Turning Wood into Nitric Acid
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 มิ.ย. 2024
- In this video I show you how I made nitric acid from wood while learning how to cut and burn wood.
If you liked the video please consider liking and subscribing to my channel :)
If you want to support my work here's my patreon - / amateurchemistry
Also, excuse me for my poor speaking, in the case that you don't understand something there are always subtiles made by me.
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This video is for educational and entertainment purposes only, please don't repeat anything you see here.
0:00 Intro
1:50 Making Potash
10:10 Making Nitric Acid
12:10 Making TACN
15:00 Outro
#chemistry
#experiment
#beautiful
Literally making nitric acid out of wood but doesn’t know how to make a fire properly. That is the most chemistry thing ever. Great video.
or split wood. Chisels? Chopping on concrete base?
@@SwarmerBees everyone knows ur supposed to chop firewood on glass tables with a butter knife & a baseball bat.
This is like that "turning Lego into methamphetamine" video. Completely roundabout and impractical, but technically possible and fascinating. Great video!
Thanks! It is nice to see that pepole like this type of content, because when it comes to obscure transformations I have a ton of things planned for the next few months.
Afaik from my own research You could put styrofoam into a microwave and gain 40-60% alpha-Styrene. So not that impractical altough a fractional destillation & etc. might be neccessary. I really can't tell from which paper this was but it wasn't that hard to find.
@@Amateur.Chemistry I really like the idea of being able to turn anything into whatever you want no matter how impractical. A good example is the total synthesis of morphine. It CAN be done of course, but it's something like 15 steps for a single digit total yield. Plants are still our greatest synthesis tools and the pharmaceutical industry still uses them extensively.
@@chemistryofquestionablequa6252 When it comes to plants I have one very interesting synthesis planned which is making aspirin from willow tree. I am still not quite sure how to do that, but I will try and share the results here.
@@Amateur.Chemistry sounds cool. You could probably extract the salicylic acid as a salt, convert back to the acid and acetylate with acetic anhydride or a number of other agents.
I did nearly the exact same thing some 32+ years ago! I found an old US Military field handbook at a library (on a Dutch island no less...) that had a guerilla warfare section to it. It instructed how to make some crude nitrates in wilderness/jungle settings. Did the whole collecting various wood ashes, plant leaf litter etc, boiling down & filtering to concentrate the resulting salt solution(s). Next was to let it stand and allow time for crystallization. En fin, ended up with some dirty nitrates, and mixed with some other "stuff", made some impressive smoke "bombs". 10 years later I found myself graduating from University with a chemical engineering degree. Good times.
what is name of that book if it’s not secret ?
The PMJB by kurt saxon😂
@@DjordjeDjuricSRBProbably TM 31-210 if I had to guess.
I think you should have peed on that plant leafs, to make a higher concentrate of nitrates.
sir which test is used to conform the presence of nitric acid.
With this knowledge, you could now technically make 2 parts of black powder from wood alone. Find a way to extract sulphur from wood and that's black powder from wood. All in all hilariously impractical, but a great video and fun concept.
Wood dont contain a lot of Sulphur(almost none).
@@valsodar6723 It can and was done anyway.
@@alexturnbackthearmy1907 It would required A LOT of WOOD and PATIENCE...
ما جدوى هذا الكبريت هل له ميزه عن الكبريت المعدني لقد وجده فعل حين وضعت الفضة في محلول بقايا الرماد و الفحم فأثر فيها كحال الكبريت لكنه منسلخ لايبقى هل من طريق لتثبيته
@@valsodar6723are there other widely accessible plants that do contain it?
If you are going to wash a powder with water, put water in the bucket before you pour the powder in so it will reduce the dust!
Im a chemist and I dont really expect to have some potassium nitrate in that wood ashes, just because it decompose at 400°C , further more I expect more to have somo HCl acid when you put sulfuric acid, just because KCl its a lot more stable. So you are probably wondering why when you put the copper it gives you a blue colour ?? This its because it so diluted that didnt give you the complex (CuCl4)-2 thats its green intead you get Cu(H2O)6Cl2
Absolutely right. Potash is calcium CARBONATE, not calcium NITRATE. Shocking how i had to scroll down 20 comments to finally find someone that calls this bullshit bullshit.
I commend the approach. However, this process is common to making homemade soap "Lye Soap". The best way to leach the potasium salts is to place the ash in a sock-like/teabag and steep in boiling water. Another note, the best wood to use for this process is, traditionally, Oak and other hardwoods. Pine and Spruce are good for other byproducts such as pitch and combustible liquids which require another process altogether.
Wood normally has a lot of moisture in it... So to know the yield, you really need to know just how much water it has. It gets a LOT lighter when it's truely bone-dry.
cool vid, very interesting.
a suggestion if you heat up the ash and water mixture I believe you would capture/leech more potash, it will make the filtering go quicker as well as the viscosity generally reduces with temperature.
For your future hands & back: always hit wood from bottom side (that one which is closer to ground). Axe should go right through with one or two hits, if not sharpen it. Going from top side (closer to sky) is several times harder, but you probably already noticed it. For people who still have problem: branches remnants should be A-shaped not V-shaped if log is placed. Then hit its top.
I have split a lot of wood and never noticed any difference going from top to bottom or vice versa. Not letting the wood to dry out has the biggest effect on how easy it is to split it
do you mean the bottom side as in the end of the piece of wood which was closer to the ground when it was growing?
@@KingJellyfishII Yep hit end that was closer to ground while tree was growing. This way it's much easier to cut through branching knots. Speaking from experience of cutting several cubic meters of wood for winter ea. year. Mostly oak, pine and birch. The first one has most significant difference. It's mostly because that way you follow plant fiber direction and even if you miss it a bit, the cut will itself follow path of the fibers. The opposite way you're trying to cut fibers in half, which requires way more energy than just following them. You should look for smooth cuts. If your cut is jagged, then you're doing something wrong. Some "hair" might get chipped off depending of moisture content, but the cut should have relatively smooth surface.
@@TitanumIchigo That's really interesting, I'd never noticed or heard of that myself. I've also split a lot of wood but almost exclusively rhododendron so perhaps the effect isn't so pronounced with that kind of wood. I'll have to do some experimentation though I think
@@KingJellyfishII I'm cutting wood while still quite wet, so it could be also a factor which empoower the effect.
For so many years I have always believed that potash is mashed potatoes. Now I know its some kind of acid. Thank you so much for enlightening me. You are the best!
Its potassium salts (mostly carbonate)
Potash makes lye, which is alkaline/basic.
Actually potash is alkaline,the opposite of acid,but it can still cause nasty burns to the skin when it is concentrated!
You should start with fully burnt white ash. A lot of the stuff you are trying to extract is trapped inside the charcoal grains making it hard to extract. Once the carbon is burnt away you will be left with a fluffy white ash that is much easier to work with.
These vids keep getting better and crazier. Keep it up, cause they're awesome. 🙀🙀🙀
I'm honestly shocked that there was any nitrate left after burning. Super funny video I love it lol
Thank you!!!
i love that kind of videos, where you make out of nature materials some chemicals. Transmutation is wonderful. Very good job!
Senku approves of this!
Sulfuric acid is also producable from electrolysis, which I think could use ingredients only from the potash and some kind of sulfur compound.
How do you make if with electrolysis?
@@johnElden8760electrolyze na2so4
Strongly underrated channel, maybe your accent isn’t the best but video is great and experiments are super interesting. Keep going!
man, you are awesome, I love your content❤
imma be honest, you strike me as NileRed, but before he had a fancy lab. Like a mixture of extractions & ire and NileRed. Kudos. I might actually try this one, as a chemistry afficionado
If you want to go down the natural nitrate sources, bird droppings are a great way of getting started
I didn't know it was THAT easy to make nitric acid using a plasma arc and air. Inside a flask with two openings, air in and air out, in the middle there are two electrodes that gives the plasma arc. The air passes through the arc into another flask with water and another one after that with water. In the first water flask the nitric acid builds up and the second one catches what didn't stick in first flask. When you're done reduce the water content and you're done!
Senku rolling around in the Stone World
they dont have creatine in stone world. even with 6kg of wood, the yield of potassium ash is 0.5 grams. and hno3 is even less yield. so it would take weeks of burning wood and extracting hno3 to get enough. platinum however as a catalyst is necessary in the ostwald process to create nitric acid
Polish Nile Red! I just love your videos!! Keep up the good work, you are amazing!
Fascinating chemistry is. Chemistry is not the study of reactions but rather of change.
Thank you for the interesting video👍👍
Very cool video. Appreciate your time.
I enjoyed watching your video.
It looked a lot like something I would do.
I really enjoyed this video. You made me laugh. And it was super interesting!
Hello,
Nice video and explanations.
Just as a side note, the soluble extract of wood ash may contain organic carboxilic acids salts and those (what are no nitrates) may react with H2SO4 to set some volatile organic acid free.
A typical example may be acetate setting acetic acid (ethanoic acid or vinegar) free.
Such acids are weak but dissolve copper as blue Cu(2+) salts especially in the presence of O2 from the air (moisture + air + vinegar dissolve Cu and this accelerates upon concentration, agitation, aeration and heat); copper acetate is green-blue depending on concentration.
It reacts with NH4OH to make Cu(NH3)4(H2O)2(OH)2 deep blue.
The later when added with Mg powder will be energertic somehow because of the electrochemical oxidoredox couple Cu(2+) + Mg --> Cu + Mg(2+) what burns hot and bright and spead NH3 burning gas or N2 and H2O gases away... this is sadly no proof of nitrate present into the system.
PHZ
(PHILOU Zrealone from the Science Madness forum)
Hi, the explaination that you provide here is very plausible, and there might have not been many nitrates in the wood ash, but I think that there were some due to the formation of a brown gas upon the addition of sulfuric acid to the potash mix.
This gas was definitely nitrogen dioxide due to the color and characteristic smell, and its formation indicated the presence of some nitrate or nitrite salts in the potash.
They might as well have turned completely into nitrogen dioxide, but nevertheless I think that it proves that there were at least some present.
@@Amateur.Chemistry
You are right, thank you,
I forgot about the NO - NxOy cloud you noticed and showed into a minute of your video; this with no doubt confirms some HO-NO2 (HNO3) or HO-NO (HNO2) is present into your preparation; thus some nitrate or nitrite inthere.
PHZ
(PHILOU Zrealone from the Science Madness forum)
(and from A.O.L. newsgroups alt. engr. explosives, alt.engr.chemistry, rec.sci.chem., rec.sci.pyrotechnics, ...)
Not sure about exact yield improvements, but in the context of organic gardening ramial woodchips are substantially more nutrient dense than arboreal woodchips. This leads me to believe that rather than logs, if you were to collect leafy branches, dry them out and then burn those, your final amount of potash would be far greater.
Largest yield of potash is obtained by burning White Oak to pure white ash..., in ye old days (back when we used pine tar seal up our boats) it was the primary commercial source of potash. The primary source of weapons grade potassium nitrate was obtained by urinating over a bed this sort of ash over a winter, when it would dry out in the spring a layer rich in potassium nitrate crystals could gleaned. The Prussians were experts at this process, I believe they used horse urine for a production scenario...,
Love this video
SUPER COOL
I hope you used hot water too increase solubility because when I did a potash extraction from ash I got quite a significant amount of potash.
Good to see that ash could be used for something at least, though would be interested in something that a large portion can be used so it doesn't need to be thrown away. Also wondering what no flame way could get a fire going and is then safe to be around. Closest I can think it potassium permanganate and glycerine but I thing it still burns to quick to actually light a fire
Sulfur was mentioned in the comments below, but it might be interesting to precipitate sulfur from sodium thiosulfate tablets,
chlorine remover tablets for tropical fish. I'm not sure if it's available in your country.
هل هو كبريت جيد
@@user-kd4ko5ru6f I don't know if it's a good thing or not, but
Simply add acid to sodium thiosulfate.
It's approximate, but there will probably be a lot of impurities.
After you made the TACN, what would it become if you dropped in a piece of iron to precipitate out the copper? Would the solution still be just as flammable?
good job!
Maybe a video about extracting sulfuric acid from coal wikipedia says that you can get ammonium sulfate as a byproduct of dry distilation
That sounds cool! I also want to extract anthracene and make some glow toys.
You should use boiling water to extract the ashes and an old t-shirt tried over the top of a large jar to filter out the debris before boiling it down.
Awesome video, and such creativity keep it up. the only thing try to get a white background for the darker liquids so we can see them better.
Thanks! I actually brought a white background yeasterday, and it should arrive in about a week :)
We can finally make more revival fluid, Senku!
Clicked and came here just for this comment lol
creatine in stone world goodlick💀💀 even with 6kg of wood, the yield of potassium ash is 0.5 grams. and hno3 is even less yield. so it would take weeks of burning wood and extracting hno3 to get enough. platinum however as a catalyst is necessary in the ostwald process to create nitric acid
wow that is how a real chemist thinks, keep up your work. You have a nice future :)
Wait till dr stone hears about this
Awesome!
Thanks!
Did the "TACN" stuff make more fire and light than just the magnesium powder, or did it just take the "bright white" nature out of it?
you can probably fix the scales, they have a way to readjust them
3:00 is more evidence that scientists should probably hit the gym 😎
sounds like you've never split wood.
In fairness it was pretty painful to watch 🤣
Coool video bro
Copper and nitric acid does work, to get it going typically you need to add a bit of water. You can google passivation to see why.
Great video.
Thanks!
500 years ago you would have been labeled a witch and burned at the stake! Well done. (Not burned until well done) 😂😂 Subbing and liking.
Thanks for this! I can now free my friends from the petrification that happened 3,700 years ago
Wow never though there would be enough nitrate in the potash to light a fire.
If one has a fireplace and the chimney is not so high, when rains, the ash if stands on sensitive to acid materials, is slowly decomposing them. It was the first time I noticed that the wood could produce acid.
what kind of wood do you burn ? in terms of how it was used to make nitric acid.???
I think faster is to guide the the smoke through a shower to colect the nitrates that form in the combustion.
So did you make metallic copper in the end when you burnt it and set it aflame?
yup
@@Amateur.Chemistryadd well i did also
Nice video!
Thank you!
What about the potassium hydroxide in the ash, like when they do soap ? Where did it go ?
While listening to this, I kept having the feeling that I am watching a NileRed video with an artificially modified voice. The wording is that similar. It's great!
Thanks! I wonder if watching my videos feels like watching a low budget clone of nile red, or something more original.
@@Amateur.Chemistry How should I put this... watching this video is like watching NileRed, but not the current one. Back when I started watching his videos, there was this childish enthusiasm in his eyes, and fueled by that he tried all sorts of things just because he could. Lately, this spark has been gradually dying out. Here, I see the same enthusiasm, the processes don't have to make sense, yield is secondary, the journey is important. Also, it shows how precision can in most cases be an overrated component. I wish you keep this enthusiasm because that is what drives progress.
Right around 9:10, forbidden tea.
for some weird reason watching your videos reminds me playing C&C Red Alert 1 :D
Wait until senku finds out about this
Yeah you can get potassium nitrate from wood ash. Sodium nitrate aswell. But it takes months of soaking all of the ash including the big chunks in a water barrel. Then you leach the water.
Can you make a discord server so we can talk about chemistry in there and process 😊
I will probably make one when this channel will be a little bit bigger
Wouldnt it improve your yield if you took wood dust and extracted the potassium nitrate from that?. Then again the sap contamination might be an issue.
Seeing as he struggled with just splitting the logs how do you think he’d manage to turn them to dust?
@@RM_1917 I'm sure he can use a hand saw.
Extracting spirit of wood for making flamier stuff.
Question for you SMART chemistry people.
Use to use a wood stove for heat..dumped out a lot of ashes..rained on the ashes and only left very white ashes left over...are the nitrates in the ground underneath? Like how saltpeter works?
Is the addition of sulfuric acid necessary dose lye work
No, it has to be sulfuric acid
Burning wood chips, small sticks or mulch gives you a better yeild of ash...
Magnesium burns intensely even with only the oxygen present in the air. So, to make the final test more conclusive, I would not add magnesium powder, but something else like carbon powder or even powder sugar. Regardless, I think your final test looked conclusive.
thanks
Has anyone used used Turf ash, its brick red so no idea whats in it. Decades ago I used so natural leached and crystalized concentrate* from the fire ashpile to get a squib effect. Not much to look at but proof there was something to it, never went full chemistry on it so am curious as to the chemical adventures of others.
*rain washed and sun dried over long chunk of time, ancient way of finding nitre salts.
Which acid mix in wood coal powder
5:55 did you use hot or cold water??
"my character has chemistry but no forestry" "the book says you need forestry to start a fire" "that's dumb fire is just a chemical reaction." "fine, but you are going to have to roll for each task." "I weigh out the wood" "the +5 scale brakes" "I find a new scale" "it's not as good of a scale you will have +2 difficulty to your chemistry" "I chisel the wood it should give me +2" "the chisel gets stuck in the wood" "congratulations you do not put your eye out trying to pull the chisel out of the wood" "I get a ax" "you find a rusty old ax" "you do not chop the wood with the ax, but you also didn't get tetanus" "I get help" "the wood is chopped" "I get the grill" "1 the grill breaks it's rusted likely got it from the ax." "use the grill lid and metal bucket as the grill" "congratulations the top heavy grill will not get blown over by the wind." "I fill it with wood and soak it in gasoline and light it with a blow torch" "congratulations you did not get a 1 and the predictable thing did not happen but it does not stay lit." "I try again with the near by grass the grill is in" "it works" "ok I leave the fire unattended for a few hours to burn" "those dice are loaded, the town is not on fire it's just coals now" "I lift the hot grill inside the house to get it out of the grass field" "some how you do not burn your self or drop the grill" "I let it sit inside for 2 hours" "unattended again?" "yep" "ok their are still some hot coals left, and you are getting board you will only be able to take one last action, hint: their is bucket of water near by" "I stir the coals vigorously shaking the makeshift grill inside, to let them die out" "ok you successfully made fire the rest can be done using chemistry skill."
Interesting
there is on TH-cam another video about getting to KNO3 from wood fragments and pee left to biodegrade for a long time you can use that obtain HNO3
This is probably how aqua regia was incidentally made and discovered...
now how do we get the sulfuric acid?
Seeing that you're asking that question you might not be knowledgeable or inclined to have the understanding or experience to use the internet and figure out that it's available at many places and even online for home delivery.
With that being said do you think you might be able to make mindset to be using sulfuric acid if you unable to consciously consider and work out the solution to the problem of not having a castle?
You see my concern there you want to be handling Sophia can nitric acid when for some reason you were struggling where how to achieve and obtain they said such acids.?
5:30 About 0.5 % yield. Good question if that's good or not. But since probably a big part of woods weight is water, and while burning off all non carbon, you also burn tons of carbon, turning it into carbon dioxide. So it's a very wasteful process anyways. With stochiometrically perfect amounts there would be nothing left. But because usually there is less oxygen than needed to burn and oxydize everything, you're left with some carbon and metal traces.
I think the metal traces should all be in the water. The wood itself should be relatively metal free. I guess 😂 The only metallic compound in plants I know is chlorophyll. But I have no idea if that is only in the leaves or if maybe it gets stored in the wood during winter.
"I did a few tries with it, because it was just really nice to look at"
Me: " What?!? Everything is dark-- _Oh god no, my eyes!!! _*_What have you done to my EYES_* "
You will get way more potash from burning seaweed than wood. Old school pro tip.
I wonder how this method compares to burning the wood, generating electricity from the heat, and pyrolyzing air into nitrogen oxides with the electricity?
It's a mercury "retort". Godd one of the mortahsafers stones
boil the potash until nothing but crystals are left, then distill with sulfuric acid to catch fuming nitric acid
It makes complete sense, but i had never connected that the name Potassium is derived from pot ash -ium. Mind unexpectedly blown.
BTW a better experiment would be turning wood into soap. You get KOH from potash and react it with some oil to get soap
you are like nilered but post more often that’s great
ما نوع الخشب المستخدم
Senku enters the chat
Looks like the magnesium is doing all the show here.
Nice project but it can be made more easily from air. A high power electric arc will produce nitrogen oxides, just dissolve the in water.
ooo i alwways do this when nbowed !
You have to mix the ashes with urine and leave it for several months in a plastic tank. That way you will get much more product.
I would like to see a white background here or there when things are to dark to see, just an idea though.
Amazing job well done how are you friend well done
Thanks! I am great, and I am currently finishing up the school stuff and starting to work on tons of new videos!
@@Amateur.Chemistry i love your chemistry video
This video should give to Shenku in Dr.Stone
You should have made sulphuric acid from scratch!
I will make it in a future video :)