Turning Air and Ash into Potassium Nitrate | A Quarantine-Time Science Project
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 11 ก.ย. 2024
- We are often told that things don't just come from thin air. Well, in this video, I did make something from the air: a gunpowder-like pyrotechnic composition! While this may seem impossible, through the magic of the Birkeland-Eyde process, it can be (and WAS) done! To be fair, I also had to use a bunch of wood ash, water, copper metal, powdered sugar, and burned cream of tartar. Check out this LabCoatz short to see how I did it...
In depth:
Electric arcs are so hot, that they basically "burn" the nitrogen and oxygen in air to form nitrogen dioxide. This is a brown gas that dissolves readily in water to form nitric acid. As I bubbled this gas through water, though, a lot of the volatile acid evaporated away as it formed. To fix this, I simply added copper metal to the water to react with the acid as it forms. Since copper nitrate won't evaporate like nitric acid, the nitrate ions are forced to stay in solution. After a few weeks or daily operation, I had dissolved almost six grams of copper.
Wood ash is roughly 10% or less potassium carbonate/hydroxide (potash) by weight. Some rough calculations show that I would've needed 22 POUNDS of wood to make enough potash to react with my copper nitrate. So, I roasted some cream of tartar along with my wood. The thermal decomposition of cream of tartar (chemically, potassium bitartrate) yields potassium carbonate, which is used in the reaction alongside the other wood-based potash. After dissolving out my potash from the ashes and burned cream of tartar, I boiled my solution down and added it to the copper nitrate. This yielded highly soluble potassium nitrate and an insoluble copper hydroxide/carbonate paste. This was easily filtered off. My solution of potassium nitrate was boiled until it was fairly concentrated, and then refrigerated at 38F for 10 hours. Over that time, huge potassium nitrate crystals formed, which I kept and dried. The total yield was 6.7 grams.
I mixed my nitrate with 3 grams of powdered sugar and 1 gram of candle wax, which gave me almost 11g of flammable smoke bomb mix, which I lit with my 9kV neon sign transformer.
Long description, I know. But, it's information for those who want it!
I think you might be able to skip a step or 2 if you add the ashes directly to the water you're bubling the gas through. It could bind directly without the copper/iron displacement reaction. Your result would also look cleaner and have fewer metal contaminants but it might look cooler this way if you're using it for green fireworks.
So. I see KNO3 and Sugar smoke bombs on youtube from time to time and they're always done with dry ingredients. This works somewhat but the original recipe from the Anarchist Cookbook or other 1980's equivalent book that involves melting the two together - KNO3 to Sugar in a 60/40 ratio respectively and melting it on the stove (VERY LOW HEAT) until it turns into caramel. Then just push in a wick and let it harden then light. The caramel version makes 100x more smoke and burns way slower. We used to make 1/2 soup can size smoke bombs that would fill cul-de-sac's with smoke. :)
I've actually made such mixtures before (even going as far as grinding the melted solid into grains similar to black powder). At the time of this video, I didn't have a good way of melting the nitrate outdoors, and I certainly wasn't going to do it indoors, given the likelihood of a flare-up.
@@LabCoatz_Science So, hilariously, the second time we did that recipe, we used an outdoor camp stove and cheap camping pot which was like 0.5mm thick aluminum....
It flared on us, blowing up in our faces and ruining our eyebrows, bangs, armhair, etc. We got lucky. Another friend who had no business making it, made it at his friends house on their stove and made a huge batch. He got impatient and turned up the heat and proceeded to burn half the kitchen down. Cabinets, stove/oven, linoleum floor, counters all burned to needing to replace it all but worse than that he got it on his hand and arm during the flareup and got 2nd and 3rd degree burns. It was a thing. Skin grafts, the works. That stuff blows molten flaming sugar *everywhere* when it goes while in liquid form.
edit - If you melt it slowing with low heat in a non cheap pan or pot it's reasonably safe to make indoors. I've made over a dozen batches back in the 80s. It just takes forever to melt on those low temps is all.
@@motelgrim My big incident was on the back porch. I had probably a pound of it on a little electric heater that I had pieced together myself (sketchy exposed mains wires and all), and I was heating it gradually in a steel stock pot. All of the sudden, as I was leaning over it stirring, I heard that characteristic hissing sound and jumped back. A pillar of lilac fire straight shot straight up about four feet, scorching the side of the house and unleashing a monumental smoke cloud. Afterwards, I turned myself in to the parents, and that was the last time I ever cooked my rocket candy, lol!
A simpler way to make potassium nitrate, albeit not easier. fabricate a drying rack with several layers , like a clothes dresser only with multiple drawers, the bottoms perforated to let water based liquid though, the bottom having a large shallow pan to catch drippings. The whole apparatus built on top of a fire pit to evaporate the liquid. You then acquire a large quantity of cattle dung, cattle stall bedding and cattle urine , you may even collect human urine to add, load the racks with the stall bedding and cow s**t and pour the urine mixture through it all from the top, when the pan is full drain into container replace the dung and bedding with new pour first run back though, you can collect the used dung and bedding for reuse or just toss. Repeat the run 5 times and taste the liquid in tha pan to see if the material is gaining strength. Anyhow after several passes you build a fire under the pan and evaporate the water . This is how potassium nitrate was made for gunpowder in the revolutionary war days ,because the British were running blockades and we couldn't get gunpowder or saltpeter. From the Dixie Gun Works Catalog published around 1970. I'm 71 years old.
Nice.
noic
Thanks man, wish I had done a better job of editing and filming it; it really was a cool process!
Can you explain to me what I do to make it again .
What did you use to create the arc?
A 9kV/30mA neon sign transformer I had lying around. I could have used anything probably, but neon transformers are basically built for this purpose (sustaining an electrical discharge for a long period of time, usually in a neon light).
I'm confused ... did you make pottasium nitrate by using potassium nitrate hydrocloric acid and copper?
As I thought that was nitric acid when all is said and done... I'm just wondering why you didnt just use the nitrate was it for purification and concentration?
The only materials used here were water, air, copper, and potassium carbonate/hydroxide extracted from wood ash. An electric arc essentially "burns" the nitrogen in the air, combining it with oxygen to make nitrogen dioxide. The nitrogen dioxide dissolves in water to form nitric acid. This is volatile, however, so I added copper for it to react with, so the nitrate ion is fixed in solution as copper nitrate. After weeks of gradually converting copper into copper nitrate, I added the potassium solution, which caused a displacement reaction to take place, resulting in a solution of potassium nitrate and a precipitate of copper carbonate and hydroxide. Hope that answers your question!
@@LabCoatz_Scienceimpressive
Can you make nitrocellulose from brikeland eyed
without sulfuric acid ?
Maybe. Nitrocellulose is only produced when cellulose (from, say, paper or cotton) is exposed to nitric acid and another strong acid. The other acid used to catalyze the reaction is usually sulfuric acid, but it might be possible to use hydrogen chloride or phosphorus pentoxide. Sulfuric acid is much easier to get than both of those compounds (I got a liter of it at Walmart for $5), though, so it is your best option. Plain nitric acid just won't cut it. It is also best to use fuming nitric acid (85% concentrated or higher), which can be quite hard to produce via the Birkeland-Eyde process due to its volatility.
:S I'd be more concerned with storage and stabilising it before you consider making any... That's a one way trip to catastrophic gelognite came about because of that I think...I wouldn't quote me on that I'm a diyer not a chemist haha
@@LabCoatz_Science Sulphuric acid dehydrates the cellulose which is required to create bond sites for the nitryl radical.