Making Nitric Acid Without Distillation?
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- Опубликовано: 28 сен 2024
- After making sulfuric acid by diaphragm electrolysis more than a year ago, I've had a few requests to try making nitric acid by the same process, and have decided to give it a go in this video.
By electrolysing a solution of potassium nitrate, we slowly generate nitric acid on the anode, as a result of the electrostatic attraction between the anode and the nitrate ion, and the formation of hydrogen ions on the anode surface. Using a semi-permeable diaphragm between the two electrodes, we can isolate the nitric acid we generate, and collect it after running the cell for a day or two.
Sadly, testing the current setup for this length of time only yields about 250mL of nitric acid at a very low concentration (0.7M at best), which is not particularly useful when compared with the concentrated stuff, in fact, to dissolve copper metal I first had to concentrate the acid by a factor of 3.
In order to be a viable production method, some changes must be made to the process. Possibly, changing the volumes of the chambers, lengthening the run time, or adding a second diaphragm to prevent the reduction of nitrate ions on the cathode may improve the yield, but maybe I'll try that in another video.
Why the copper electrode turned black:
Red clay has a ton of iron(III) oxide in it which reacts with nitric acid. As quickly as you produced nitric acid it was turning the iron(III) oxide into iron(III) nitrate. You were then performing electrolysis on the iron(III) nitrate, resulting in nitric acid in the pot and iron(II) oxide (black) moving across the "membrane" and depositing on the copper. The reason the bath turned yellow is because the iron(II) oxide will somewhat readily turn back into solvated (or eventually suspended) iron(III) oxide.
Almost all of the energy of this process went into dissolving the clay pot. Also nitric acid is really quite volatile, like hydrochloric acid, and will just disappear into the atmosphere. A decent cover over the pot would have prevented this.
I've had better luck with using graphite fiber arrow shafts as electrodes than compacted graphite. They don't degrade at all really but their electrical resistance is quite a bit higher.
where do you buy your graphite arrow shafts?
@@mr.salisbury2435 Any sporting goods store that sells hunting supplies, also just Amazon. Its arguable whether they're really "graphite" or not, but they're extruded carbon fiber/graphite. It looks like they're mostly called "carbon arrows" now. They'll probably have the tip nut and vanes glued on.
I originally bought mine as a bore for a gauss kind of mass driver that wasn't *too* conductive (compared to aluminum).
@@htomerif thank you for clarifying
@@mr.salisbury2435 gO TO YOUR LOCAL WELDING SUPPLY STORE AND ASK FOR CARBON BURNING RODS,THEY ARE CHEAP AND THE ONLY THING YOU HAVE TO DO IS REMOVE THE COPPER COATING BYRUNNING THE RODS IN A ELECTROLYTIC SOLUTION IN WHICH THE ROD WILL BE THE POSITIVE AND WALLLA
As a general note for others, anode wear can be mitigated by controlling the current density the anodes see. A starting point for graphite I like is around 15 mA/sq. cm. On little cylindrical anodes like these though, this reaction would be taking weeks. I'm using blocks that are a few hundred square centimeters. I think that Scrap Science is just willing to let the wear happen to get reasonable reaction speeds.
Wonderful! I've been purifying saltpeter which had been crystallizing on a wall of a former pigsty for a while now and I've been looking for something to do with it!
I also wondered what would happen if I were to electrolyze it so yeah, good thinking I guess.
if it requires distillation i am out, shit too expensive
@@VerbenaIDK Plenty of ways to make a homemade distillation apparatus from materials laying around.
@@ryanallen1014 Dont have anything I can use
Puff Puff ven AI lissen on this yngstet😂
This is going to be great for my diy lab thank you so much
I gave this experiment a try, using two small clay pots and a couple of platinum electrodes. Both were the platinum-plated expanded titanium type measuring roughly 4 square inches. I started with a dilute solution of 100G of KNO3 in about 2.5 liters of distilled water, and distilled water in the red clay pots. I used an adjustable digital-display power supply capable of limiting both current and voltage.
I set initial voltage to 8V without a current limit. The anode side became strongly acidic in a very short time once the current ramped up; and the cathode side very strongly basic. My yield of very dilute nitric acid appeared to be fairly pure but with a pink tint probably caused by the material of the pot, and similar in ultimate quantity to yours, after about 40~45 hours of electrolysis. I used the opportunity to experiment quite a bit with voltage and current limits, so it's not possible to give better than a ballpark account of those parameters; I'd say most of the electrolysis was conducted at around 5V and 200mA. I found that if I limited current to 100mA, voltage tended to stabilize at about 3.9V with minimal gas production at the electrodes. Higher current got higher voltage (unless it were limited) and a lot more gas. I stopped the process rather early. I'm sure I did not consume all of the 100grams of KNO3 with which I started. I also boiled down a large volume of water taken from the cathode side, which yielded a gram or so of what must be fairly pure KOH, which of course refuses to dry fully over moderate heat. Incidentally the cathode side didn't appear to lose a significant amount of water.
Likely because my KNO3 wasn't very pure, the KNO3 solution that was NOT inside either of the pots became slimy and cloudy, with a pH of about 9. The KNO3 had come from stump remover, so it contained unknown anti-caking agents. This, and my desire to move on to boiling down my products, prompted me to end the electrolysis early. So I can't really assign anything remotely like a percentage yield.
Presumably this method would produce copper nitrate if a sacrificial copper anode were used. I'm thinking there's a chance that rather than liberating a lot of NO2 as happens when copper is directly added to nitric acid, the NO2 might have a chance to go into solution and thence produce the metal nitrate more efficiently. I'm going to give that a try next. I'll use much purer KNO3. Hopefully the process itself will provide a means to know when the electrolysis is done. I would expect the copper to stop eroding when the KNO3 has been consumed.
Where did you get the pots from?
@@yasyasmarangoz3577 Walmart! It's a seasonal item. About 12cm wide and high. Same as this:
www.walmart.com/ip/5-5-Clay-Pots-Great-for-Plants-and-Crafts/150223887
how is it going?
any success with it?
@@VerbenaIDK Yes, it works well.
The pots are porous enough that there is evident seepage from both pots into the main electrolyte bath. It helps, and it keeps the process going, to extract most of the contents of the pots at intervals and replace with distilled water, thus minimizing that seepage loss. Using copper as the anode makes copper nitrate, and produces no detectable odors or emissions aside from some bubbling of hydrogen at the negative electrode. I ran the experiment at about 3~5 volts .5~1 amp using a copper anode consisting of 10 gauge solid electrical wire for about a week (which consumed a significant amount of wire) which produced, after evaporation of the anode-pot solution, something like 40 grams of very pretty blue copper nitrate, which appears to be quite pure.
When I stopped the experiment, the main bath contained a good deal of "fluffy" mostly-greenish material, apparently consisting of copper hydroxide, probably some copper carbonate from exposure to CO2 in air, AND a dark-brown heavy residue of copper oxide. Experimentally, I tried adding to the electrolyte some of the dilute nitric acid I had extracted from the anode side, and 100% of the material dissolved into copper nitrate, turning the solution a perfectly clear very acidic dilute blue. To then remove the copper, I added some of the KOH that had been extracted from the cathode pot, carefully monitoring until pH was neutral. This resulted in a filterable green copper hydroxide precipitate which, after separation, dried to a cake of very fine dark-green powder. The remaining solution was clear and colorless. It was evaporated to recover the remainder of the potassium nitrate, which appears quite clean.
@@jamesg1367 That seems amazing!
40g I am assuming of yield, and that's a lot!
although not nitric acid, that's great!
I've been looking for an alternative way to make ammonia... nice to see this....
I love just being part of your journey into amateur chemistry by watching your videos. I do a lot of chemistry which I should create more videos of like you. I'm most obsessed with extracting elements from rocks and minerals, which is actually quite dangerous because of the many regularly encountered unknowns. It's a bit scary having to treat the hazmat as I've identified arsenic and thallium from ores I've dissolved in acids. God only knows what else I have in my bucket of various sealed unknown product containers.
Is there an easy way to extract the elements in cinnabar from everyday stuff?
@@vivimannequin If you have cinnabar, it is easy enough to extract the mercury. I think it can be displaced using carbon as a reduction agent within a sealed clay vessel. It can also be extracted using acid then cementing the product out by addition of aluminum, zinc or magnesium. Cinnabar tends to carry other contamination products like arsenic, so the mercury needs further purification through distillation. Mercury vapors are really harmful as-is so the toxicity of arsenic probably isn't much of an argument point. Just take the proper precautions as you would with any chemistry experiment to stay safe and avoid contaminating the environment.
@@mwilson14 How do you displace it with carbon?
@@vivimannequin I guess the method is to actually roast the cinnabar with quicklime I was thinking of. The easiest way then would be to roast the cinnabar with oxygen to release sulfur dioxide and mercury.
@@mwilson14 I don't have the equipment to do that though
Found platinum anodes that test as platinum (platinum coated titanium) for 13 USD - 3x4 inch mesh anode with handle. It is more effecient and cleaner, but works great. Carbon rods are my personal second to that one.
Using a slight modification of this apparatus (Porous pot in slightly bigger plastic beaker; together with platinum anode and copper cathode, and 12 volts /1.25 amps) 250 ml of nitric acid is consistently obtained - after running for only ~ 6hr. When boiled down to 50ml, this will readily dissolve copper [when heated] as in the demonstration. Sometimes there is an ammonia smell, and there is always a murky precipitate. The cell also gets quite hot.
You can use iron anode in KNO3 to make Fe(NO3)3 and make KOH in the cathode compartment. Then take the Fe(NO3)3 solution and distill HNO3 off leaving Fe(OH)3 in the distilling flask.
Nice idea!
I might give that a go at some point, but if we're going as far as distillation anyway, I'll probably just go for distilling the potassium nitrate over sulfuric acid.
> distill HNO3 off leaving Fe(OH)3 in the distilling flask
sir how are u going to distill? electrolysis?
No I like the idea of ferric nitrate by anodic oxidation! I just need enough(5-10% solution) to color brass and copper sheet for decorative patinas!
There's definitely ammonia made in the cathode side. I used a platinum coated electrode on the anode side and steel on the cathode side and calcium nitrate instead of potassium nitrate. I'm glad I kept my garage well ventilated because it smells horrible.
Hi Harry , i finally succeeded in making a toxic cloud of red nitrogen dioxide. I got the idea from Nurd Rage , using fertiliser , hydrochloric acid and copper. Now i just have to circulate it through water to make nitric acid ☺
Nice work! Let me know how it turns out
@@ScrapScience Hi Harry, yes bubbling the gas through water made nitric acid ( dilute ) as it immediately reacts with copper..I also ended up with jet black copper chloride in the reaction chamber. Tested it on copper and it immediately took a layer off the copper. What i dont understand is , How is the copper dissolving reasonably quickly in the fertilser / hydrochloric acid solution to make the nitric dioxide in the first place ?
Good luck
You can try electolyzing N2 dissolved in water at 150 PSI. This should give HNO3 at the anode and NH3 and H2 at the cathode compartment. It is a bit dicey doing high pressure electrosis.
Yeah, I'm afraid anything involving high pressure is way beyond my skill set at this stage (probably at all stages honestly).
@@ScrapScienceI still wouldn't recommend trying it but 500mL coke bottles can hold up to 180psi but they get weaker over time and get weaker much more rapidly when exposed to sunlight or UV after sitting in sunlight for a few month it was only able to hold up to 50 psi but maybe if you use a fresh bottle and keep it away from sunlight you can do high pressure electrolysis but it will most likely be a bad idea.
Nice video!!
agreed! you inspired me to make my own channel
@@davisdean7481 yea your channel has potential just keep uploading and keep up the good work
Concerning your problem with the conductivity of distilled water - if you already have some HNO3, what about adding a few drops of it (or some other chemical) to the water just to _”jump start”_ the process?
Its very similar to an process they used with peat and big clay potts filled with koke as anode and around the clay pots was an mix of peat & limestone powder and an cast iron kathode. 10V and the cells had an recistant of 3 Ohm they produced nitric acid or nitrates they added ammonia to the peat in the warming throught the current the microbes could produce more nitrate and the current seperated the ions.
Would you like to revisit this with two clay pots? One inside the other. I think your yeild will improve.
Furthermore, what if you coil the copper cathode around the outside clay pot a few times and place the anode directly in the center.
I hypothesize that:
1) will provide a more uniform electric field around the pots; and
2) a more uniform electric field will help better push and pull on the ions into their seperate containers; and
3) ion penetration will happen over a larger area of both pots reducing the resistance in the cell; and
4) A lower resistance will let you lower the applied voltage and that will improve the efficency.
I'll definitely be revisiting this process in the future, I'm planning on it being a future video of my diaphragm electrolysis series. Two diaphragms instead of one is the plan to improve efficiency.
The shape of the actual electric field itself isn't really a factor on efficiency, as the reaction rate and efficiency are solely determined by the cell current and it's relation to the cell voltage rather than where the ions are moving. You're 100% correct on points 3 and 4 though, plus the effect of lowering current density on the cathode will further lower resistance and increase efficiency.
@@ScrapScience I am sooooooo looking forward to your next video.
I think point 3 (ion penetration over a larger area of the pot diaphragm) happens because the geometry creates a shaper field gradient "all around" the cell that better pushes and pulles ions over a larger area and better prevents diffusion mixing.
I think the clay should perform as a barrier means to devide the medium of the container by 2 and to create the clay wall there but it must complete act as an water ion exchange but not sulfate ions from the other side this means the sulfate ions should stay on one side only not get to the other but water ions can move freely between the two sides of the membrane
One side is water and one side the solution of mgso4 dissolved in it and the electrodes must be isolated from one other and then start the hydrolysis
Well all this chemistry is home grown hahaa the chemicals are not lab or hight grade lets thank this guys for effort and im shure that a low grade nitric acid will suffice for most home experiments yeha what do you guys think cause high grade nitric acid is dangerous for the novice.
Why does the reaction takes lot of energy while it gives just a small amount of product ?
you can use membrane permiablity proton it is polymere (perfulorure polyethylene glycole)
Cation exchange membranes don't work for transporting anions like this. I'm afraid those membranes won't work for this particular case.
Neat, but why doesn’t the hydroxide migrate through the semi-permeable membrane like the nitrate ions do? And what stops hydrogen ions migrating back the other way?
Yep, both hydroxide ions and hydrogen ions will migrate through the diaphragm, since it isn't an ion-selective membrane. This is the major source of inefficiency for the process.
You can prevent the transfer of hydrogen ions by using an anion selective membrane, but with a clay pot, it's just something you have to accept.
As the acid concentration rises
H+ goes from the anode to the cathode. The speed of H+ ions is about 10 times faster than K+.
As the HO- concentration around the cathode rises
The HO- goes to the anode.
The speed of OH- is about 9 times faster than NO3-.
So what happens is H+ + HO- = H20
at the membrane.
This is a competing reaction.
Very true.
The reaction will always exhibit this inefficiency, so it's something we just need to accept in this process, unless we want to go for ion selective membranes.
15:07 it should be mixture of Ammonium and Potassium hydroxide .
It's great idea thanks for that ,
Are you using a glazed or unglazed pot?
Unglazed. Glaze will block the movement of ions.
@@ScrapScience Thanks, it was kind of hard to tell from the vid.
LOL, I never would have ever thought I'd see the day that a pair of hands could this overact. LOL
Great work, even with the spazzie hands! Thanks for being you!
Yeah, I don't know what my hands were doing in this video, it's so crazy that I can't bring myself to watch it again honestly :)
I've switched up how I film my videos now though, so everything's a lot less hectic these days.
Glad you enjoyed it anyway!
From what I remember from my chemistry class was that electrolysis tends to destroy nitric acid , plus if you left your beaker on open air for 24 to 48 hours, no wonder why you lost some of it.
6:56 i always forget this ....
Which one is A and which one K , because in battery
Cathode are the plate which gives positive volt and for A vise versa but in physics Cathode refers to Negative 😖😵
Just tell me which terminal is connected to the positive in your setup because at 6:56 you said it's O2 gas at carbon electrode so it should be connected to positive so i think it should called Anode plz tell ...
Yep, in batteries, the positive electrode is always the cathode, and the negative is the anode.
But for electrolysis, the positive electrode is always the anode, and the negative is the cathode.
The real definition of a cathode (that works for literally everything physics or chemistry related), is that electrons will flow INTO it from an external circuit. Similarly, electrons always flow OUT of the anode into an external circuit.
In this case, the copper is negative and carbon is positive.
Great upload as I'm getting back into it so I can stay home and be a chemist 👍 Now is the pot is the semi-permeable membrane? Thanx💖
Yes, you're correct about the clay pot. :)
Can't the same process be used to make Hydroiodic acid? Accept using Sodium Iodide instead?
Trying to make hydrochloric, hydrobromic, or hydroiodic acid is a lot trickier with this method. When the halides are present, the anode is able to react with them rather than water. So what ends up happening is that elemental halogens (in this case, iodine) would be formed in the anode chamber, as the iodide ions would be oxidised at the anode instead of water (which would have generated the necessary H+ ions for the acid).
@@ScrapScience -Ok thank you for the clarification!
What if I use a lead dioxide anode instead of a carbon or platinum one?
Definitely don’t try that. Lead dioxide, even industrially made ones, are not at all resistant to nitric acid, you’ll quickly end up generating an incredibly toxic solution of lead nitrate. Please don’t poison yourself, carbon/graphite anodes are always a safe alternative.
I'm curious, I think I've seen nitrites being used instead of nitrates you'll get Nitrous acid instead of nitric acid, and elsewhere I've seen nitrous acid will turn into nitric acid over time, so could you end up with nitric acid with sodium nitrite as the starting material?
Nitrite is easily oxidised to nitrate under anodic conditions, so you'll almost definitely still get nitric acid as a product in that case. Either way, nitrite salts are a lot more obscure (and usually more expensive) than nitrates, making the process less cost-effective.
I wonder if electrolyzing epsom salts like this would work for making sulfuric acid...
If you check the most popular video on my channel, you might see an experiment trying exactly that :)
(I will warn you though, I made the video when I was sixteen or something and I'm really not proud of it)
I would like to know how to make sodium thiosulfate please reply or make a video about it
What haopens if u use more voltsge... Say 19v or 20v
The reaction will run faster, but at a lower energy efficiency. Additionally, you'll generate more heat in the cell.
At this concentration will it react with steel if so could I supersize this with unused 55 gallon barrels and the largest garden pot I can find
Well, while it would be very likely to react with steel there, you could design the cell such that the outer area of the barrel is the cathode chamber (in fact, making the barrel itself into the cathode would allow for very high current). If you then just generate the nitric acid in the clay pot, you'd be keeping the acid away from the steel anyway.
Suppose you have the potassium nitrate solution and distilled water at below, or the same level during electrolysis changing or reducing osmotic pressure.
Maybe i missed it in one of your videos...but do you use a membrane (or plug) at the bottom of the clay pot?
Some videos I do forget to say, sorry. The pots are plugged with a stopper or a small amount of silicone sealant before use.
@@ScrapScience Thank you for the fast answer! And no problem you cant explain everything in every video ^^ keep up the great work
For making sulfuric, nitric, phosphoric, acetic, hydrochloric, etc, if using the copper salts of those, is the clay pot still required? i.e. copper sulfate, copper phosphate, copper acetate, copper chloride, etc
If it isn't required when using copper salts, then is there an upper limit?
For sulfuric:
A clay pot is not required, as per my video on that topic. An upper limit exists due to the drastically decreased solubility of copper sulfate as the concentration of acid increases. I’d estimate the limit to be about 50-60% (acid concentration) but I’ve never experimented to see how far it can go.
For nitric:
A clay pot is required, as the generated solution of nitric acid should not be allowed to come into contact with the cathode (which would react with the acid to form unwanted side products).
Using copper nitrate really isn’t practically different to using any other nitrate for this process.
For phosphoric:
A clay pot is not required. This would work similarly to sulfuric acid generation, and would likely have an upper limit for the same reason. I’m not sure what kind of max concentration would be achievable for it though, I’ve never experimented with that reaction.
For acetic:
A clay pot is not required. An upper limit probably exists here from the fact that at high acid concentrations, the acid will react on the anode to form ethane and CO2. It also might suffer from the same low solubility problems as the sulfuric acid process, but I’m unsure because acetic acid is nowhere near as strong as sulfuric.
For hydrochloric:
You cannot make hydrochloric acid directly by electrolysis of a chloride salt, regardless of whether or not you use a clay pot. Chloride will preferentially react on the anode to form chlorine rather than stay in solution and allow the acid to be generated.
The only effective way to do it (somewhat indirectly) by electrolysis is to react chlorine and hydrogen gasses (made by clay pot electrolysis of NaCl) together, forming HCl gas. This reaction is very difficult to do safely however, as it is often explosive. I’ll also hopefully cover the reaction in a future video.
I think your a bit hard on yourself regarding the nitric acid concentration result. I think your method is quite innovative and more realistic to the common man. If boiling the end result is the only extra step then I'm in for sure. Great video and thanks for taking the time.
Where do you get potassium nitrate in Australia.
Online, mainly Ebay.
Can you top this up with the potassium like you would a chlorate cell? I'm trying this out but I added the 2nd clay pot like you mentioned
If you're using a double clay pot system, yes! Simply add more potassium nitrate to the centre compartment as it runs.
@@ScrapScience nice I will try topping up next time. The 2 clay pot setup seems to give a slightly stronger result. I used about 200g of nitrate and the acid solution strength test devolved a spec of copper over 4 days with no heating
Would ammonium chloride work the same?
To make nitric acid? No, in the best case scenario, you'd end up generating ammonia in the cathode compartment and chlorine gas off the anode (definitely not ideal and dangerous if you don't have a fume hood). Worst case scenario, you'd end up generating small amounts of dangerously explosive compounds such as nitrogen trichloride (this is the main reason why electrolysis of ammonium chloride should always be avoided). In theory, you may get some small yield of nitrates on the anode if the salt is added to the anode chamber initially, but I'd definitely say it's not worth it to try, given the possible dangers.
@@ScrapScience Ok thank you
If a higher power supply was used would it speed up the process ?
Yep, the reaction rate is proportional to the current through the cell, which in turn is based on voltage. A higher voltage supply (provided it can keep up with the current the cell draws) will make the reaction quicker. However, it will also cause carbon anodes to disintegrate much quicker, but they're cheap so it shouldn't matter too much.
I am designing a process and in a stage I get copper nitrate. This method works for regenerating the nitric acid and separating it from copper?
Yep, any nitrate salt will do. In that case, you’ll also plate the copper metal onto the cathode
If you are real ambitious you can bud a reactor out of pipes
And gun barrels
And steel rods with 3 combustion chambers. One on each end and one at the center. The two pistons come forward to compress the reaction mixture in the center combustion chamber. In this way you can get much higher temperatures. The rapid cooling freezes the NO composition at the higher equilibrium temperature.
Can ammonium nitrate be substituted for potassium nitrate????
Yep! But the process is just as inefficient
@@ScrapScience much appreciated ☺️☺️☺️
Can I use graphite found in pencils as a anode please tell.it's lock down here so I can't buy graphite anode
You can, but you’d need to use up a lot (probably around 50) pencils to get a reasonable quantity of acid. Pencil lead doesn’t last long at all in this kind of reaction.
@@ScrapScience thank you
Yes, carbon zinc batteries have much larger, more pure sticks of graphite inside. They work much better as electrodes than pencil cores.
Where can I get the graphite ?
You can buy graphite electrodes from a welding supply store, from online, or you can get them out of zinc-carbon batteries.
The term for the pot is diaphragm, not membrane
That's true. This is a bit of an old video, so I didn't properly understand the difference at the time.
for electrodes, what about MMO electrodes? Will they rot, too?
I'm honestly not sure. Maybe the MMO itself would be fine, but the titanium substrate probably couldn't handle any reasonable concentrations of nitric acid. I personally wouldn't risk it, given how expensive MMO electrodes are.
@@ScrapScience IDK, I'm making sodium chlorate with some MMOs, and was wondering what else I could do.
maybe shoulda just went ahead and got platinum plated electrodes.
Yeah, I'm afraid MMO is excellent at performing oxidation reactions in neutral chloride solutions, but pretty terrible for anything else (though it depends on what type of MMO you have, I suppose).
@@ScrapScience ruthenium-iridium
@@ScrapScience would platinum plated titanium work?
Maybe a diaphragm membrane works ,I understood the clay pot idea it will be functioning like a diaphragm membrane but we see that we still cannot 100% confirm that the clay pot did its objective to perform as a diaphragm but maybe I'm wrong and that OK I just got to this conclusion with time
Doesn't the nitric Acid react with the clay ?
Not at these very low concentrations, it would have to be much, much more concentrated for any reaction to occur, and that's if it does react at all, terracotta is surprisingly resistant.
Hi mate, I have another question for you ... I did what you did with the clay pot , and i used Miracle Grow fertiliserI, I have now made Acid in the clay pot as it reacts with baking soda..But there is a number of different chemicals in Miracle Grow. Would this be nitric acid or some other sort of acid ? As my garage now has a strong smell of chlorine. 😣
Seeing as the fertiliser is a big mix of chemicals, it’s likely that the acid you’ve made is a mix of nitric, sulfuric, and phosphoric acid, as this process pretty much just generates the acids corresponding to each present anion. The chlorine smell is likely due to chlorides in the fertiliser (the chloride anion is an exception, as the anode will generate chlorine gas from it rather than make HCl).
If you’re really keen, you could react your acid product with calcium carbonate, and then filter off the insolubles. That way you’d have a pretty pure solution of calcium nitrate, which you could put through the electrolysis process once again to get more pure nitric acid. The yield would likely be very low though.
@@ScrapScience Ok Thank you for your reply... Im wondering also if i do your method using straight cloudy ammonia in the cathode side and putting something over the cathode , would that produce and collect nitrous dioxide gas ? 🤔
I'm afraid not, firstly, reduction occurs on the cathode, not oxidation, so ammonia definitely won't be oxidised to any other products in the cathode chamber. Even if it were put in the anode chamber, you have three things working against you. The main one being the fact that ammonia (or the ammonium ion) doesn't oxidise to NO2, but instead to NO3-. Also, ammonia is not very conductive and the ammonium ions are repelled by the anode, severely hindering the desired reaction.
You're much more likely to simply generate hydrogen (on the cathode) and oxygen (or possibly small amounts of nitrogen and nitrate on the anode) by the electrolysis of ammonia, whether or not you have a pot separating the electrodes.
@@ScrapScience Bugger... lol... There has to be an easier way 🤔
what percentage of nitric acid would this be ?
The electrolysis generated a concentration of around 1% or 2% probably
13:19 don't throw that Fine graphite particles it's intercalated fine graphite powder made just for free during making something else it has very large surface area and can be use as battery Anode in Diy Battery project .
M i right !!!
What focus did you get this way?
What do you mean by focus?
@@ScrapScience I think the translation was supposed to be concentration. (here liquid in chemistry not light ray in optics/physics)
What is the white thing in the bottom of the pot?
It’s a small amount of silicone sealant for plugging the hole in the pot
@@ScrapScience Thank you, by the way is there any other material besides the pot that what still work?
I’ve never found anything quite as cheap and effective as a clay pot, but anything porous and inert should do the job. You could probably rig something up with some fine fibreglass or filter paper to separate the electrodes, I’m not too sure how good the efficiency would be though.
@@ScrapScience Filter paper? Will nitric acid dissolve it?
@@changweihsu Only highly concentrated nitric acid could have a chance at dissolving paper, so the concentrations achieved by this method won't be a problem.
I like the video ☺💪👍
woooooooo..good job!!!!! them clay pots are such a good idea..my go to for sure!!!
comments have disappeared for me?
Whta a wsate of ym tmie
Does this have to be distilled water?
will it still work with normal tap water?
It will work with tap water, but depending on which minerals are in your tap water, it won’t be particularly pure
ok thanks!
@@ScrapScience How about bottles water?
@@changweihsu bottled water would do fine, but it's honestly not going to be much more pure than tap water (unless your tap water is particularly hardened or has other high levels of impurities).
Please add subtitles
nice
🙏🙏🙏🙏❤️ GOD BLESSED
probably much easier way is to mix a nitrate salt with a bisulfate salt monohydrate and distill off ~ 50% + nitric acid
Nice project, I was thinking about this for years but NurdRage said in his copper refining video that electrlysis of copper(II) nitrate solution actually decomposes nitric acid and nitric acid would redissolve the copper so i didnt try it.
You can concentrate the nitric acid by boiling.
is it possible to use titanium electrode?
For the cathode, yes. For the anode, no.
You probably want to just stick with the really dilute nitric acid if you're going to be wearing nitrile gloves when you're messing with it 21:28
11:39 Time to make a new video.
This method is to much trouble for such a weak acid. I'll just make fuming nitric acid with a retort or glass distillation method, using a nitrate, sulfuric acid with minimal water.
nitric acid from Acqua regia? it will be amazing-
If only.
Take helmate oxygen mask for safety and oxygen machine from fish tank battery one
waste of time, sorry.
You got more things wrong than you got correct!
Not very productive, perhaps a trial run before you RUclips it.
For those that dont know the ions,electrons can pass through the clay pot but no liquid can pass through the clay pot wallls some use a sponge but a clay barrier is much better filter.
Wow! Thats something. So can this be a practical usage in an electroysis setup as an alternative for the anode and cathode bags?
Water and ions can pass through the clay but they're doing it quite slowly. So it's not perfect but good enough
It's not that it's impossible to pass, it's that the diaphragm slows diffusion down drastically. That way you can push charged particles and they move quickly through the diaphragm, but neutral particles only diffuse
@@Jibrannajam92For many reactions it can, yes. This is actually the way the chlor-alkali process is done, or at least was done for a very long time. Maybe they do it differently now
I finally found an improved but more lengthy process
use a copper anode to produce copper nitrate and continiously remove KOH from the cathode compartment.
make the porous pot area the cathode compartment.
after you obtain copper nitrate crystals from the anode chamber you then run a seperate diapragm cell electrolysis run where you use graphite as the anode and steel or graphite as the cathode and you will produce copper metal in the cathode compartment which you can remove to totally remove and ions in solution to get a very high concentration of Nitric acid.
the cathode compartment ph may drop after some time so a tiny bit of sodium hydroxide may help keep it from becomming acidic if you are using steel as a cathode otherwise if its graphite then there is no problem there.
This method works for sulfuric acid too but sadly not hydrochloric acid
the copper/iron 2 chloride just gets electrolyzed into chlorine sadly
Another option would be to decompose the copper nitrate using heat like NurdRage did in his last video. In fact, the biggest problem was to get the copper nitrate, because he made it from calcium nitrate and copper sulfate, which gives very difficult to filter calcium sulfate.
Also, if you don’t have easy access to HCl, you can always make it from NaCl and H2SO4, as your method works for H2SO4 too.
@@GRBtutorials u know after so long ive made a liter of HNO3 so far and guess what my process is.
Well I found a cheap Pt catalyst sold for fireplaces 22 dollars for like A LOT 5 grams of Pt on ceramic wool which makes a volume of like 250cc which means I can make a lot of reactors.
I then created a setup using an ammonia desorber and airline regulator valves to carefully control the gas composition about the catalyst.
Would like to see the difference when using 2 pots instead of one
Brian Coit, Double the amount on nitric acid.
I don't think one would happen,i shall try and infform you all
*Use Carbon rods not Graphite rods or 304L stainless steel on the positive!!!*
New favorite RUclipsr!Love your vids man keep it up!
I appreciate and admire folks that have the balls to admit (like you) when they’re wrong. Unlike the myriads of PhD’s in chemistry from the University of RUclips commenting and talking shit. Great video and it forms a great basis for us the other half who are not PhD’s with a degree. 😅
I must say this guy rly makes science with scrap. Nice work
Can't even obtain potassium nitrate over here without going onto a watch list thanks to the IRA.
Which is a shame because nitric is useful for alot of chemistry, gold refinement and etching.
Know of any process to get nitrates for a home chemist in nanny states beyond the birkeland eyde process
The Ostwald process is one possibility. ( ruclips.net/video/dMV4-CxCyL0/видео.html and ruclips.net/video/iaNSH89gpPk/видео.html )
Ammonium sulfate fertilizer can be used as a source of ammonia, with sodium hydroxide. ( ruclips.net/video/gh4gGkk74iU/видео.html )
When you explain you repeat over and over being confusing. Why does he keep saying the same thing over an over slightly differently, your just a nervous talker . Do an outline first and organize your thoughts then do a summery at the end.
If you're looking to watch someone who has their thoughts in order, my old videos are definitely not the ones you want to watch, haha.
If you feel like checking out any of my newer stuff, hopefully you'll find that I'm a lot less all over the place in this regard.
When you heat it the Nitric Acid (boiling point 181.4 F) boiled off before the water (212 F) does. Heat it enough and only the water and copper will remain. LoL
That’s not how boiling nitric acid works.
Nitric acid forms an azeotrope with water that boils at a higher temperature.
I wonder if anyone has used oil as a barrier in one of the u shaped pipes for electro chemistry, all you would have to do is add something like a stick of graphite that goes through the oil to complete the circuit
I'm not quite sure what you mean, oil is essentially an insulator and won't dissolve ionic compounds, so it can't be used to conduct electricity in an electrolytic cell either as an electrolyte or as a diaphragm/membrane. Or are you talking about a different mechanism?
@@ScrapScience That's why you use graphite, first put in salt water, then a layer of oil on each side put in the graphite rods on both sides to create a bridge through the insulators then top it off with the liquid you want to change
The clay pot is a membrane that lets IONS flow, not only electricity. Oil won't work.
@@EdwardTriesToScience I thought it was the electrons flowing while blocking the ions that do the work
Could using hydrogen peroxide cause it to react instead of the heat?
Yep, probably. Though if your end goal is simply to dissolve copper rather than make copper nitrate specifically, you could also use a mix of peroxide and hydrochloric acid, which also does the trick and is easier to set up.
@@ScrapScience I wasn't thinking really about how it would change the cu nitrate in the end since I thought it would just disassociate
Another reason for low yield apart from the fact that Nitrate is reduced to ammonium in the cathode might be that at the anode Nitrate may be converted to NO2 and NO as everytime I did electrolysis of Sodium Nitrate I always noticed the odor of Nitrogen Dioxide.
Couple of points which may help out. The ionic exchange is being drastically limited by the lack of variable voltage and the distribution of current across the anode and cathode. By this I mean when current is low because of the lack of electrolytes in the distilled water it helps to increase the voltage a little to get electron excitement working quicker. When current starts flowing you can then reduce the voltage well below 12vdc. This is slower but it stops cathode and anode annihilation. Professional electrolysis is usually done at about 1.5vdc to avoid cathode/anode annihilation but it also involves better separation materials rather than clay. The shape of the anode and cathode are critical for even current distribution through the solutions otherwise you'll annihilate your equipment. Instead of dropping the anode and cathodes into the solution vertically and creating a concentration in one particular area, consider horizontally mounted rods. Take the graphite rods and drill 4 holes in them evenly spaced half way through and insert graphite pegs into the holes. Then split the source wire for the cathode into a 1 into 4 configuration and the same for the anode, connect each wire to each peg. This distributes the current and voltage across a larger surface area and increases ionic exchange significantly. Because you have a greater surface area to play with, current can be increased without causing too much damage to the graphite. Voltage can also be increased accordingly because current and voltage are distributed evenly and voltage nodes will not appear on the graphite. Pulse width modulation is also a great option for this type of work, look into that.
the decomposition of HNO3 on the anode makes this process not worth it and I do have proper ion exchange membranes.
I instead opted for the oxidation of ammonia since I found a cheap source of Pt catalyst ready made for less than 25 USD for 250cc of catalyst.
Can we make sulfur??
Nah man just buy that it costs next to nothing
You can use Gaseq to calculate the equilibrium yields of NO given compression ratio and
Fuel and air mixture.
That cardboard power supply makes me ancy.
But it's eco-friendly and in some cases might even turn surrounding area more futile for local ecosystem
Water surrounds the pot from all sides which means the diaphram membrane effect didnt work because the clay should perform as a barrier in the electrolyte but when the pot is inside the container this means the same process keep repeating itself.or the product I being created and neutralised at same time
Use sodium bisulfate for the "acid".
I was wondering, since you also produced ammonia on the copper, leavening out the membrane would cause the production of ammonium nitrate right? Or would it just produce ammonia?
Most of the ammonia produced by the process will be in the form of ammonia itself (not ammonium ions). However, a very small fraction will exist as ammonium (due to equilibrium processes), which could technically be interpreted as making up ammonium nitrate in solution. In practical cases though, this ammonium content is more associated with hydroxide ions than nitrate ions.
@@ScrapScience Oh ok, I’ll look into some other methods. Thanks a lot!
Could you use a aluminum cathode to push the reaction forwards by the potassium hydroxide and aluminum reacting to produce sodium aluminate and more hydrogen ions
I'm afraid not, the reaction of aluminium with potassium hydroxide does not produce hydrogen ions, but hydrogen gas instead. The reaction isn't really influenced by the presence of hydrogen ions anyway, it's pretty much just based on how many nitrate ions you can push through the diaphragm.
my anode, instead of making the acid, made a very basic base, about 12. does anyone know why?
Did you possibly mix up anode and cathode?