during storage adding ethanol to kill bacterial growth.
has any one here attempted this? If not for yields and use but to see if it works. Urea is cheep where I live so I don't need that but the nitrate
salts are hard to come by for me.
I don't have access to horse stalls. But my cats little may do if that has better
yields.
Thank you. Bert - 10-12-2014 at 20:07
You need to research how the nitrogen bearing chemical content of urine is converted to nitrates-
It's a multi step conversion, accomplished by several different types of micro organisms. First ammonia, then nitrite, finally nitrates.
This is old technology. Plenty of documentation, both from the days before Haber-Bosch and since. Anyone with an understanding of either a compost
pile or maintaining a fish tank's water quality could help you out too.SimpleChemist-238 - 14-12-2014 at 06:07
Compound
% of Total Nitrogen
Urea
86.9
Ammonia
4.4
Amino Acids
4.3
Creatinine
3.6
Uric Acid
0.7
This describes the amounts of nitrogen in urine, as seen above. In the swiss method urine is collected after it is processed by micro organisms that
convert the ammonia from the urea into metal nitrates such as calcium or magnesium nitrates. These in older methods were harvested and reacted with
pot ash to make potassium nitrate. pesco - 28-12-2015 at 05:06
Yields would not be good than. For a litter of urine only a max of .750g of potassium nitrate could be collected?
Summarized reaction of complicated conversions by various bacteria (urea -> NH4- -> NO2-
-> NO3-) and addition of pot ash :
CO(NH2)2 + K2CO3 + O2 -> KNO3 + CO2 + H2O
9.3g + 21.40g + 19.82g -> 31.31g + 13.63g + 5.57g
And thats only Nitrogen from urea component.
Anyway, amount of Nitrogen in urine strongly depends on diet, it will be much lower in urine of vegeterian who avoids legumes than in urine of person
whos staple is steak + baked beanZ.
IMHO the (average) 31.31g of KNO3 from 1 liter of urine is not low yield.
RegardsBert - 28-12-2015 at 08:30
Traditional organic process takes up a lot of volume and a lot of time, relative to Haber-Bosch. An amateur with access to raw materials (Yo, got aBBQ
or fireplace and some horses?) a big back yard and time to wait CAN produce a fair quantity of nitrates.
I have read of liquid bio-reactors being assembled by some amateurs, pretty much a large version of the filtering equipment for a fish tank- Still a
lot of liquid, but barrels, aerators and pumps instead of shovels and big stinky piles for handling the process.
Habe-Bosch takes a (relatively) massive industrial infrastructure & expensive high temperature/high pressure equipment- which an amateur is not
easily going to assemble themselves or run without some learning incidents. Ostwald process oxidation of the ammonia is also potentially too exciting
for your garage.
I regularly clean up large piles of chicken coop wastes, but I prefer not to extract and purify nitrates. I just add BBQ ashes and some barn lime to
the compost pile and work it all directly back into the garden. Best not to let the pile be rained on directly too much, or water soluble Nitrogen
compounds will leach away about as fast as the microorganisms produce it.
It's all good...Little_Ghost_again - 28-12-2015 at 08:56
LOL I spend so much time and money keeping nitrates as low as I can in my aquarium! Once an aquariums filter (in my case sump filtration) is
established it can process ammonia at an incredible rate.MolecularWorld - 28-12-2015 at 09:06
I have read of liquid bio-reactors being assembled by some amateurs, pretty much a large version of the filtering equipment for a fish tank- Still a
lot of liquid, but barrels, aerators and pumps instead of shovels and big stinky piles for handling the process.
Where did you read about this? I've been working on something like this, and while I've found a few century-old references on microbiological nitrate
production with something more [time and space] efficient than a niter bed, I haven't found anything done recently by amateurs or on a similar scale. AJKOER - 28-12-2015 at 09:18
Making nitrites may be easier than most would believe. I seem to always experience a nitrite decomposition (as pH rises) by the action of household
ammonia (contains surfactants so a foam column is visible), 3% dilute H2O2, a little sea salt on copper metal. For insights on the chemistry, see my
comments at https://www.sciencemadness.org/whisper/viewthread.php?tid=64... .
I suspect, but not attempted, the effects of adding NaOH, to the mix to suppress the nitrite decomposition, may result in NaNO2. The use of an air
pump may be able to supplement oxygen needs for the reaction.
If the recoverable product is nitrite, the addition of HOCl (or NaOCl) could form nitrate. I am not expecting a high yield, but otherwise a relatively
fast reaction.
But my cats little may do if that has better
yields.